Week Two: Proposal

Hello everyone,

Here is the overview of what Kailee and I did this week.

When we were thinking about our proposal Kailee did some research on small conflicts that occurred in Fredericksburg, but our first venture to finding information was harder than we thought. It is good we are going to do this now rather than later.

We first had the choices of the Eagle Shoe Factory Strike, the Prohibition in Fredericksburg, and desegregation in Fredericksburg schools. We knew that desegregation in schools was going to have the most information. I thought of following the premises of the research of an alumni of our school on Prince Edward County, but we wanted to focus on schools specifically near us.

We overall tried to find a conflict that happened in Fredericksburg, so we could be able to drive to the locations. We would also be able to talk to people who were a part of the conflict and knew of the conflict.

Step 1 (University of Mary Washington Library)

We decided to first research on the other two conflicts first to see if we could get enough information on them to create a website. We went to our school’s library to see if we could find anything on them. We first looked at the books on Fredericksburg history, but we could not find specific information on the two conflicts. Most of the books were about locations and geographic changes in Fredericksburg. We were getting a little worried we could not find anything on the two topics. We wished there was a information on conflicts in Fredericksburg, but I guess we will be the ones to make that path for showing that kind of information.

We then went to our school’s specialist on collection records on Fredericksburg. She was helpful in giving us resources once we find a topic we would like to research on. She could not find any information on the Eagle Shoe Strike or prohibition. What we did find with her was a great website in looking at our school’s newspapers. Once we find a topic we can search all the newspapers to see what the students thought about our topic. Our school has been open since 1908, so we could add the student’s perspective on our topic.

Step 2 (Central Rappahannock Regional Library)

We hit a dead end with our research in our school’s library, so we decided to go to the local library a few minutes from our school. We were notified from our school’s specialist to go to the “Virginiana Room”. We were hoping this could be our solution, and it thankfully was a great start! When we went to the room it has specific information neatly organized into files about all sorts of topics concerning Fredericksburg. We looked through the topics, and we again could not find anything specifically on the Eagle Shoe Factory and Prohibition in Fredericksburg. We did find a great amount of information on desegregation in Fredericksburg schools. We found a great foundation to our project! Yay!

We want to focus on the first event of African American students protesting their school, Walker Grant High School, by graduating separately from where they were supposed to. They walked out, and then did their own graduation commencement in a nearby church. It was due to inequalities in the schools, even after the national order on desegregation. We want to start there, and for the website we could compare what other high schools did concerning that events. We can see that there are newspapers articles from the town’s papers from both sides of the conflict.

We will go back to this library, and we would also go to a center in Fredericksburg that has more historical records on the schools. Overall, we are feeling more confident on our topic!