Located on the second floor of the Alexander Black House, Education in Blacksburg is a permanent exhibit in a school room setting.
The public school system we know today is a relatively modern concept. For Virginians, education was a privilege until the 1870s when legislators created a system for free public education. Despite this new system, educational disparities existed amongst students depending on race, geographic location, and economic class. Blacksburg’s history of schooling and educations reflects many of the same challenges faced by other town and school districts throughout the country that navigated the challenges of limited budgets, social inequalities, and changing societal role of schooling.
We consider this exhibit an ongoing community project and will continue to accept submissions that help tell a well-rounded story about education in Blacksburg and the surrounding area. We are looking for artifacts, photographs, memorabilia, oral histories, stories, documents and more. Your donations and/or loans can potentially help us complete the historic record of our area’s education system in all its challenges, triumphs, and milestones.
For submission inquiries, please email info@blacksburghistory.org
Exhibit Sources
Evolution of the Blacksburg High School Mascot
- What Is Cultural Appropriation?
- WDBJ 7 April 18
- Students Staged a Walk-Out
- Task for in the news Jan 29, 2001 taskforce
- Let’s Teach Respect, Not Racism
- Native at VT
- James C. Klagge, Finding a Mascot for a New Millennium
- James C. Klagge, Conflicting Preferences: Politics and Morality
Special thanks to those who took the time to be interviewed on this topic.
The Pledge of Allegiance
- United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission. 1932. Volume I: Literature Series
Integration of Public Schools in Blacksburg
- Black Education in Montgomery County, Virginia: 1939-1966. Tracy A. Martin. Virginia Tech Master Thesis. 1996.
- https://civilwar.vt.edu/christiansburg-institute/
- Thorp, Daniel B. “The Beginnings of African American Education in Montgomery County.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 121, no. 4 (2013): 314-345.
- Martin, Tracy M. “Black Education in Montgomery County Virginia, Virginia, 1939-1966.” Master’s Thesis, Virginia Tech, 1996.
- Long, Edgar A. “A Vision of Education”