During the 1940s, 23 Black families in Pulaski County signed a historic lawsuit fighting for equal education for their children. Their story, and what happened to their descendants, is the focus of a documentary that will premier later this month in the New River Valley.
Corbin v. County School Board of Pulaski County was a landmark civil rights case in Virginia, and the families won in 1949, predating Brown v. Board of Education.
“It was really a precursor for some significant history, right here in Pulaski,” said Keiona Henderson, project coordinator with the 23/54 project, a collaboration between the Calfee Community and Training Center and Virginia Tech’s Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia. For the past several years, she and others have been researching the Calfee School’s history and recording oral histories with descendants of the 53 plaintiffs.
“They risked their livelihoods. They risked their safety. They risked their careers,” Henderson said. “They risked everything just so people could get an education.”
Henderson said while many of the descendants they interviewed didn’t know about the lawsuit, they all said having a good education was a value that was carried down through their families.
“And it shows us, like, how to fight back,” Henderson said. “You don’t fight back with violence. You don’t fight back with your fist, necessarily. But you fight back with education.”
The documentary, called “Stitched Together,” will premiere at a free event on Saturday, February 28th at 6 pm at the Pulaski Theatre.
