{"id":6518,"date":"2024-11-02T07:42:29","date_gmt":"2024-11-02T11:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/?p=6518"},"modified":"2024-11-02T07:42:29","modified_gmt":"2024-11-02T11:42:29","slug":"historic-douglass-high-school-celebrates-first-legacy-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/historic-douglass-high-school-celebrates-first-legacy-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Historic Douglass High School Celebrates First “Legacy Day”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Charles Avery, President of the Loudoun Douglass Alumni Association, opened the September 5th ceremony with a call for his fellow alumni to be aware that each moment of their lives is a \u201cliving legacy\u201d to their past struggles for an equal education. He announced that this year\u2019s event will become an annual one, to honor the lasting effects of their experience at Douglass High School, the only accredited high school serving Black students in Loudoun County prior to court-ordered desegregation in 1968. The event took place at the former high school, which is located at the corner of Sycolin Road and Market Street in Leesburg; the building has been registered as a Virginia Landmark and put on the National Register of Historic places. It now serves as a community center.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The highlight of the ceremony was the unveiling of this statue, entitled \u201cUpward Struggle.\u201d It was deliberately crafted to represent the resilience of the Black community in its struggle to create a high school. Loudoun\u2019s Black parents, operating through the County-Wide League, raised the money to buy the land for the building. After acquiring the land from the League for $1, the county School Board funded the school, which opened in 1941.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Jeff Hall, the Lovettsville resident who sculpted the statue, elaborated on some of the details which he incorporated in his portrayal of the two school children. He sought to convey the uphill fight of the Black population and the value which the children are expressing toward their schoolbooks. The children are deliberately dressed as they would have been in the 1940s and \u201850s, in order to evoke that era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The ceremony concluded with a picture-taking of the 11 alumni who were present. The last graduating class, which included Mr. Avery, was in 1968.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photos by Nancy Spannaus)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charles Avery, President of the Loudoun Douglass Alumni Association, opened the September 5th ceremony with a call for his fellow alumni to be aware that each moment of their lives…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,137,6],"tags":[239,240],"class_list":["post-6518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-black-history","category-loudoun-history","category-press-release","tag-douglass-high-school","tag-legacy-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6518"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6523,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6518\/revisions\/6523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}