A Very Good Sign: Cumberland County Students Preserve History by Initiating Historical Roadside Markers
June 13, 2024
June 13, 2024
“This is education in action,” said a smiling Ed Ayers, widely-known historian and former University of Richmond president, as he surveyed the Cumberland County crowd of more than 100 students and supporters. He was right: An amazing amount of student- and teacher-generated action made that culminating day in April happen, as Cumberland County Middle School history teacher Lewis Longenecker and his students celebrated the unveiling of a historic marker they’d initiated, and which now stands at a county intersection.
The marker preserves the memory and legacy of Lucyville, a Black community founded by freed slave Rev. Reuben T. Coleman, who named it after his daughter. Eventually, he owned a bank there and Lucyville also had its own newspaper and post office, along with a resort built around local mineral springs.
“It’s incredibly important to understanding our communities that that we preserve their history,” says Longenecker, a Cumberland Education Association member, “and Virginia’s historic roadside markers have not always done that as well as they could, especially for underrepresented communities. The work our students have done has given them the chance to share accurately and proudly what makes overlooked parts of our story meaningful.”
The Lucyville marker wasn’t Longenecker and his students’ first rodeo—the Lucyville marker is the fourth of five they’ve worked together on to research and earn state approval. Most were accomplished through the Virginia Department of Education’s Black History Month and Asian American Pacific Isalnder Heritage Month Historic Marker Competitions, annual events offering students throughout the state an opportunity to preserve their communities’ local history. Unfortunately, those competitions were eliminated during the Youngkin administration.
That’s why the National Education Association stepped in. Longenecker applied for and received an Envision Equity Grant from the NEA Foundation, which covered the expenses for students to research and produce a video entitled “The Chronicles of Lucyville: A Historic Community Forgotten.”
The day of the unveiling ceremony was festive, beginning with a gathering at the nearby Mount Olive Baptist Church, where speakers included descendants of Lucyville residents, Ayers, and Julie Langan, director of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.
After Longenecker noted that his students have another two dozen historic marker submissions in the pipeline, Langan lauded their ongoing efforts, which include digging deeply into primary sources and other historical documents, saying, “There’s no other school in the state that we’ve worked with so frequently on anything. Cumberland Middle School—you really stand out.”
Then it was on to the new marker’s site for the ceremonial unveiling that ensures Lucyville will never be forgotten. “While the people of Lucyville chose to be exceptional, so did our students as they completed components of the marker application, collaboratively wrote articles relating to Lucyville, and helped plan the unveiling,” Longenecker says. “They really made a difference, and now there’s a permanent marker representative of more of Cumberland County and Virginia’s history.”
According to the Economic Policy Institute, teachers in Virginia earn 67 cents on the dollar compared to other (non-teacher) college-educated workers. Virginia’s teacher wage penalty is the worst in the nation.
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