During Black History Month every year we get the opportunity to highlight and honor the legacy of two women for whom our Community Centers in Charlottesville and Nelson County were named. We also get to show how local Black History has shaped our organization and continues to do so today.
Mary Williams
Williams as a young woman.
Williams, for whom our Mary Williams Community Center in Charlottesville is named, grew up in Charlottesville and wanted to be a nurse. Because she was Black she couldn’t attend school here to become one, so she had to move away to fulfill that ambition. When she returned with her degree she found that she had to leave town again because she couldn’t find a job here. After a successful career elsewhere, she retired and returned to Charlottesville, only to discover that many seniors, especially Black seniors, had no adequate place where they could gather, have lunch, and socialize. There was a senior center located at the Jefferson School, but the space was in such disrepair that the local Health Department had threatened to close it down. So Williams helped organize a protest downtown demanding that the City help provide a senior center, and with signs in hand she and her fellow seniors headed to a City Council meeting to voice their concerns.
“I could not attend school here to get a nursing degree, so I had to leave town,” Williams told Councilors. “When I returned as a nurse, I could not get a job because I was Black. I had to leave town again. Now, I’m back and don’t tell me I have to leave my town again to go to a senior center.”
In 2011, William’s granddaughter, Michele Gibson, joined us at the new Jefferson School City Center, when the center was then located there, as we announced it would be named in her grandmother's honor. Today, the center is located at JABA’s main offices on Hillsdale Drive, where members continue to carry on her legacy.
Later this month, Ms. Gibson will join us again at Timberlake Place Apartments in Charlottesville as we dedicate the naming of the Community Room there in her grandmother's honor.
William’s granddaughter, Michele Gibson, giving a presentation about her grandmother’s life at the Mary Williams Community Center in 2022.
Cecilia Epps & Nelson County
Epps, for whom our Cecilia Epps Community Center in Nelson County is named, worked with JABA for 38 years as an Aging Service Coordinator/Case Manager. During that time, Ms. Epps was JABA in Nelson County. She helped to implement new programs, and she worked closely with the Blue Ridge Clinic. Her retirement brought a gym-full of people to honor her at the Nelson Center. For the Nelson County African American Oral History Project, she also told the remarkable story of how she and her husband, Fletcher, fought to improve the quality of education for their children and integrate the school system in Nelson County. Born in 1926, Mrs. Epps grew up on a small farm her father bought from a former slave-owning family and went on to build a house of her own and raise six children. It's an amazing story!
The Yancey School & Esmont
Members of JABA’s Southern Albemarle Community Center eating lunch together in the former cafeteria of the Yancy School.
Following the Civil War a community of African-Americans remained in Esmont to buy land, start businesses, farm, and work as domestics and laborers for the families that once enslaved them, forming a largely self-subsistent community. While they endured extreme poverty, they also worked together to make thing better.
Black parents, teachers, and community leaders had to successfully sue the local government to buy the land for what would become Esmont High School in 1904, and later Benjamin F. Yancey Elementary School in 1960, named for the Black educator who led the original effort to build the school. Sadly, the Albemarle County School Board decided to close Yancey Elementary School in 2017, citing declining enrollment, making it the first time in over 100 years there wasn't a school in Esmont. The school building has since become a community center and home to JABA's Southern Albemarle Community Center, which relocated from Scottsville, and members were quick to keep the memory of the tight-knit African American community alive.
Last year, members created a map of Porter's Road in Esmont on either side of Route 6 from memory, naming the schools, churches, grocery stores, beauty salons, car garages, and other businesses...Thomas Store, Feggans Barber Shop, Esmont Hotel, Cozy Corner, Paige's Garage, the Cary Sawmill...
"This one road supported itself," said Karl Bolden, a JABA center member who grew up in Esmont along Porters Road in the 1960s. "I didn't see poor people here. If somebody needed help, somebody helped them. We all supported each other."
Today, the JABA center members admit that the Esmont community isn't as tight-knit as it once was, that people buying up land and property aren't necessarily aware of the area's history and that a majority of community members who remember or recognize Esmont's history are retired and aging.
"This is still a thriving community with a rich history," insisted center member Graham Paige, who grew up in Esmont and taught in local schools for 30 years after getting his Masters at UVA. As a former Albemarle County School Board member, he was one of two members who voted not to close Yancey Elementary School. He hopes the Yancey Community Center can help preserve the community's legacy and that the County will focus on the area.
Burley High School & Vinegar Hill
MWCC members with a presentation about Jackson P. Burley High School.
Mary Williams Community Center members have often shared their memories of attending segregated Jackson P. Burley High School on Rose Hill Drive. Jackson P. Burley was an educator and prominent African American Businessman who sold 17 acres he owned on Rose Hill Drive for the construction of the school, which opened in 1951 and graduated its last class of seniors in 1967, eight years after school integration began in Charlottesville. Later, the school became Jackson P. Burley Middle School, which serves students from Albemarle County. Center members often recall the amazing Burley Band, which was always the highlight of local parades, and their famed football team, the “Burley Bears.” The 1956 Burley Bears were memorialized in a documentary by local filmmaker Lorenzo Dickerson called “Color Line of Scrimmage.” Not only did the team go undefeated that year, but none of their opponents scored against them, and their home games were more popular than UVA football games. Members have also highlighted the Monument Wall that was placed in front of the school and dedicated in 2018 to honor that history.
Last year, members watch and discussed another film by Dickerson's, a documentary called “Raised/Razed,” which tells the story of the vibrant black businesses and community of Charlottesville’s Vinegar Hill neighborhood before its destruction in 1964 because of Urban Renewal policy. Members continue to recall rich memories from this time period, and we are grateful for their stories that preserve this time in history for us.
Mary Williams Community Center Member watch the documenatry “Raised/Razed.”
Extra reading...
You can also learn about Elva Key and Waltine Eubanks, two long-standing members of our Advisory Committee who served the Nelson and Fluvanna County communities.