“The locations of many of Virginia’s historically important records of school desegregation remain unknown. DOVE will train volunteers to conduct onsite surveys of school desegregation collections,” said Sonia Yaco, ODU Special Collections librarian and university archivist.

Training sessions will be held in the four communities where public schools were closed to prevent integration in the late 1950s under Massive Resistance: Norfolk, Prince Edward County, Charlottesville and Arlington/Front Royal.

The DOVE project was created in 2008 as a collaborative effort to develop a guide to historic resources that document Virginia’s school desegregation process from the mid-1940s through the mid-1980s. Participants in DOVE include ODU, Norfolk State University, College of William and Mary, Virginia Commonwealth University, George Mason University, National Archives and Records Administration – Mid Atlantic Region, R.R. Moton Museum, Virginia State University, Norfolk Public Library, Virginia Tech, Washington and Lee University and the Library of Virginia.