From April through June, the "School Desegregation: Learn, Preserve, and Empower" project toured locations in Hampton, Richmond, Farmville, Lynchburg, Alexandria and the Eastern Shore to gather personal accounts and artifacts from the 1940s to the 1980s related to the desegregation of Virginia schools.

The project, which is now on display at the History Museum of Western Virginia in Virginia, is a collaboration of DOVE (Desegregation of Virginia Education), AARP Virginia, Virginia State Conference NAACP, and the Urban League of Hampton Roads. Its goal is to fill in "the missing piece of history’s puzzle ... the thousands of untold stories of the people who personally experienced integration. From segregation to massive resistance to desegregation, they bore witness to emerging social change. Their stories help us to understand the enormity of the struggle that brought about that change."

Read about the success of the project in an InsideODU story by Steve Daniel.

The DOVE project seeks to identify and preserve materials relating to school desegregation. A growing catalog and other information is available from the ODU Library Web site. For more information, contact Sonia Yaco, ODU's Special Collections Librarian and University Archivist, at syaco@odu.edu