Uncovering the History of Bath County’s Segregated Schools: The Story of Two Rosenwald Schools for the Black Community   This year’s spring program sponsored by the Bath County Historical Society will present the history of the two Bath County Rosenwald Schools: Union Hurst in Hot Springs and T.C. Walker in Millboro. These two schools are the focus of a project titled, Ethno-Historic Research on the Rosenwald Schools of Bath County: Switchback School and the Millboro School. This program is supported by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (VFH). Project Director Cynthia Boteler will share insights in a multimedia presentation which will incorporate her research and oral history from community members on Thursday, May 9, 2013 at 7:00 pm in Trimble Hall, The Dairy Community Center in Warm Springs, Virginia. Virginia State University Archivist Lucious Edwards will give a brief overview of the Archie Richardson Collection, within which Boteler discovered photos of the two schools in 2012. Anthropologist, historian and director of the Tusculum Institute at Sweet Briar College, Dr. Lynn Rainville, will also present information on Rosenwald Schools and her work on her website, The Rosenwald Schools of Virginia. Seven years of organizing Black History programs for Dabney S. Lancaster Community College and a program on the Robert Russa Museum in Farmville compelled Bath County resident, Cynthia Boteler to begin her research. In February of 2010, Boteler wrote a proposal to create an oral history project with a professional development grant from the Virginia Community College System. In July 2010, Boteler -- with the assistance of a small film crew, Union Hurst alumna Perlista Henry, and several community college students -- filmed an alumni reunion for a documentary film on Watson High School in Covington, Virginia. Support for the project was provided by Coming to the Table, a program of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. During this process, Boteler consulted with Perlista Henry, a current board member with the Bath County Historical Society. Henry told Boteler about the two small schools in Bath County, Union Hurst School in Hot Springs, and T.C. Walker School in Millboro. Henry, a resident of Warm Springs, described riding the bus for approximately an hour to attend Watson High School in Covington. “It was a 70-mile roundtrip for the students who lived in Millboro, and we had a 50-mile roundtrip there.” Henry attended the Watson High School Reunion and worked with the film crew during the interview process as she knew the alumni being interviewed. Henry also narrated parts of the film. Doris Turner Hayes, whose mother taught at T.C. Walker and Union Hurst, was a graduate of both T.C. Walker School and Watson High School. She shared her memories of T.C. Walker School, some of its history and of actually meeting T.C. Walker. Two weeks after the film premiered at DSLCC in 2011, Boteler discovered information on the VFH’s website on the Scrabble School, a Rosenwald School. Approximately 5,000 Rosenwald schools were built across the south as a result of a partnership between Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears Roebuck. Boteler’s discovery of Union Hurst and T.C. Walker on the Fisk University database of Rosenwald schools, among a list of roughly 300 Rosenwald schools in Virginia, was the catalyst to document this segment of Bath County’s past. To date, in addition to researching primary sources of the written history beginning in 1871, Boteler completed five oral history interviews with alumni from each school. Boteler’s presentation will start at 7:00 pm on Thursday, May 9th in Trimble Hall in The Dairy Community Center in Warm Springs. This project is sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (VFH), Virginia Hot Springs Preservation Trust, Bath County Historical Society, Anderson Cottage and Dabney S. Lancaster Community College.

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