vtspecblogger Civil War, Feature Items, Local/Regional History, Uncategorized

150 Years Ago: The Battles of Cloyd’s Mountain and the New River Bridge, as experienced in the John Holliday Diaries

This week marks the 150th anniversary of the Battles of Cloyds Mountain and the New River Bridge, significant events in the civil war that took place right in Virginia Tech’s backyard. Included in Special Collections’ vast Civil War and manuscript collections is the diary of John Holliday, a non-commissioned officer in Company C of the 91st Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment who fought in these battles, giving us a unique first person perspective of this campaign. His first diary, with entries from May 1st to August 8th, 1864, has been digitized and is available at Special Collections Online.

Holliday joined the regiment in Spring 1864, and according to his first diary entry, dated May 1st, 1864, he was stationed in Fayetteville, in the newly-formed state of West Virginia. On May 3rd he began to march south through the Appalachian Mountains into confederate Virginia with 6,100 men in the three brigades of the Union Army of West Virginia under the command of General George Crook. Crook’s objective was to destroy the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad, cutting off an important supply line for the Confederate army. The rail depot in Dublin and the bridge across the New River in Radford were his primary targets.

Presumed portrait of John Holliday, date unknown, from the John Holliday Diaries and Photographs Collection (Ms2012-028)
Presumed portrait of John Holliday, date unknown, from the John Holliday Diaries and Photographs Collection (Ms2012-028)

After a week of marching, on May 9 Holliday and the rest of Crook’s forces reached a small gap through Cloyd’s Mountain, Virginia, just 5 miles north of Dublin, where confederate forces under Brig. Gen. Albert Jenkins had set up a defensive line, hoping to catch the Union forces in a choke point. Holliday’s brigade, under the cover of the woods, managed to flank the confederate line on the left and divide their attention in the fight.

Holliday wrote, “advanceing under a heavy fire we arrived at the edge of the woods in front of their works… up the hill amid a Storm of Bullets we went driveing the enemy before us, at this moment a Rebel officer Riding a fine Black horse Rode along their lines waveing his hat in full View of both friend and foe tried to Rally his Broken Regt,, in This he failed many a Rifle was aimed at him but he rode off the field apparantly unharmed… The field was ours but at a heavy Cost not less than five hundred of our little Division was either Killed or wounded during the fight”

The battle, though small and involving relatively few troops, contained some of the most savage fighting and highest percentages of casualties in the entire war. The Union sustained 10% losses, while the Confederates sustained more than 20%. In all, more than 1,200 men lost their lives.

Having defeated the Confederate line, Crook’s troops moved into Dublin and destroyed the railroad depot. After camping for the night, on the morning of May 10 they set out again towards Radford and the New River bridge.

“at ten oclock we arrived within one mile of the Bridge. the roar of artillery in our front showed that the enemy was there and ready to dispute our passage at The Bridge…soon shot and shell went screeching through the air….they kept up a heavy fire cutting off limbs of trees around us. one of these falling wounded Sergt. B Lowman of Co. G. another shell striking near by killed two of the 7th Va Cavalry one of them a mere boy the shell striking him on the Breast tore him almost in atoms… our men fired the Bridge the flames spread Rapidly at this moment the enemy Gave way and three Prolonged cheers arose from our division the enemy was in full Retreat,, once more the day was ours,, each Regt formed above The Bridge and watched it untill the Vast structure went down,, three cheers was then given for Genrl Crook our noble Leader”

A page spread from John Holliday's first diary, featuring his entry for May 10, 1864, The Battle of New River Bridge
A page spread from John Holliday’s first diary, featuring his entry for May 10, 1864, The Battle of New River Bridge

The next day (May 11) Holliday traveled to Blacksburg, spending the night at the Preston and Olin Institute, which just eight years later would become the first campus building for Virginia Tech (then known as the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College).

“Broke Camp early marched to Blacksburg a small Town in Montgomery County Containing Several fine houses the largest is the college a large Brick Building here we halted for the night had some Slight skirmishing on entering the Town in which a col of the militia was killed.”

After a night in Blacksburg, on May 12 Crook’s forces began their retreat back into West Virginia, crossing over Mountain Lake. Rain made their crossing a difficult one. “it has been raining all afternoon Cold and wet which makes it tiresome marching.”The considerable mud the troops encountered forced them to abandon many wagons and heavy supplies including some artillery along the roadside just past the Mountain Lake lodge, earning one hilltop the name ‘Minnie Ball Hill’ for all the minnie balls that were dumped there.

In the following months, Holliday and the 91st Ohio would go on to join the Valley Campaign, fighting in the battles of Lexington (June 11), Lynchburg (June 17-18), Winchester (July 20, 23-24) and Martinsburg (July 28), all recorded in detail in his first diary. An interactive online exhibit that traces some of Holliday’s movements across Virginia and West Virginia is available here.

 

vtspecblogger Architecture, History, International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA)

That Exceptional One, Mary Brown Channel

Architecture has often been, and in many ways still is, a male dominated profession. Early female pioneers in architecture were deemed “that exceptional one” based on a quote from Pietro Belluschi, FAIA stating “If [a woman] insisted on becoming an architect, I would try to dissuade her. If then, she was still determined, I would give her my blessing – she could be that exceptional one.” Virginia’s exceptional one was Mary Brown Channel.

hand drawn colored architectural drawing
Proposed Reredos for St. John’s Church. Ms2007-030 Mary Brown Channel Architectural Collection.

Born December 8, 1907 to William Ambrose Brown and Mary Ramsay Brown of Portsmouth, VA, Channel attended Randolph-Macon’s Woman’s College earning a bachelor of Mathematics in 1929. She wanted to follow her brother to the University of Virginia to study architecture, but women were not accepted into the University’s graduate programs at the time. She instead applied and was accepted to Cornell University’s School of Architecture.

Graduating second in her class in 1933, she was the first woman to win the Baird Prize Competition Medal. The Baird Prize was a six day design competition held by Cornell for architecture students in their junior and senior years. Channel was awarded the second prize medal for her design of a “monumental aeration fountain for the city reservoir.”

Channel returned to Portsmouth, VA after graduation and began her career with the Norfolk architecture firm Rudolph, Cooke and Van Leeuwen. She drew no salary for her two years but gained valuable experience working with the team that designed the main post office in Norfolk as well as several other civic and organizational buildings. In 1935, Channel was one of three candidates in a class of five to pass Virginia Examining Board’s licensing exam becoming Virginia’s first licensed female architect.

Watercolor church front
Proposed Front for Episcopal Church, Blackstone, VA. Ms2007-030 Mary Brown Channel Architectural Collection

Following her licensure she opened her own practice in Portsmouth, VA. In October, 1941 she married local businessman Warren Henry Channel. After the birth of her first child she limited her practice to residences and churches. Channel retained her license until 1990 and was actively drawing plans into her eighties.

She designed structures throughout southeastern Virginia. Some of her projects include the Lafayette Square Arch housing the main entrance of the demolished American National Bank, the old Virginia Power Company Building on High Street, Channel Furniture Store in Greenbrier, numerous houses, church additions, and renovations.

Watercolor architectural drawing
Virginia Electric Power, Portsmouth, VA. Ms2007-030 Mary Brown Channel Architectural Collection.

She was recognized in October, 1987, at an occasion honoring Portsmouth’s local and statewide notables. Channel died in 2006.

vtspecblogger University History

From Then to Now: An Exhibition in Two Parts about April 16th

8.5x11Flyers

The University Libraries Special Collections, in partnership with Student Centers and Activities and Ashley Maynors Self-Reliant Film, presents, From Then to Now: An Exhibition in Two Parts about April 16th. Part I of the exhibition will be held in the Newman Libraries Multipurpose room where a digital gallery of eight screens will display photos and short films. Three screens in the exhibit contain photos that were sent in after April 16th by community members, faculty and staff. Two screens display photos of the Hokies United memorials, which were created on the Drillfield post 4/16. The two films in the exhibit are by Ashley Maynor and comprise a home movie of the early Drillfield Memorial and footage of Virginia Tech from Maynors film in progress, The Story of the Stuff, which explores how we collectively mourn and memorialize in a time where tragedies are experienced first hand-once removed on the web and television. Part II of the exhibition will be held directly across the hallway from Part I, in the Special Collections room, and include a physical display of condolence items. These items were created by people from all over the world during the months following April 16th. The two parts show how the creative process helped many move towards healing and created a path out of the darkness of grief.

The exhibit was curated by Robin Scully Boucher, art programs director for Student Centers and Activities at Virginia Tech. Ashley Maynor is an award-winning filmmaker and producer. She was named the Sundance Institutes Sheila C. Johnson Creative Producing Fellow. Her most recent film as director is the documentary For Memories Sake. Tamara Kennelly, university archivist, coordinated the processing of the Virginia Tech April 16, 2007 Archives of the University Libraries

Both exhibits are on the first floor of Newman Library up the ramp from the study cafe. There will be an opening reception with food and refreshments on Friday, April 11 from 12 to 1. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

Poster from A Thousand Cranes Memorial project for the victims of Virginia tech
Poster from A Thousand Cranes Memorial project for the victims of Virginia Tech
vtspecblogger Uncategorized

Stephen King: A Latter Day “Fix Up”

At this point, it seems safe to say that magazines are more or less defunct as a vehicle for popular fiction. They were superseded more or less completely by paperbacks in the 1950s. Of course that process took awhile, and in the interim a good deal of the paperback SF market featured new, lengthier versions of magazine stories, which had been expanded or combined into book-length features. Eventually paperback originals (and original short story anthologies) came into their own, and the “fix-up” became less common without completely dying away.

Textual criticism of fix-ups has never been very popular among SF scholars, but it seems like there might some interesting possibilities. A comparison of the censored Analog versions of Joe Haldeman’s “Forever War” stories to his successful novelization comes to mind as an interesting possibility.

Having a significant collection of paperback and magazine SF on hand (as we do here!) makes this sort of work feasible. It is also fun to have a look at some of the lesser known magazine appearances of well-known authors. I’m thinking particularly (today) of Stephen King’s stealthy initial publication of “The Gunslinger” in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I don’t suppose King comes in for much academic criticism either, but at the very least it is revealing to compare the initial circumstances of the Gunslinger publication series to the more visible phenomenon that is has turned into. The most obvious finding from a perusal of our collection: at no point did the stories garner a cover.

king2king1 king3kingking4

Of course King was already a bestselling author when these came out. So, while he was willing to lend his name to this project (unlike the contemporary pseudonymous Richard Bachman books), commercially speaking it was decidedly on the back burner. As for the content itself, I’m not sure to what degree you could call the later novelization a fix-up. That is for the putative researchers to decide, right? Until I was putting this post together, I was not aware that he had been at The Gunslinger with revisions and updates. There is definitely a textual history there, if not necessarily a devoted critical community. Maybe in the next century.

vtspecblogger University History

The Checkered History of April Fool’s Day

For better or for worse, I don’t make a habit of looking at the Collegiate Times, at least not the issue of the day. This isn’t a judgement, just the reality. I do often look at it in the course of my job as an archivist at Special Collections, and just a few days ago I came across the 1986 April Fool’s Parody issue. The masthead proudly (or, maybe not so proudly) proclaimed Collegiate Slime and “Virginia Technical Institute’s Stupid Yellow Rag.” The location was “Bleaksburg, Fajenyah” and the index listed sections for Sex, Beastiality, Scandal, Lies, Demagogery, and Free Beer.
 
April Fool's Parody Issue, 1986

OK. College humor, what can you do? In one form or another, it’s probably as old as the oldest university. But I got curious, given that April 1st was coming up and decided to do a less-than-comprehensive review of the history of these issues. The 1977 issue served up The Cowlegiate Crime and Virginia Polywrecknic Institute and State Asylum.
 
1977 Parody Issue

The Crime appeared again the next year with the lead story, “Corps Demands Total Power” and again in 1982 with what was becoming a usual mix of effrontery, barely(?) post-adolescent male humor, and a penchant for superimposing an image of someone’s head on a body to which it did not belong. In 1988, the Slime was back, this time as “Virginia Wreck’s Fascist Rag,” still in Bleaksburg, now Virginny, and, again, in 1990. That year Bart Simpson and WelWhee Tried can be found among the bylines, and a few sample pages are numbered 2BE, NOT2BEE, and 4AUTNBEA. In 1991, however, something else happened.

2 April 1991
5 April 1991
5 April 1991

In the April 2nd issue of the Collegiate Times, editor Jim Roberts published a commentary in which he describes how the annual issue of the Slime had been produced and was ready for distribution. He writes:
 
Last April, I argued that the parody issue was good for the CT and the university, because it allowed the staff to take a satirical look at the issues which have surrounded us all year. Twelve months later, I have decided that is not within the scope of responsibilities of a news organization. . . . I decided last night to have the 14,000 issues destroyed.
 
Roberts described the adverse reactions to the previous issue of the “parody” as well as the tradition of producing the issue. Many thought the issue “insensitive,” that it had gone too far, and he concluded “the traditions of the CT far exceeds whatever fun we could [have] with six pages of jokes and unflattering pictures.” In the end, he writes that many may think he made a “poor decision,” but that, in the news business, “we’re often better off being criticized not for what we print, but for what we don’t print.”
 
The April 5th issue of the CT suggests just how right he was. As reported on page one, sometime in the early morning of the 3rd, a former CT employee distributed copies of the paper that had been set aside to be recycled. By 7:30 that morning, copies had been found and removed from Burruss, Newman Library, and Norris Hall.

According to the article, “Professors, women, minorities, SGA leaders and by and large almost every sector of the university contacted administrators about the issue.” Darrel Martin, assistant to President McComas commented on the line between parody and “the occasion where attitude and language are not part of the journalism profession or part of an educational environment.” In the same issue an editorial titled “Slime offensive” made the point more directly. The writer, coordinator of the Sexual Assault and Victim Education Support Services peer education program, wrote:
 
In reference to Adolph McMillan and Paul Hell’s articles (who, by the way, provided only pseudonyms), your writings outraged me. Your words were offensive and debilitating to women. . . . As long as attitudes such as Adolph’s and Paul’s are continued to go without a challenge . . . violence against women will continue to persist.
 
Also in the same April 5th issue, the CT editorial board member who would be editor-in-chief for 1991-1992 said that after consulting with CT staff several changes would be made for the next year’s parody issue. The name would be changed to avoid association with the past issues of the Slime, it would be printed in tabloid form to differentiate it from regular CT issues, and it would be completed a week before distribution.
 

1 April 1992
1 April 1992

 
Honestly, I’m not sure they quite got the point.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  Maybe by 1994?
 
1 April 1994
1 April 1994

 
1 April 2011
1 April 2011

 
 
 
In any case, by 2011, the CT simply let us know it’s April Fool’s Day in its masthead.
 
 
 
 
 
 
The VA. Wreck, Vol. 1. (1905)
The VA. Wreck, Vol. 1. (1905)

Oddly enough, this same week when I looked into the CT Parody issues, I came upon another bit of Virginia Tech (ok, Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College) humor. In June 1905, the first (and only?) issue of The VA. Wreck, a take-off on the college’s newspaper, The Virginia Tech, was published. (Yes, the real newspaper was called The Virginia Tech.) Blacksburg is said to offer Hot Summers, Arctic Winters, Reasonable Board, Poor Food, and Hard Beds. The paper was published by “The Deanery” on a “Tri-Weekly” basis: “Comes out one week and tries to come out the next.”

Perhaps to set the stage for what will follow, the four-page paper comments:
 
Some seem to think this paper is a burlesque on the Virginia Tech, but such is not the case, and we decline the honor. If anything, the Virginia Tech is the burlesque; anyway it is a parody of some sort too deep for us to fathom.
 
And so much more. It felt a little odd to be spending so much time with documents from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, let alone newspapers from just a couple of years ago. After all, I’m an archivist. Ahhh, the Va. Wreck. 1905. That’s better. We’re not just concerned with the past . . . but with the PAST! Right? At least 50 years ago! The older the better! Right? That’s the real joke. April Fool’s!

vtspecblogger Architecture, History, International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA), News

WANTED: Researchers interested in women’s contributions to the built environment

Want an opportunity to win $2500 and take a road trip to Virginia Tech Special Collections? (Airlines, cruise ships, or a brief walk across the Drillfield are other forms of acceptable transportation.)

Photo: Milka Bliznakov in a car
Milka Bliznakov, IAWA founder

Well, you are in luck because proposals are now being accepted for the annualMilka Bliznakov Research Prize sponsored by the International Archive of Women in Architecture Center, Virginia Tech.

The Board of Advisors of the International Archive of Women in Architecture Center (IAWA) presents this Annual Prize of $2500 (with an additional $500 available for travel) in honor of IAWA founder Milka Bliznakov.

The Prize is open to architects, scholars, professionals, students, and independent researchers with research projects that would benefit from access to the IAWAs collections.

More details and submission guidelines can be found here. The proposal must be submitted by May 1st, 2014. The winner will be announced by June 15th, 2014.

vtspecblogger Feature Items, Uncategorized

Spring Splendor in Special Collections

Spring has officially begun, and it’s time to start planning out gardens and planting seeds. Seed catalogs, with their plethora of new and unusual varieties to grow and try, have been a typical part of Spring gardening preparations for a very long time. With that in mind, I decided to take a look at what past years have had to offer in Special Collections’ old seed catalogs.

The one that caught my eye was less a seed catalog and more a tour de force of vegetables and flowers in lithographic design. The Manual of Everything for the Garden, an annual seed catalog published by Peter Henderson & Company of New York, contains some of the most beautiful vegetable illustrations I have ever seen. Through their illustrated catalog, one could order nearly everything for the garden and yard, including seeds for vegetables, fruits, grasses, grains, and flowers, as well as gardening tools and equipment. Henderson founded the company in 1871, and by his death in 1890 it was one of the most successful seed companies in the United States. His son, Alfred Henderson, took over the business after his father’s death and continued the success- from the 1890s though the 1920s the company mailed out some 750,000 copies of its annual seed catalog each year. Yet despite its popularity, finding an intact Peter Henderson & Co. catalog today is extremely rare. The exceptional quality of their color plates and chromolithography made them highly sought after for the popular Victorian pastimes of scrapbooking and decoupage, resulting in most being cut to pieces.

Virginia Tech Special Collections is lucky enough to have a first edition copy of the 1898 catalog, which has survived completely intact, including two tipped in price lists. Nearly all of its 190 pages are filled with highly detailed chromolithographic prints, illustrating all the botanical splendor that the company’s seeds promise to grow. These beautiful graphics were made by Gray Lithograph Co. of New York, and Stecken Lithographic Co. of Rochester, NY, one of the largest centers of lithography in the country. As the long and dreary winter dragged on, I can only imagine how exciting flipping through these pages in anticipation of Spring would have been.

vtspecblogger About Special Collections and University Archives, Literary First Editions, Uncategorized, University History

Legacy of Dayton Kohler

Bookplate found on the inside front cover of many books from Kohler's collection.
Bookplate found on the inside front cover of many books from Kohler’s collection.

Drawing of Dayton Kohler by Karl Jacob Belser, 1931.
Drawing of Dayton Kohler by Karl Jacob Belser, 1931.

 
 
If you have an interest in modernist literature and have, on occasion, requested Special Collections’ copies of such worksespecially by American writers of fiction, though not exclusivelyyou may have discovered the bookplate shown above with a startling frequency. “From the Collection of Dayton Kohler . . . Virginia Polytechnic Institute . . . Carol M. Newman Library” appears time after time in books by many of the great writers of our time in the Rare Book collection. When I first started working here, just about five and a half years ago, as I came upon first editions of Faulkner, Hemingway, Cather, and Fitzgerald; then Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, and Joseph Conrad; Saul Bellow, Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, James Thurber, J.D. Salinger, Reynolds Price, William Styron, and more, I kept noticing the same bookplate. All first editions, several of them signed by the author. Who was Dayton Kohler?

Select first editions from the collection of Dayton Kohler

Kohler was Professor of English at Virginia Tech. He retired in 1970 after arriving at this institution as an Instructor in 1929. Born in 1906 and a graduate of Gettysburg College, he received his master’s degree from the University of Virginia the same year he came to Blacksburg. In 1931, Karl Belser, a colleague in the Department of Architectural Engineering drew a sketch of Kohler (shown above) that is housed, along with several other prints and drawings, in the Karl Jacob Belser Illustrations, 1931-1932, 1938, n.d., also at Special Collections. Kohler’s own collection of papers is also on hand. It includes an extensive correspondence with authors and other critics of the time, much of which relates to various literary essays and reviews.

Dayton Kohler died in 1972, but not before arranging for a collection of his booksincluding many 20th-century first editionsto become part of Special Collections. In fact, former director of Special Collections Glenn McMullen said in a June 1990 Roanoke Times and World News article that acquisition of Kohler’s book collection was “the first major acquisition” for the new department that had only formed in 1970. A May 21, 1971 memo to then-library director Gerald Rudolph reports that 1095 books were received from Professor Kohler some ten days earlier. The list that accompanies the memo shows only authors and quantity, with no detail regarding title and/or edition. But, in addition to the names referenced above, the list includes William Carlos Williams, John Dos Passos, Truman Capote, Henry James, Ezra Pound, James Joyce (a trip to the shelves indicates the 1930 edition of Ulysses, not the 1922 first edition, was Kohler’s), and a total of 27 Hemingways and 38 Faulkners(!), plus much, much more. What a tremendous legacy for the Library and its patrons to use and enjoy. I’m sure there are still more terrific editions in the collection that I haven’t yet seen. To close (almost) this post, I’ll leave you with one more that I did find:

Jacket of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, 1925.
Jacket of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, 1925.

Inside front cover of The Great Gatsby (1925) with F. Scott Fitzgerald's inscription to Dayton Kohler, dated 1934.
Inside front cover of The Great Gatsby (1925) with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s inscription to Dayton Kohler, dated 1934.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Lastly, if any alumni who may remember Professor Kohler read this post and wish to tell us more about him, please consider leaving a comment below. We’d be pleased to add them to this post. Thanks!

vtspecblogger Uncategorized

A new way to look at Civil War diaries

With the help of our new digital library site, VT Special Collections Online, we will soon be sharing some of our digitized civil war diaries in new and interesting ways. Using plugins designed by Neatline will allow us to create exhibits that display both transcripts and digital images of diary entries on timelines or as location points on maps. An early example of this can be seen with The Richard Colburn Diary.

Colburn, of Ellington, Iowa, started his diary on December 18, 1861, the day he enlisted in the 12th Infantry of the United States Regular Army. After two months of training he traveled east to New York and Washington DC, entering the fight to defend the Union. His daily diary entries recount his movements, which when plotted on the map, illustrates the vast distance he traveled to fight, as well as the significant difference that railroads made to travel.

Colburn’s 12th Infantry became involved in the Peninsula Campaign, including the Battle of Williamsburg and the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, where on June 27, 1862, Coburn was wounded and taken prisoner by the 5th regiment of Virginia. The remainder of the diary describes his hospitalization, his release on January 15, 1863, and his trip home. The exhibit helps to visualize his experience in the Civil War in an age of GIS and global connectivity. By overlaying his journey onto modern maps, it is easier to connect our world today with the events that took place over 150 years ago.

Make sure to check back to VT Special Collections Online in the coming months for more diaries to come!

vtspecblogger African American History, Local/Regional History

Beatrice Freeman Walker Video Interview

Image of Beatrice Freeman Walker
Beatrice Freeman Walker

In a video interview on March 12, 2013, Beatrice Freeman Walker talked about growing up in Blacksburg during segregation, the changes she has observed in the town, and the historical significance of the St. Luke and Odd Fellows Hall. Mrs. Walker, who died on December 31, 2013, was a dynamic community member and cared deeply about the preservation of Blacksburgs African American history.

Born in 1926, the youngest of five siblings, Mrs. Walker grew up in Blacksburg at 202 Jackson Street. Her familys property went all the way to Progress Street where her father, Alonzo Freeman, had his dry cleaning business. Their home was on the border of the towns original grid of 16 blocks, which was laid out by William Black in 1797 and bounded by Draper Road, Jackson Street, Wharton Street, and Clay Street. In the 1970s, the town acquired her family home though eminent domain in order to expand the fire department, and she lived the remainder of her life in Christiansburg.

In the interview she recalled that when she was growing up, the children were unconscious of segregation. There were blacks on one side of the street and whites lived on the other. The problem, she said, It isnt the children. Its the parents.

At various times, her family also owned a beauty salon, an ice cream parlor where they served homemade hand-cranked ice cream, and a recreation place called Paradise View on what was then Grissom Lane, but is now called Nellys Cave. Daddy just owned it because we had croquet, horseshoe, badminton, bands, and sandwiches and sodas, she said. They would go up there for recreation. It was open on Saturdays and Sundays. People as far as Bluefield, West Virginia would come in and down there.

Among other jobs, Bessie (Briggs) Freeman, Mrs. Walkers mother, traveled in order to encourage membership in the St. Luke and Odd Fellows. This organization was important to the African American community because it helped people find opportunities for learning different trades and it sold insurance that people could borrow from when they wanted to send a child to college or when there was a death. The St. Luke and Odd Fellows Hall, built in the early 1900s, provided a gathering place for meetings, social events, and fundraisers.

Junior class, Christiansburg Institute, 1942. Beatrice Freeman, a class officer, is second row, second from the right.
Junior class, Christiansburg Institute, 1942. Beatrice Freeman, a class officer, is second row, second from the right.

After graduating from Christiansburg Institute in 1943, Mrs. Walker did civil service work in Washington, D.C. Later, she returned to Blacksburg and worked for several local businesses including Spudnuts (later called Carol Lee Doughnut Shop) on College Avenue, Litton Poly-Scientific, and in 1975, Volvo White Motor Company in Dublin, Virginia. While at Volvo, she was active in the United Auto Workers (Local 2069) and a strong advocate for her fellow employees.

St. Luke and Odd Fellows Hall
St. Luke and Odd Fellows Hall

Beatrice Freeman Walker was instrumental in the renovation of the Order of St. Lukes and Odd Fellows Museum Hall in Blacksburg. In 2004, Mrs. Walker, Walter Lewis, and Aubrey Mills were appointed as trustees.

Beatrice Freeman Walkers video oral history interview, which was conducted at the St.Luke and Odd Fellows Hall, may be accessed from Virginia Techs institutional repository, VTechWorks, managed by the University Libraries at http://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/24714 Mrs. Walkers granddaughter, Latanya Walker, was present at the interview conducted by Tamara Kennelly. Scott Pennington was the videographer.

To learn more about the St. Luke and Odd Fellows Hall visit http://www.blacksburg.gov/index.aspx?page=73