Jacob Robinson grew up in Galax, and his grandmother traveled by bus to attend the Wytheville Training School, one of a handful of Black schools across Southwest Virginia
“There was a huge emphasis on the institution of education for Black community members here,” Robinson said.
Schools like the Wytheville Training School and the Calfee Training School in Pulaski were built in the 1800s and stayed open until schools integrated.
“A lot of folks don’t know, but Black folks in this region were highly educated during that time, especially in relation to other parts of Virginia,” Robinson said.
Robinson is a researcher at Virginia Tech and is part of a team called Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia. They’re collaborating with nine community groups to reclaim untold and overlooked history. One of those groups is the Calfee Community and Cultural Center, the organization that now calls the former Calfee Training Center home.
Robinson said, once Pulaski County integrated in 1967, many of the Black teachers who had taught at Calfee left (because they weren’t offered equal opportunities at the integrated school).
One who stayed was Dorothy DeBerry Venable, a Black coal miner’s daughter, who taught for 46 years.
“In order to reach the students, you’ve got to get down to their level. I loved every minute of it,” Venable said in an oral history interview the Calfee Center is working on. “We had fun.”
Before integration, Venable taught second grade at Calfee for fifteen years. When she discovered her students were learning from older textbooks than what students at the white school had, she complained to the school board.
“Later on that day, this van from the school board office pulled up in front of the school,” Venable said. “And guess who got new books? Me. I had been taught by my father that if something’s not right, you complain.”
Venable was the only Black teacher in Pulaski County Schools who kept a full lead teacher position when schools integrated.
“I was the only one that was put in a regular classroom,” Venable said. “It wasn’t because I was so smart, but it was because I had a big mouth.”
For her courage and resilience, Venable was one of six people honored with a Legends of Excellence Award at a recent ceremony hosted by the Calfee Center. Many of her students were in the room, and gave her a standing ovation.
During the ceremony, Calfee Center’s executive director, Jill Williams, said heroes like Venable, are important to celebrate.
“Without those stories, stories that are relatable, and rooted in community, how do we inspire the next generation of leaders? How do we build a better future?” Williams said.
“We are living in a time when there is real pressure to whitewash our nation’s history. Especially the painful parts about slavery, segregation and oppression,” Williams said. “And while I understand the impulse to shield children from pain, the danger is this: when we don’t teach the hard history, we also don’t get to teach about the everyday heroes who resisted.”
At the ceremony, the Calfee Center also unveiled a special story-quilt, which tells the history of 23 families who signed a lawsuit in 1947 to demand equal education for their children.
Descendants helped design their family’s squares with photos and other memorabilia. A local quilting group put it together.
Jamie Raczynski is a senior history major at Virginia Tech who helped with the project.
“Especially now, in our current world, a lot of people, including myself, feel like, they don’t have as much of a voice, or they don’t have as much of a say, as what’s going on in the world,”
But working with the Calfee community to bring this history to light has changed that. “It makes me feel less small in the world,” Raczynski said. “That, like, if these people in 1947 could sign on to a lawsuit, and win. It makes me feel like I could make change in the world too. And just doing this project is a part of that change.”
The Calfee 23/54 quilt will now go on tour at several sites in Southwest Virginia, including three historic Black schools that Raczynski said are connected to this history.
This project is one of nine in Virginia that’s funded by Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia (MAAV) at Virginia Tech. Coordinator Lauren Trice explained all the projects are centered around redefining what monuments mean. "And allowing the people whose story it is to be told have decision making power and have agency in how those stories are told," Trice said.
The MAAV project is in its final year of a three-year, $3 million grant from the Mellon Foundation. Similar monument projects are going on around the country.
The Calfee Community and Cultural Center Pulaski is hosting a celebration Friday, June 20 from 5:00-10:00evening at their renovated school building that was once the home of the Calfee Training Center. The event will feature children’s movies, storytelling, a food truck, and an outdoor showing of the film “Harriet.”
The 23/54 story quilt will go on tour this summer to the following locations:
- The Inn at Virginia Tech. Christiansburg Institute Alumni Reunion. July 4-6
- Wytheville Training School. Wytheville Street Fair (8/19) July 11-25
- Glencoe Museum. Mary Draper Ingles Festival. July 26
- Rosenwald Felts Galax. Rosenwald Revamped Digital Day. Aug 23
The Calfee Center also plans to unveil their documentary about the history of the Calfee Training school later this fall.
