Virginia Estelle Randolph: Keeping the Dream Alive

by Linda Harris Sittig

In the early 1900s, Virginia E. Randolph’s dream was for every Black child in the South to get a decent education.

She was not the only one to hold fast to that dream. Today, the names of many educators from rural Black schools are only vaguely remembered in their small communities. And the one-room schoolhouses they ran during the Jim Crow Era of American history have also mostly disappeared.

The Rosenwald Schools

From 1917 to 1932, thousands of these one-room schools, the Rosenwald Schools, sought to provide at least an elementary education for Black children in the South. The Rosenwald Schools resulted from a unique collaboration between two visionary men. One man, a Jewish German immigrant, Julius Rosenwald, made his fortune establishing the Sears Roebuck Company.  The other was famed educator Booker T. Washington. Together they formed a foundation that allocated funding to develop over 5,300 schools serving over 700,000 Black students across the South.

The schools were staffed by teachers trained at historically Black colleges, but the supplies like chalkboards and maps were castaways from the segregated white schools. The buildings were often white clapboard and faced north or south so a substantial amount of sunshine could flow through the windows, providing light. Each front door was wide enough to accompany a passel of children dashing back in after recess held open by the teacher as they rang the bell for students to return to their seats.

And even though the Rosenwald schools continued operating into the 1950s when Brown vs. Board of Education struck down segregation in public schools, the Rosenwald Schools continued to function without electricity or indoor plumbing.

Now for Virginia D. Randolph.

The child of formerly enslaved people, Virginia Estelle Randolph, was born in Virginia in 1870. Her birth coincided with the formation of the public school system in Virginia, a segregated system where Black students could not attend schools with whites. At twenty-two, Virginia had completed her formal schooling and took a job teaching in Henrico County, Virginia. She taught at the one-room Mountain Road School. The building and grounds were unsightly, so Virginia whitewashed the school, planted flowers in the yard, and even bought gravel with her savings. She organized a Willing Worker Club and visited the community to encourage parents to support her efforts in improving the school. Next, she developed a unique teaching style that combined academic instruction with practical lessons in cooking, weaving, and gardening.

In 1908 the Superintendent of Schools in Henrico County approached the Board of the Jeanes Teaching Fund, asking that they supplement Virginia Randolph’s salary. Virginia then became the first Jeanes Supervisor Industrial Teacher and the supervisor of all the Black schools in her district. There were 20 Black schools in Henrico County, and for forty years, she traveled weekly to each of them to train teachers and build community support. As the success of her program grew, she also trained educators throughout Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia.

Not content for Black students to only have access to elementary education, Virginia began to champion for Black high schools to be built. In 1917, the Virginia Randolph Training Center (later called the Virginia Randolph High School) was established on Mountain Road, Glenn Allen, Virginia. The money to construct the school came from the Rosenwald Fund. 

Although Virginia never married or had children of her own, she cared for over 50 foster children in her lifetime. She retired from teaching in 1949 and passed in 1958 at age 88.

Throughout all the years of her life, she kept the dream alive.

Finding Virginia and Other Strong Women

~ People often ask me where I find my strong women. I keep my eyes and ears open. And I always stop at historical markers to read about the importance of that location. The markers are short history lessons in themselves. This was how I discovered the Rosenwald Schools.

https://www.historicrussellschool.org

Then I read that a former Rosenwald School was still standing in Durham County, North Carolina. A road trip ensued.

I stood in the yard of the Russell School and gazed up at the windows and the front door. I could almost hear the singing voices of students and imagine all the windows open to fresh air.  And I saluted the countless individuals like Virginia E. Randolph who worked tirelessly so that all children in America could become educated fairly.

If you enjoyed this month’s blog and are not yet a follower, please sign up on the right sidebar.  Although the blog is published only once a month, I am busy writing on other days. You can find my three published novels, Cut From Strong Cloth, Last Curtain Call, and Counting Crows, in bookstores, on Kindle, and online. My non-fiction book, B-52 DOWN, pays tribute to a five-person USAF crew, the community who searched for their downed plane, and the five wives who had to deal with the tragedy.

~ linda