William Jasper photo

William Jasper

This is a photograph of William Jasper. He was probably born in 1808 as a slave on the plantation of William Hayward Foote. According to his will, Foote decided to free his slaves on or soon after his death in 1846. At this time Jasper, in his thirties, was valued by appraisers to be worth $350. Foote’s will also freed Jasper’s wife Sara, in her mid-twenties, and their two daughters who were six and four. They were actually freed in the early 1850’s. It is important to note that the Jaspers were free blacks in Virginia before the Civil War. But even as free blacks they faced numerous obstacles. The Jaspers wanted to stay in Virginia near friends and family, so in 1853 and 1858 they chose to register as free blacks in Fairfax County to prove that they were free. This meant they could travel and gain employment. In 1860 William Jasper purchased 13 acres of land near the Hayfield Plantation. It is likely that he put together the $200 to pay a white farmer and slave owner for the land from his work as a farmer.

Jasper-Walker family collection.

Date not known.

Laurel Grove School as restored.

Under the direction of the Laurel Grove School Association, and with several grants from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, an interdisciplinary team of community members, curriculum experts, teachers, historians, and museum curators recovered the history of this school from oral histories and local archives, and refurbished the classroom. The Laurel Grove School was restored in 1999.

Photograph taken by Brian Heintz.

2008

Jasper Family Registrations, transcribed

These documents include registration documents for William Jasper, his wife Sarah, and his daughters Susan and Eliza, from 1853 and 1858. Especially after Nat Turner's slave rebellion in 1831, Virginia's free blacks faced copious laws restraining their actions. They could not own guns, obtain a formal education or vote. Laws restricted their movement, business transactions, and social relationships. Thus, though free, the increasing number of black people in northern Virginia lived in a world of persecution, suspicion and danger.

Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York: Free press, 1974); William W. Hening, ed., Statutes at Large, Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, 13 vols. (Richmond: Samuel Pleasants, 1819-23); June Guild, ed., Black Laws of Virginia: A Summary of the Legislative Acts of Virginia Concerning Negroes from the Earliest Times to the Present (Richmond: Whittet and Sepperson, 1936; New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969); and Donald M. Sweig, "Northern Virginia Slavery: A Statistical and Demographic Investigation" (Ph.D. diss., College of William and Mary, 1982).

Recent Thinking on Booker T Washington

This is a summary of some recent re-thinking about the life and accomplishments of Booker T. Washington based on Robert J. Norrell's Up From History: The Life of Booker T. Washington.

Robert J. Norrell, Up From History: The Life of Booker T. Washington (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009)

2009

Olivia Cherry, interview

One example of “the extraordinary resilience of black citizens, who individually and collectively found ways to endure, fight back and occasionally define their own destinies…”

Olivia Cherry was born in 1926 and interviewed in 1995 at the age of 69 in Norfolk, Virginia.

William H. Chafe, Raymond Gavins, Robert Korstad eds., Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South (New York: New Press, 2001)

1995

Laurel Grove School Timeline

This three-part timeline includes national, state (Virginia), and local/jasper-Walker family events. It is best used as a tool for teachers and students to see the interconnections between events in these three columns.

Eleanor Greene and the Laurel Grove School curriculum project

Laurel Grove School Single Time Line for lesson 2

The three-part timeline has been simplified to make it easier for fourth grade students to use in their writing assignment

Eleanor Greene and the Laurel Grove School curriculum project

Sixth Annual Fair of the Fairfax County Colored School Fair: Rules and Regulations

“Colored Fair Association” programs from 1916 and 1924 indicate that students could enter a variety of industrial and academic competitions for cash prizes. Contests in the domestic arts called for baskets, hats, photograph frames, embroidered and crocheted items. Agricultural exhibits featured garden vegetables, canned fruits, and poultry and livestock. Contestants vied for prizes of up to five dollars. To demonstrate their academic proficiency, students wrote essays on “What Good Roads will Mean to Virginia” or created a “Map of Fairfax County locating the Colored Public Schools and Fair Grounds.” Others submitted an illustrated poem, a list of words most often misspelled, an illustrated paper on simple fractions, or a sample of their best penmanship. Winners earned between twenty-five cents and one dollar.

The Colored Fair documents are in possession of Phyllis Walker Ford.

1922

Sixth Annual Fair of the Fairfax County Colored School Fair Association of Fairfax County, Virginia

“Colored Fair Association” programs from 1916 and 1924 indicate that students could enter a variety of industrial and academic competitions for cash prizes. Contests in the domestic arts called for baskets, hats, photograph frames, embroidered and crocheted items. Agricultural exhibits featured garden vegetables, canned fruits, and poultry and livestock. Contestants vied for prizes of up to five dollars. To demonstrate their academic proficiency, students wrote essays on “What Good Roads will Mean to Virginia” or created a “Map of Fairfax County locating the Colored Public Schools and Fair Grounds.” Others submitted an illustrated poem, a list of words most often misspelled, an illustrated paper on simple fractions, or a sample of their best penmanship. Winners earned between twenty-five cents and one dollar.

The Colored Fair documents are in possession of Phyllis Walker Ford.

1922

"Colored Soldiers" by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was an African American poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Paul Laurence Dunbar’s father, Joshua Dunbar, had escaped from a plantation in Kentucky via the Underground Railroad and joined the 55th Massachusetts Regiment of the Union army, serving in the Civil War. Dunbar’s pride in his father’s achievements inspired poems like “Our Martyred Soldiers”, “Whistlin’ Sam”, “W’en Dey ‘Listed Colored Soldiers” and “The Colored Soldiers”. “The Colored Soldiers” praises the brave black men who, like Dunbar’s father, had served in the union army during the Civil War.

Mitch Capel, Gran' Daddy Junebug
http://www.gjbug.com/The_Colored_Soldiers.php

The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, edited by Joanne M. Braxton (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993).

1894