The Appalachian African-American Cultural Center: Building on the Past

http://www.arc.gov/magazine/articles.asp?ARTICLE_ID=159
The Appalachian African-American Cultural Center: Building on the Past
by Carl Hoffman

It's a monument of sorts, yet so simple and unmarked that a passerby might not even notice it. But the little brick building on Leona Street in Pennington Gap, Virginia, holds such bittersweet memories—and fresh hope—that Ron Carson can't tear himself away from it. Often, he just sits in it for hours.

Built in 1940 on land donated by Carson's great-great-grandmother, the building once housed the only primary school for blacks in all of southwest Virginia's Lee County. Its legacy is complex: even as it stood as a visible symbol of segregation, it represented education, self-sufficiency, and community. "I cried when our teacher gathered us together and told us we wouldn't be here next year," remembers Carson, sitting in the now-renovated schoolroom, surrounded by sepia-toned photographs and artifacts. Today, thanks to the efforts of Carson and his wife, Jill, the building has become the Appalachian African-American Cultural Center, dedicated to uncovering and preserving the sometimes painful, often triumphant, life stories of Appalachian blacks even as it seeks to transcend them.

Ron and Jill Carson met in 1967, a long way from Lee County, in Jill's hometown of Boston, Massachusetts, where Ron attended the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy. Twenty years later, yearning for small-town life, they moved to Pennington Gap and built a house on land still owned by Carson's family—directly across the road from the old school. "I used to sit on a big rock while my house was being built and reminisce about all the days I went to that school," he says.

Indeed, there was a lot to reminisce about, for the Carson family's roots run deep in Lee County. Carson's great-great-grandmother, Rachel Scott, moved to Pennington Gap around 1900. A barber whose customers were white, she gradually amassed, as Carson puts it, "a little fortune" of over three hundred acres of land and a 19-room house.... MORE