3 New Virginia Highway Markers Recognize African-American History

RICHMOND
The effort of three African-Americans merited historic highway markers among the new ones recently approved by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources (DHR).

In the Town of Orange, the marker “Capt. Andrew Maples Jr., Tuskegee Airman” will be erected to recognize a veteran who also received military awards for valor.

Maples, who grew up in Orange, completed in 1941 the Civilian Pilot Training Program at Hampton Institute. “He graduated from the Advanced Flying School at the Tuskegee Army Air Field” in January 1943 and “was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, and deployed to Italy with the 301st Fighter Squadron” during World War II.

During a mission escorting bombers, Maples’ plane went down over the Adriatic Sea. After declaring him dead in June 1945, the Army awarded him the Purple Heart. Maples’ name also “appears on the Tablets of the Missing at the Florence American Cemetery and Memorial in Italy,” the marker text concludes.

Veterans of American wars will also be highlighted in an “Oakwood Cemetery” marker to be placed in Martinsville’s historic burial ground.

The sign “Nellie Pratt Russell (1890-1979)” will be erected in Brunswick County. Russell was an educator who attended Howard University and “one of six incorporators of Alpha Kappa Alpha Society, the first Greek letter organization founded by African-American women,” according to the forthcoming sign.

Russell earned a Master of Arts degree from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1931. “For about 50 years, she taught English at the Saint Paul Normal and Industrial School (later Saint Paul’s College),” the marker will state. Russell helped found a chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha at St. Paul’s and “led women’s organizations in the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia,” the marker text concludes.

Located in Lawrenceville, St. Paul’s College closed in 2013.

A marker in the Town of Ashland, titled “School Transportation,” will highlight that public school boards in Virginia through the early 20th century and the era of school segregation provided busing for white students but frequently denied this service to African-Americans.

“Across Virginia in the 1930s, Black community organizations raised funds for buses,” according to the approved marker text.

One Hanover County resident, Lucian Hunter, supported by the Chickahominy Baptist Association, acquired the county’s first school bus for Black students around 1934 and Hunter’s three sons drove students to the all-Black Hanover County Training School. After Hunter and others petitioned the county school board, it “voted in 1935 to contribute funds toward [bus] service” for African-American students.

The Virginia highway marker program, which began in 1927 with installation of the first historical markers along U.S. Rte. 1, is considered the oldest such program in the nation. Currently there are more than 2,500 official state markers, most of which are maintained by Virginia Department of Transportation, except in those localities outside of VDOT’s authority.

The manufacturing cost of each new highway marker is covered by its sponsor.
For more information about the Historical Highway Marker Program, visit http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/.