NAACP Members Share Their Story

Sonia Yaco with DOVE exhibit

Sonia Yaco, Special Collections librarian and university archivist at Old Dominion University, and Old Dominion University have been selected to receive the 2012 AARP Community of the Year Award. It will be presented to Yaco at the AARP All Volunteer Assembly Awards Recognition Banquet on Nov. 28.

The award is in recognition of Yaco’s leadership on the Desegregation of Virginia Education (DOVE), AARP, NAACP and Urban League project and traveling exhibit, “School Desegregation: Learn, Preserve, and Empower.”

The exhibit will be at  ODU’s Perry Library from Jan. 7 to Feb. 14, 2013.

Paula Martin Smith with DOVE exhibit

This event includes:

• Sharing historic photographs, documents, and memorabilia
• Recording your story (from 1950s to the 1980s) about desegregation
• Viewing film footage of local history
• Taking part in a Community Dialogue

This event is sponsored by the collaborative efforts of the Danville Historical Society, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, the Danville Museum of Fine Arts & History, AARP,  Virginia NAACP, and Urban League of Hampton Roads, Inc.

Opening Reception
Saturday, November 10,2012
3:00-6:00 PM

Bring letters, photos, fliers, and posters about school desegregation to donate to DOVE and the Danville Historical Society or to be scanned for digital archives. Call “C.B.” at 434-7934-5644 to schedule a recording time.

Danville Museum of Fine Arts & History
975 Main Street
Danville Virginia

Warren Stewart at DOVE event in Hampton with Brenda Andrews, publisher of New Journal and Guide and Sonia Yaco

August 14, 2012

Dear Ms. Yaco:

Thank you for allowing AARP to team with the DOVE project this year as we helped educate communities across Virginia on the history of our Commonwealth.  Creating a traveling exhibit and showcasing this at a dozen sites is no easy task but together, we did it!  I do believe that the groundwork we’ve laid could bring about further opportunities in coming years as well.

We are especially pleased to have given individuals the chance to tell their stories and to have those records stored as archives in the libraries of Old Dominion University.  We appreciate your effort to collect, record, transcribe, and copy these living histories at each of the locations.  Hearing each one was a moving experience for me, and I was pleased to have shared my own experience knowing that it too will be stored for future generations.

These types of projects are especially meaningful for AARP members and our state office continues to be interested in programs which reach across boundaries in order to educate people of all ages.  We wish to offer congratulations and share that we would be interested in collaborating again.  Thank you for diligently working to make all the logistics fit together.  The results we’ve achieved could not have been done without your leadership and coordination.

If there is anything else AARP can do to further share with others the results we’ve demonstrated, please do not hesitate to ask.

Sincerely,

Warren A. Stewart
State President

Theodore Delaney at “School Desegregation: Learn, Preserve, and Empower” at History Museum of Western Virginia

The History Museum of Western Virginia and the Harrison Museum of African American Culture hosted the “School Desegregation: Learn, Preserve, and Empower” in Roanoke Virginia in July and August.

More images of Roanoke exhibit

For more information contact DOVE co-chairs:

Brian Daugherity
Virginia Commonwealth University
bjdaugherity@vcu.edu

Sonia Yaco
Old Dominion University
syaco@odu.edu

Desegregation as I saw it in 1968 at Capeville Elementary School in Townsend Va.  I was 9 years old at the time.

In fourth grade, the wheels of desegregation began.  I’d heard family talk about it but I did not know what it meant so I just went about my business.  When the day came, I was frightened by some of the white people who felt they were being punished in some fashion for having to bring their kids to this black school.  That morning after getting off the bus to school there were station wagons everywhere with big white women on bullhorns calling us niggers and were just mad because their kids had to attend school with us.  I was really confused because my parents never spoke that way about anybody I knew.  Maybe it was because we were not around white people that much.  All I felt was confusion.  The police came and dispersed the crowd and school went on as usual.  The thing that really got me thinking about how bad this would be was one day when I was on the swings and a white girl was on the one next to me.  My mother had done my hair in a bun which meant that a lot of hair pins were there to stop my hair from falling.  The girl asked me who put all those nigger pins in my hair.  At first I said nothing because I really didn’t know how to react.  Was it an insult?  So she kept repeating it.  I finally got sick of it and punched her off the swing.  She ran crying to the principal’s office and even after explaining what happened I was kept after school and she waved good-bye to me while boarding the bus to go home.   This type of treatment continued because no one wanted to take on the white parents of the kids causing the problems.  I am thankful to the man who was raised with my mother who was a janitor at the school.  He left work early and took me home.  He said he didn’t want to upset my father who would have hit the roof.  Not angry at me but at Mr. Arnold the principle of the school who made me stay after school.  He was right.  My dad would have gone to his home that night and punched him out.  This incident was not the only time that black kids were suffering because of the problems that the white kids would start.  Many kids suffered from the teachers as well.

There were many white kids who were very kind and did not disrespect the black kids.  Many of those who had physical problems were treated badly by the white kids as well.  They were mostly my friends.  At that time in school there were bullies who chose not to associate with me as well.  So us cast outs played together and talked over our problems.  All we had was each other.

It wasn’t easy.

The initiative, which includes a traveling exhibit this spring to six commonwealth locales, is designed to encourage the preservation of records that tell the story of Virginia’s school desegregation – through firsthand accounts of people who experienced both the segregation and desegregation of Virginia’s public schools.

As Andrew Heidelberg, one of the “Norfolk 17″ who integrated Norfolk’s all-white public schools in 1959, said at the news conference on Wednesday, “Let’s get the history as told by the people who lived the history.”

Sonia Yaco, ODU’s Special Collections librarian and university archivist, who serves as co-chair of DOVE, shared some stories of Virginia’s desegregation history at the event last week, but said there is much that is lacking in the public record.

“Public records and newspaper accounts tell part of this tale. But still missing are the stories told by those affected by integration,” she said.

“A man called me at Special Collections at ODU Libraries to ask where he could find any evidence of the cross burning, abusive late-night phone calls and death threats he had endured when he enrolled in a previously white rural south-side high school. Where was it recorded?

“A woman emailed me asking where she could find material telling what it was like to be bused for racial balance.

“Where are these stories? For most communities, the answer is nowhere. The experience of black children who walked into white schools, and the stories of the white children who were bused to black schools, is missing from history.”

Yaco said she created DOVE in 2008 to fill this gap, and this new initiative will add more pieces to the Virginia history puzzle.

DOVE, Yaco explained, locates, catalogs and encourages the preservation of materials related to massive resistance, including correspondence, reports, newsletters, photographs, personal papers, organizational papers and first-person accounts.

“We want to find material about those who experienced desegregation and make it available to the public. We have been surveying archives throughout the state for relevant material, and we have created a catalog showing where these various materials can be found.

“Last year, I learned about AARP’s work gathering oral histories from the activists in the civil rights movement. They, in turn, told me about historic photographs – of Oliver Hill and other attorneys who filed the Virginia Brown lawsuit – that are held by the Virginia State NAACP. We recognized that we had a common goal: preserving the history of diversity in education in Virginia. In this mission, we have been joined by the Urban League of Hampton Roads.”

Brian J. Daugherity, Virginia Commonwealth University, co-chair of DOVE, spoke at the press conference about the need to preserve this important history. Two members of the Governor’s administration spoke in support of the project – Lisa Hicks-Thomas, Secretary of Administration and Javaid Siddiqi, Deputy Secretary of Education.

The one-day traveling events this spring will include:

• An exhibit of photographs and documentaries on the history of school desegregation in Virginia.
• The chance for participants to tell their story about desegregation. The public is invited to bring anything that describes their involvement in desegregation to the events: letters, photos, fliers and posters. People can donate them to DOVE or allow them to be scanned for the digital archives. Oral histories will be collected.
• Workshops, voter registration and volunteer opportunities.

The events will be held Saturdays on the following dates:

• April 14—Eastern Shore Community College, Business Development and Workforce Training Center, 29300 Lankford Highway, Melfa, VA 23410
• April 28—First Baptist Church of Hampton, 229  N. King Street, Hampton, VA 23669 from 10:00 Am – 3 PM
• May 5—R. R. Moton Museum, 900 Griffin Bld., Farmville, VA 23901 11:30 – 3:30 PM
• May 12—Armstrong High School 2300 Cool Lane Richmond, VA 23223 9:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m.
• May 19—Charles Houston Recreation Center, 905 Wythe Street  Alexandria, VA 22314 9:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m.
• June 2—Lynchburg Public Main Library, 2315 Memorial Avenue, Lynchburg, VA 24501 9:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m.

“We at DOVE are most eager to learn whatever Virginians are willing to share with us about segregation and desegregation and the history of Virginia education,” Yaco said.

For more information about the project, visit the DOVE website, http://www.lib.odu.edu/specialcollections/dove/index.htm.

Refreshments will be served. Registration is required. Call 1-877-926-8300.
For more information, call 1-866-542-8164.