Collections : [Virginia State University]

The Virginia State University (VSU) Special Collections and Archives holds information on African American history in Virginia on the subject(s) of the Arts and women’s organizations, literature, agriculture as well as the premier primary sources that chronicle African American education in Virginia from the founding of the University 1882, to the 1960s. Worth mentioning are the Virginia Teachers Association Papers, an organization of African American teachers established in 1887 in Lynchburg VA and managed on the campus of VSU; the Virginia Interscholastic Association Papers, 1954-1969, an association of African American high school records of more than 100 schools representing a student population of over forty thousand; the Prince Edward Free School Papers chronicles the period in Prince Edward County when the public school system was closed and efforts of the Black community to educate African American students through that period; the Archie Richardson Papers which contains photographs of African American rural school houses during the 1930s.