Payoff Season for Fifth- Year Seniors - Old Dominion University

DOVE project
Preserving Memories of School Desegregation
Sonia Yaco fully expected to record
lots of oral histories and collect a
variety of photographs and materials
when the Desegregation of Virginia
Education (DOVE) project took its
“School Desegregation: Learn, Preserve,
Empower” exhibit on the road earlier this
year. That, after all, was the purpose of
the collaborative history project, which
DOVE created and is now co-sponsored
by AARP Virginia, the Virginia State
Conference of the NAACP and the
Urban League of Hampton Roads.
But Yaco, the Old Dominion
University Special Collections librarian
and university archivist, did not expect
the degree to which the traveling exhibit
would have a healing effect on a number
of the participants. And she was certainly
taken by surprise when a woman by the
name of Paula Martin Smith showed up
for a DOVE event in Lynchburg on
June 2.
It turns out that Smith was, literally,
the face of the exhibit. As she would explain
to Yaco, it was a photograph of her
as a 10-year-old that DOVE used on its
promotional materials and portable display
for the “School Desegregation:
Learn, Preserve, Empower” initiative. The
picture was among a selection of photos
that NAACP Virginia lent for use in the
exhibit.
Hearing Smith’s story and collecting
the oral histories of 66 other Virginians
was a rewarding experience, Yaco said.
“Public records and newspaper accounts
tell part of this tale. But still missing
are the stories told by those affected
by integration,” said Yaco, who founded
DOVE in 2008 and serves as its co-chair.
“Going into communities where I’m
an outsider, and asking people who have
very painful memories to share their experiences
of desegregation, I was struck
by the generosity and courage of these
people to tell their stories,” Yaco added.
“For many people, it was the first time
they had talked about it.”
At stops in Melfa on the Eastern
Shore, Hampton, Farmville, Richmond,
Alexandria and Lynchburg, people came
to view the exhibit, talk to others with
similar experiences and add their own
stories to the public record. Many ended
up staying the whole day.
And then there was the story of
Smith.
“As it turned out, I couldn’t have
picked a better poster child for the exhibit,”
Yaco said. “The first year she
taught in public schools was the first year
that Pittsylvania County (Va.) integrated.”
When Yaco selected Smith’s photo,
she had no idea who the girl in the
picture was or why it had been taken.
The picture, as she would later learn, was
That’s Paula Martin
Smith today standing in
front of the DOVE
exhibit, which features
a photo (left) of her as a
girl. Courtesy Lynchburg
Public Library.
taken for an NAACP
function.
In her oral history, Smith,
now retired and in her mid-
60s, talked about growing up
in Danville. Her father was
the owner of the first blackowned,
certified bank in
Virginia, but even though
she was from a prosperous
family, she still experienced
separate restrooms for the
races and other forms of
discrimination.
Yaco was delighted
when Smith asked if the
exhibit could also come to
Danville. The answer, of course, was yes,
and AARP plans to host a DOVE event
there in the coming months. ODU Libraries
will sponsor the DOVE exhibit
early next year.
Yaco noted that the project is interested
in collecting oral histories from
anyone who experienced school desegregation
in Virginia, for its beginnings in
the mid-1950s through the 1980s.
Pro-busing demonstration in
Washington, D.C., conducted by
members of the Virginia NAACP in
1979. Courtesy NAACP Virginia
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