Hey everyone!

So after class on Thursday, Alyssa and I went to our campus library to begin our process of narrowing down to one topic for our research. When we were directed to the section of the library where the Fredericksburg historical resources were, we mostly found maps and tourist books about the history and that wasn’t exactly what we were hoping to find. Discouraged, we reached out to the two ladies in charge of archives and special collections. We got a reply from Carolyn Parsons, head of special collections, and we’re invited up to her office to get some help on where to look for resources. She directed us to a database full of old local newspapers and even a database of primary documents from the university’s perspective. When we continued our conversation as we scanned through the various sources, Mrs. Parsons mentioned that one place that would have a lot of Fredericksburg history in the form of primary source documents was the Virginiana room at the library downtown. We thanked her and began with the campus resources. Unfortunately, unless we wanted to do the Civil War, there was a scarce amount of documents that pointed us to any leads on a local conflict in our city’s history. The three topics we originally hovered around started to seem less promising. We couldn’t find much information about the Eagle shoe factory strike, and it seemed like the John J. Wright School and the Prohibition era had already been pursued in-depth by other historians in the area. A little nervous but hopeful, we made plans to ride over to the library the next morning to see what we could find.

The next morning we arrived to the library and we’re given instructions to head to the basement to access the Virginiana room. When we arrived and entered the room we were met with rows and rows of filing cabinets full of primary source documents. To get started, we took the binder containing the complete list of topics covered in the cabinets and started to write down possible conflicts that stood out to us and would make a good foundation for our project. The one that interested us the most was how integration played out in the school systems in the area. When we opened the filing cabinet to access it, we discovered a very thick folder full of articles that dated back to the 1960s! As we viewed the timeline provided and read through the articles, we found multiple examples of conflict that occurred when the Fredericksburg region started to integrate the schools. One example in particular impacted us. In the early 60s, students from a local African American high school were set to graduate at a local community center, but at the last minute the officials from the center told them that they can only graduate in that building if they enter through the back door and not the front. In response, all of the graduating seniors, in cap and gown, walked away from the community center and marched all the way to a church in downtown where they were finally able to hold the graduation ceremony. This is only one of many examples we found of how these schools encountered and resolved various conflicts related to having African American students at all-white high schools for the first time. This intrigued Alyssa and I, so we decided that we are going to research the conflict in the Fredericksburg area regarding the process of desegregation and focus on a few schools that played a vital role in the conflicts surrounding integration such as H.H.Poole, Stafford, Walker Grant, and James Monroe High Schools. We are very relieved and excited that we found a source of conflict in our city’s history that interests both of us and has never been fully explored. We can’t wait to see what we can find as we venture further into research.