Often Ignored Piece of Our Collective Past

This weekend we had the opportunity to attend the grand opening of the Lucasville School as a Historic Preservation site.  The Lucasville School was the black school in Prince William County during the time of segregation. 

I think that it takes a great deal of bravery and thoughtful reflection to choose to memorialize this period of our nation's history.  It would have been easy to let this tiny school house slip through the cracks in favor of preserving less controversial and grander historic sites, but that is not what Prince William County did.  We took this relic from our past and restored it so that future generation can learn from the mistakes of our past and therefore not be doomed to repeat them.

When we entered the very small school, Rachel wanted to know if it was the classroom for the Kindergarten or the first grade.  She could hardly believe that this was the entire school.  All the students of every grade studied in that one room heated by a pot belly stove.

Earlier in the week, I was trying to prepare the kids for our trip to Lucasville School and trying to explain segregated schools.  I might as well have been telling them that the black kids had to go to school on the moon, because it would have made just about as much sense to them.  How could children, who see a white boy and a black boy sharing a bunk bed every night understand that there was a time when these same children would not have even been allowed to share a classroom?

Rachel has become fascinated with the Civil Rights movement.  She loves to hear about "the lady who wouldn't sit in the back of the bus" and for her birthday she has requested a t-shirt with Martin Luther King Jr. on it (in Rachel's world you aren't anybody until you are on a t-shirt).  It amazes her that a little girl her age, Ruby Bridges, integrated her elementary school.  Even more though, it amazes her that the other children left the school instead of being in Ruby's class.

I must say that at a time in her life when Rachel is building her racial identity I am so proud that she identifies more with Ruby Bridges than Beyonce, she thinks more highly of Rosa Parks than Little Kim, and Martin Luther King Jr. is her hero, instead of Martin Lawrence.

Comments

[Laundry & Children]

I forgot to mention that while Rachel and Nicholas soaked in the history, Jack found the very loud bell and the paddle. Nicholas was curious about what the paddle was for and his eyes turned in to saucers when I told him that it was for the teacher to give pops to naughty students.

[GG at VB]

These are great pictures.

[Thoams Jackson]

While doing research on Terri Dickerson, Director of Civil Rights who list integrating private schools in Baltimore in 1962 on her bio, we came across a Real Hero of Integration; Ruby Bridges. Ruby did what Ms. Dickerson purported to have done as a courageous act, two years before Dickerson's biographical act. That's not the reason for this comment; the reason is our children need to learn about Ruby Bridges, and what she did for our nation as a six year old.