Dinwiddie County – One of the 53 sites along the Civil Rights in Education Heritage Trail®. In 1911 a group of Dinwiddie County’s African-American residents established the Rocky Branch School in Sutherland. The school was a typical two-room schoolhouse. It had been moved from original location across from Ocran Methodist Church on U.S. Route 460 […]
Dinwiddie County – One of the 53 sites along the Civil Rights in Education Heritage Trail®. Prior to the Civil War, Dinwiddie County was home to several private academies for those who could afford to pay for their education. While it was mostly affluent males who were educated, Pegram’s Academy, Female Academy, Girard Heartwell School […]
Mecklenburg County – One of the 53 sites along the Civil Rights in Education Heritage Trail®. In 1876 the United Presbyterian Church and the Rev. J. J. Ashenhurst, the first principal, formed Thyne Institute, the only facility in Mecklenburg County offering courses for blacks until 1923. Two years after opening in a small building that […]
Prince Edward County – One of the 53 sites along the Civil Rights in Education Heritage Trail®. In 1954, after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, that United States schools must integrate, Senator Harry S. Byrd and several Virginia governors followed the policy of “massive resistance.” Integration was […]
Prince Edward County – One of the 53 sites along the Civil Rights in Education Heritage Trail®. The Robert Russa Moton Museum, a National Historic Landmark, is the student birthplace of America’s Civil Rights Revolution. Dreamed by 16-year-old Barbara Johns, the 1951 Moton Student Strike produced three-fourths of the plaintiffs in the landmark Supreme Court […]
Lunenburg County – One of the 53 sites along the Civil Rights in Education Heritage Trail®. On May 13, 1947, several African American leaders in Lunenburg County met at First Baptist Church in Victoria to discuss the need for a centrally located building large enough to accommodate county-wide gatherings. Out of a need to deal […]
Nottoway County – One of the 53 sites along the Civil Rights in Education Heritage Trail®, when the Russell Grove School in Amelia County grew too big for its building, land was found in Nottoway County near Burkeville for a new school. Built in 1892 to educate African-American girls, the new school was named Ingleside […]
Nottoway County – One of the 53 sites along the Civil Rights in Education Heritage Trail®, Mt. Nebo Church was founded shortly after the Civil War in 1867. A northerner named Mr. Rickets bought the place called Oak Hill and began preaching to a group of African Americans at this place in the woods. The […]
Nottoway County – One of the 53 sites along the Civil Rights in Education Heritage Trail®, the Blackstone Female Institute was conceived in 1891 by George Pierce Adams, a Blackstone merchant, and Joshua Soule Hunter, a Methodist minister. Originally designed as a school to prepare young female students to enter Randolph-Macon Women’s College, it was […]
Brunswick County – One of the 53 sites along the Civil Rights in Education Heritage Trail®. Though many freed African Americans continued after the Civil War to work the same farms on which they had been slaves, many also left their homes in search of better opportunities elsewhere. Often the sick, elderly and very young […]
