Stanton Center 94 West Washington Street, Annapolis The first colored public school in the area was founded in Parole by the Freedmen's Bureau in 1867. Although many other schools closed with the discontinuation of Freedman's Bureau funding, the survival of Black education in Annapolis was ensured by a group of local African American citizens who purchased land from the Hyde family in 1869 on West Washington Street in Annapolis and transferred the Parole school to this location. The citizens group included William H. Butler, William Dorsey, Moses Lake, Charles Shorter, Charles Johnson, and Noble Watkins. This became known as the Stanton School, named for Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. The present building was built in 1903. In 1917, the first (and only) colored high school was started in Stanton School; in 1933 Bates High School opened. The site of the former Stanton School was entered in the National Register of Historic Places on December 1, 1983.