Local history on parade with neighborhood tours

The big, brick building is two blocks long, eight decades old and is the last vestige of an era local historians hope will not be forgotten.

The Jefferson School, the area’s first school for black high school students, stands across the street from an office supply store and shopping center. Five decades ago, it was in the center of a predominately black residential and business district.

This weekend it will be the starting point of neighborhood tours planned by the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society.

“We start our tours here because it represents an important era of African-American history in the city and the area,” said tour guide Bess Kane, standing in front of the school. “The oldest portion of the school was built in 1926. Before it was built, African-Americans who wanted to go to high school had to go to Washington because there was no school for them around here.”

Kane will lead the society’s Starr Hill/West Main Street neighborhood tours scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday. The one-hour, free tours are part of a program called The Big Read that is encouraging Central Virginians to read Zora Neale Hurston’s novel “Their Eyes were Watching God.”

The 1930s novel illustrates the life and community of a woman descended from slaves in the early 20th century South.

The two-month-long program that encourages the community to read and discuss one book has been well received, said Jefferson-Madison Regional Library officials.

“There’s been a great turnout, partly because of the novel and because people are catching on to the idea of The Big Read,” said Krista Farrell, branch manager at the Central Library in downtown Charlottesville. “Many people hadn’t read the novel before and they’ve really enjoyed it.”

Society members hope the tours will provide background to the novel and an important part of local history. The society also has displayed an exhibit at its offices downtown that focuses on the black community in Starr Hill.

“It’s important because it’s the heart of the African-American community in the area. It’s sort of the historical nucleus,” Kane said. “The walks make people aware of the African-American heritage in Charlottesville, their daily lives and how unequal much of life was.”

The tour includes Jefferson School, churches along the route and homes of influential blacks. The area is located off Main Street, between the railroad tracks and the Lewis and Clark statue at Main and Ridge streets.

Much has changed in the community since the 1960s as most of the black business and residential sections were torn down in urban renewal programs. About 158 families were left homeless, according to the historical society. Of those families, 140 were black.

And of the 158 families, 125 were considered low-income. They were moved into public housing units in the then newly constructed Westhaven neighborhood.

“I vaguely remember Vinegar Hill. We had a furniture store that was in the area that was torn down during the urban renewal and I remember thinking, from a white-person’s point of view, that it was great that the people who lived there would be getting new homes,” she recalled.

For many in the black community, urban renewal meant black removal, Kane said.

“It never occurred to me, until I heard years later from someone who lived there, that they felt they were being displaced,” she said.

“It was a very different time, back then,” she said. “I sometimes tell students on tours about a dress shop that was the only store where African-Americans could try on dresses before they bought them and the kids looked at me like I’m crazy. Things have come a long way. They had a long way to come.”