Members of the Woodville Rosenwald School Foundation’s Descendants Community Committee traveled to the Virginia Museum of History and Culture in Richmond earlier this month to visit the exhibit titled, “A Better Life for their Children. Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington and the 4,978 Schools that Changed America.”
The exhibit explores the legacy of the program developed by Booker T. Washington, an African American educator, and Julius Rosenwald, a Jewish businessman and philanthropist. Between 1912 and 1937, their program provided seed money to build 4,978 schools for African American children across the segregated southern U.S. (including Woodville School in Gloucester).
Prominently displayed in the exhibit is a picture from the Gloucester Training School’s first and second grades in 1948. The picture was included as evidence in a lawsuit brought by the Virginia NAACP against several school boards, including the Gloucester County School Board, which claimed the school districts d...