Will Frank, arts and culture reporter
Roanoke City Public Schools is currently in the process of applying for a state historic marker to highlight the pioneering education work of Lucy Addison.
The Big Picture: Lucy Addison was born to enslaved parents in 1861 in Fauquier County, Virginia. She ventured to Philadelphia to earn her education degree and returned to Virginia to teach in Loudoun County. After some time there, Addison was offered the position of interim principal at Roanoke’s First Ward Colored School in 1887.
In 1918, she became the principal of Roanoke’s Harrison High School. At this time, the high school only offered classes as high as the eighth grade. Addison tenaciously campaigned and advocated for a secondary school curriculum and was able to steadily add advanced classes. The State Board of Education accredited Harrison as a high school in 1924, establishing it as the first black high school in Roanoke and providing Black students their first opportunity to receive an education.
In 1928 the city renamed the school after Addison, attaining the title of Roanoke’s first public building named after one of its citizens.
(Lucy Addison, photo curtsey of RCPS)
Zoom Out: The process of getting a marker proposal approved is complex and challenging. The Roanoke County Public School (RCPS) is opening the Booker T. Washington Community Empowerment and Education Center where the proposed marker would be located. RCPS is working with Nelson Harris, a Roanoke historian and former mayor, to help review and submit the proposal. He has had 10 proposals approved by the VDR
- “The Virginia Department of Historic Resources (DHR) only approves about 25 per year for the entire state. Your marker application will compete with marker applications from Richmond, Lynchburg, Northern Virginia, Shenandoah Valley, Charlottesville, and anywhere else that people are submitting historic marker applications”, stated Harris.
For the marker, the team submitting has to provide research that backs up their claim on why the proposed individual, institution, or organization is historically significant. Once the research is completed the proposal is submitted to the DHR for review. They go over the research to make sure everything is accurate or add additional information. After the vetting process, if they accept your proposal, they then will work with the group who submitted it on editing and drafting the final text on the marker.
- “Everything will take anywhere from four to six months. If the marker is approved, then the order is placed and it goes to the foundry. Right now, there’s about a six to eight-month lag time from the time the orders are placed until the marker arrives. So by the time I mail in my marker application, and everything goes well, the marker arrives in the city after a year and a half”, explained Harris.
Zoom In: RCPS plans to open the new Booker T. Washington Community Empowerment and Education Center in the old RCPS Central Office, which is set to be the new hub for the Roanoke community, as well as the location of the proposed marker. Claire Mitzel, the school’s division spokesperson who also works very closely with Harris, has high hopes for the new community center’s impact.
- “It’s going to serve, I hope, to support our students and families from all around the city. It’ll act as a welcome center, so families can come here to enroll their students, get immunizations, receive needed resources, and have a sort of parent and guardian empowerment workshop series”, Mitzel remarked hopefully.
The idea of the new education center came from the inspiration of Lucy Addison, and her pioneering work in black education.
- “Honoring Miss Lucy Addison, who the school is named after, is just a small way that we can shine a light on history, and make sure that generations of students and families know who she is. The building was built almost 200 years ago, and going into the future, we want to honor those who came before us”, stated Mitzel.
(Roanoke County Public School when it was first constructed circa 1920, photo courtesy of RCPS)
The opening of this center brings Addison’s achievements full circle. A new community center, by the community and for the community, supports students and families throughout Roanoke and provides them with the tools to help them thrive.
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