A New Era In Building: Black Educational Activism In Goochland County

On February 24, 2022 historians Brian Daugherity and Alyce Miller delivered a lecture about Black educational activism in Goochland County in the early twentieth century. In this lecture, based on their award-winning article published in the Virginia Magazine of History & Biography in 2020, Brian Daugherity and Alyce Miller will analyze community efforts to increase educational access and opportunity for African Americans in Goochland County, Virginia, in the early twentieth century, as well as the connections between this advocacy and other communities across the state and throughout the South. The story, told using various archival records and oral history interviews, demonstrates the power and agency of rural Black southern communities during the Jim Crow era. Recognizing and analyzing this advocacy helps expand our understanding of Black activism during the Jim Crow era, educational philanthropy, and southern educational history, as well as how this era of Black activism was linked to subsequent civil rights achievements. Brian J. Daugherity is an associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of several books on the civil rights era in Virginia. Alyce Miller is a professor of history at Valencia College. Their article in the Virginia Magazine of History & Biography (vol. 128, no. 1) was awarded the William M. E. Rachal Award for Best Overall Article in the journal in 2020. Learn more at https://secondunionrosenwaldschool.org and https://digital.library.vcu.edu/islandora/object/vcu%3Agoo. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.