RHS Virtual Series

These History Portals will extend beyond the more singular write-ups of our Past Events, and RHS-Essays. We hope you’ll find a topic you like, and take a ‘Deep Dive’ as we gradually add new RHS articles, image galleries, primary sources, and relevant multimedia links. We will keep you posted as they build, but for starters, enjoy the chance to explore the range of African-American lives that have shaped Rockbridge across four centuries. And look back one straight hard century ago, to that last global pandemic that struck Rockbridge locally, and lastingly.

Fighting for Freedom: Black Union Soldiers

Larry Spurgeon & Cinder Stanton

June 2021 Program

With Archived Video and Materials

Watch the Zoom Recording HERE

Browse the 60+ Soldier Bios HERE

**Read the 2-Part News-Gazette Series:**

Part 1: General Patterns and Pathways

Part 2: Personal Profiles – Rockbridge USCT

Rockbridge-tied soldiers fought with state-organized and federal forces across the Union theaters of war, in and beyond Virginia. Among the many regiments they served in were the 107^th and 5th U.S. Colored Infantry (above, below).

During the Civil War, more than 60 Black men from Rockbridge served in 29 Union regiments, enlisting in 14 states. Some were free before the war while others were enslaved men who escaped to join the fight to end slavery. They included carpenters, farmers, waiters, a blacksmith, and a descendant of the Hemings family of Monticello.

Cinder Stanton and Larry Spurgeon will discuss their research, and RHS Executive Director Eric Wilson will moderate, with audience Q&A to follow.

Local Black Histories: Virtual Access, Lasting Archive

As our e-Newsletters roll out this series in the coming months, please check back in to see what new materials we’ve added. You can click hotlinks to access sites, or download full articles. Please Contact Us with your Questions, or suggestions for additions, or to add join the email list for latest releases, additions, and notice of relevant events.

Note: Resources with an * have been produced in conjunction with RHS Programs or Publications.

Series Overview

*Eric Wilson, Local Black Histories: Virtual Access, Lasting Archive

Free Blacks & Slavery in Rockbridge, Virginia

*David Coffey, Patrick Henry, Free Man of Color: Caretaker of Thomas Jefferson’s Natural Bridge

*Larry Spurgeon, The Henry Brothers, Part 1: From Slavery, to Free Men, and the Legacies of Resilience Part 1 + Part 2

Turk McCleskey, The Road to Black Ned’s Forge: A Story of Race, Sex, and Trade on the Colonial American Frontier (+ video lecture)

Ted DeLaney, John Chavis: Soldier, Minister, Educator & America’s First African American College Student, at Washington College: (+ 3 min audio profile)

Melvin Patrick Ely, Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Freedom from 1790 to the Civil War (+ radio interview)

*Fitzhugh Brundage, Attitudes towards Slavery in Antebellum Rockbridge County

Neely Young, Ripe for Emancipation: Rockbridge and Anti-Slavery from Revolution to Civil War

*Charles Dew, Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge

Larry Spurgeon, Stonewall Jackson’s Slaves

*Larry Spurgeon, James Alexander aka ‘Jim Lewis’

*Eric Wilson, Re-Visiting a Rockbridge Icon: Archer Alexander’s Journeys as a Local Slave, a Self-Emancipated War Hero, as a National Monument

*Eric Wilson, The Faces of Freedom: Archer Alexander, Emancipation Memorials, and How We Look at the Past (Video + Slides)

Journeys to Juneteenth

Entries in the inaugural Rockbridge Juneteenth Art Show

Juneteenth and Freedom: Reading Lists for all Ages

*Eric Wilson, Celebrating Juneteenth in Lexington, 2021

*Eric Wilson, Journeys to Juneteenth

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. & PBS, What is Juneteenth?

New York Times Interactive, How We Juneteenth

Juneteenth Art Show 2020: Project Horizon and Nelson Gallery

Emancipation and Reconstruction

*Theodore C. DeLaney, Aspects of Black Religious and Educational Development in Lexington, 1840-1928

1867: Black Men in Rockbridge and Virginia Vote for the First Time

Doug Harwood, The Strange Saga of Lexington’s Colored School

Lynching in Virginia Database, JMU: Comparative Sources on Jesse Edwards in Rockbridge, 1869

*Larry Spurgeon and Eric Wilson, Black Men Take the Ballot: The Landmark 1867 Vote in Rockbridge

*Larry Spurgeon and Eric Wilson, The Votes of 1867 … Who Counted Here?

*Larry Spurgeon and Eric Wilson, ‘Bulldozing,’ Blowback, & Disenfranchisement Reconstruction and Redemption in Rockbridge, 1867-1902

*Larry Spurgeon and Eric Wilson, School Ties and Social Networks: The Rise of ‘The New Negro’ in ‘The Age of Jim Crow’

*Larry Spurgeon and Eric Wilson, “Fence Corners of Cultivated Fields”: Lexington’s Two Black Cemeteries

1867 Register of 952 ‘Qualified Colored Electors’ from Rockbridge (Searchable Transcript)

*David Coffey, Reconstruction and Redemption in Lexington

John M. McClure, Freedmen’s Bureau School in Lexington versus ‘General Lee’s Boys‘

Joseph Reidy, Illusions of Emancipation: The Pursuit of Freedom and Equality in the Twilight of Slavery

Dorris Keeven-Franke, The Life and Legacies of Archer Alexander

Sascha Goluboff: Sentimental Attachments: Race Relations in Brownsburg Before and After the Civil War – Brownsburg Museum Exhibit

Nicole Myers Turner, Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia (+ paired open access, interactive e-Book)

The 20th Century: Jim Crow to Desegregation

*Eric Wilson, The Cultures of Teaching: Community Commitments, Local Teachers, and the 20th Century Arc of American Education

Edward Ayers, The Roots of Segregation in Virginia (video)

*Eric Wilson, Black Histories at Natural Bridge: Re-Visiting Virginia’s Frontier Icon (video + slideshow)

*Eric Wilson, Looking for Lylburn Downi ng

Michael Blankenship, Rev. Lylburn L. Downing, a Biography (1862-1937)

*Eric Wilson, Eliza Bannister Walker: Community Activist, Cultural Leader (video + slideshow)

*Eric Wilson, Re-Visiting Rockbridge, 1939: A New Year’s Journey with RHS, and “The Negro Motorist Green Book”

*Eric Wilson, Lexington’s Two Schools for Black Students (1865-1965): The Impact of Educators of Color (Video + Slides)

*Eric Wilson, The Impact of Educators of Color, Part II: Consolidation and Curriculum, 1965-2020 (Video + Slides)

*School Spirit, School History, Black History Month 2023: The Legacies of Lylburn Downing School

*Theodore C. DeLaney, Telling Our Stories: School Desegregation in Four Western Virginia Counties

Virginia Humanities, Separate But Unequal: Fighting Virginia School Segregation: 4 Testimonies (podcast series, “With Good Reason”)

*Eric Wilson, The Arts and Histories of Diamond & Green Hill (slideshow)

Beverly Tucker, The House on Fuller Street: Oral Histories from Lexington’s African-American Neighborhoods

Jonathan Schwab, UVA Football’s First Black Scholarship Player, 1970: Rockbridge High School’s Stanley Land Looks Back, 50 Years Later

Other clusters we will be adding in, ahead, spanning eras and different themes:

Re-Visiting Rockbridge: African-American Communities in Brownsburg, Diamond & Green Hill, Natural Bridge
Visitations: Graves, Memories, Homecomings, Communities

Rockbridge and WW2: 75^th Anniversary Commemorations

*Sgt. LeRoy Miller, his Purple Heart, USA Wings, and Service Prayer Book.*

This summer witnesses 75^th anniversary commemorations of the end of World War II, stretching from Victory-in-Europe Day (May 8, 1945), to the final surrender of Japan (August 15, 1945). These digital profiles provide local histories and images illustrating the contributions of Rockbridge men and women who served in the Armed Forces, were wounded or killed in duty, and those who returned to Rockbridge to shape their lives, families, and communities, here and beyond. Please contact RHS to help us share stories of the people in your own lives whose efforts in World War II can be sustained in our stewardship of in Rockbridge histories.

V-E Day at 75: Rockbridge Profiles in Courage

Cpl. John Gunn, WW2 Memoirs: Crossing the Rhine, Capturing a German Spy, the End of WW2 in Europe

Sgt. Leroy Miller: Natural Bridge ‘Rocket,’ US Army Airman, WW2 Purple Heart

S/Sgt. Eugene Kyle Sweet: Hero in Italy, Returned to Rockbridge, Bequest to RHS

From Work to War: RHS Witnesses the Close of WW2 with Pop-Up Exhibits, Virtual Series

Beyond the World War II We Know: NY Times Series

Buena Vista Fights & Works: WW2 Soldier Profiles, and Community Support

Buena Vista World War II Service Record: American Legion Commemorative Publication, 1948

Rockbridge Pandemics: From 1918 Influenza to COVID-19

We’ve drawn together a range of resources from our own programs, publications, and partners that spotlight local experiences in Rockbridge and Augusta Counties, and others that cue you to a wide range of online reading and media resources regarding the ‘Spanish Flu’, and other epidemics in history. As you read and reflect, please do communicate with us in your own right: particularly regarding any family or community histories from that era that you may personally know through stories told, photographs preserved, memoirs or scrapbooks that illuminate those trying times, a century ago, now fresh in new light.

Click on these hotlinks for:

“The Great Rockbridge Flu Epidemic of 1918-1919 in Rockbridge County” (by VMI microbiologist & immunologist Dr. Eileen Hinks: 2005 RHS Program, published in RHS Proceedings Vol.13)

“The Flu of 1918: Attack on the Homefront in Augusta and Staunton” (by Augusta County Historical Society President Nancy Sorrells & Caitlyn Alexander, Augusta County Historical Society Bulletin, 2018)

“The ‘Rockbridge Flu’: RHS Looks Back, a Century Ago” (by RHS Executive Director Eric Wilson, Lexington News-Gazette, April 8, 2020)

Reading List and Media Links for Local, National, Global Resources on the 1918 Influenza & Other Epidemics