The university occupies a unique geographic place in U.S. history: in early April 1865 both Gens. Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant marched past the north end of campus on Lee's retreat to Appomattox just days before the end of the American Civil War; at the south end of campus lies the former Robert Russa Moton High School, site of the historic 1951 student strike that became one of the five court cases culminating in the historic "Brown v. Board of Education" decision; and Israel Hill, a community of free black people formed around the turn of the 19th century, stands two miles from campus.