On Thursday, Feb. 16 at 4 p.m. in Lankford Student Union Ballroom,
the Longwood University Black Student Association (BSA)
set up a presentation and quiz bowl titled "Black History 365." The
event, proceeded over by announcer Cierra Coles, started with a
presentation, complete with a slide show by Longwood University's
Dr. Edward Kinman, associate professor of geography.
Kinman started with an introduction of his field and the changes
humans make to the environment along with the ways in which
maps can be altered by weather or destruction. This lead to a picture
of snow covered and warm season town of West Yellowstone and an
1878 map of Farmville.
Kinman explained that the geography of Farmville has changed
drastically over the ensuing centuries. One of the most prominent is
the removal of a street eight to nine years ago, but this proved to be
only the tip of the iceberg. Janet D. Greenwood Library, for instance,
supplanted a tobacco warehouse and a Baptist church. The southern
portion of Longwood University's campus also sits on the area once
occupied by over 100 homes mostly with African-American residents.
Kinman came upon the bulk of his research regarding the black
community that used to span Longwood's campus when the Farmville
Main library was being drawn up for construction.
During this time, an area of cleared land across from the colored
Odd Fellow Cemetery was being considered. There was a strong
backlash from the community and the library was moved to another
spot.
However, as Kinman sat on the side of a community meeting
about the library occupied by mostly older black residents, he was
introduced to an impression they had that the library's construction
near Odd Fellow would just be one of many long-running injustices
against the black people of Farmville.
When Kinman asked to interview four of the community members
about this history, he found that Longwood University had legally
or illegally appropriated the land of an entire black community during
the 1960s for the construction of its southern campus.
Some time later, he collaborated with an artist to construct three
pieces, currently hanging in Chichester Science Center, that illustrate
the phases of construction and the footprint of Longwood University's
campus overlying the older blueprints of the vanished community.
However, the campus expansion was originally planned to be even
larger, spanning across Race Street or the construction of dormitories
and other campus buildings. To fund this expansion, $27 million
was given to the school by the state of Virginia.
However, President Newman worried about the ethics of the
school's expansion and proposed urban renewal funds to reimburse
families. The funds were fought off by community members that
didn't want to leave under any conditions, and Newman was fired
in 1967. The expansion thus never came to be.
After the presentation, Coles announced a quiz bowl based on a
table of information on black history that has taken place each and
every month of the year. Separated into teams based on the numbers
one and two, the audience cycled between members for a spokesperson
and answered questions with point values, much like jeopardy.
Categories included Main Events and Politics and Education among
others.
After the event, Coles explained how she had organized the program
with a quiz bowl and a speaker. She explained that Kinman
was her professor. She added, "He did a research on the black history
in Farmville. So I asked him if he'd be willing to give a program,
since we're having a black history program being that black history
happens every day. "
Coles also encouraged people to be knowledgeable and realize that
"black history happens every day, and it's not just the big things that
matter. I mean, we have Barack Obama, but who invented the pencil
sharpener or built the clock? That could be a black man."
Coles admitted she did not initially know a black man invented
the pencil sharpener and answered a question about why it is usually
assumed that inventions are the work of white men.
Coles explained the appropriation of black inventions because of
complications with the patent process and the perception that the
"majority of the world is a ‘white world.'"Coles added, "I put quotations
around it because it is not. The world has no color. So you need
to do your research instead of assuming that a white person did it or
a black person did it so you don't put limits on the world."
In the aftermath of this program on the state of black history, here
and elsewhere, we find an amount of new knowledge and try to use
it to shape our future.
