Forward by Sidney Griffin, AIA
We uplift AIA Central Virginia Fellow member, Jody Lahendro, FAIA, for playing a key role in the State Department of Historic Resources receiving a grant through the National Park Service Underrepresented Communities Grant Program. Here, Jody recounts what this grant means for the recognition and historic preservation for Virginia’s historic African American schools.
DHR press release: https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/press-release-posts/nps-awards-virginia-75k-for-historic-context-document-for-african-american-schools/
Report by Jody Lahendro, FAIA
The recent announcement of a $75,000 grant to the state Department of Historic Resources (DHR) represents a major first step in gaining recognition for all of Virginia’s historic African American schools. This grant will fund the preparation of a Multiple Property Document (MPD), a cover form that will define the physical and cultural characteristics of Progressive Era schools constructed for rural African Americans. Once accepted by the National Park Service, this MPD will greatly facilitate the listing of historic Black schools on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places. Obtaining eligibility for these listings is often a requirement for obtaining grants for preservation of these schools.
A similar MPD was approved in 2004 for Rosenwald schools in Virginia, African American schools of this same period but constructed with the financial assistance and administrative oversight of the Rosenwald Fund. This new MPD will, for the first time, recognize the significance of historic Black schoolhouses built because of other, no less important, Progressive Era initiatives.
An example of the cultural richness that can accompany non-Rosenwald schools is Cuckoo Colored School in Louisa County, which will be nominated for listing with the MPD cover document. This unimpressive, 990 GSF abandoned schoolhouse was constructed about 1925. In helping school alumni and community to document and preserve this school, I learned that a Black school was founded in this location before 1880 by the inheritor of Cuckoo Plantation for children of his family’s formerly enslaved people. This small, unremarkable building is a surviving artifact of several intersecting cultural patterns of Virginia history, and will hopefully, because of this grant, join our record of listed historic landmarks while facilitating its preservation.