Documenting a Historic Black High School

By Sydney Collins
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Originally posted in the UR Newsroom

Imagine a city of Richmond high school built in 1865, currently positioned in the middle of housing projects with a detention center on the side of it. One of the housing projects is on top of an old city dump. Yet, an increasing number of residents in the surrounding area send their children to the school in the center of it all because of its convenience.

However, the high school is in danger of being shut down, and if that happens, those same students who currently attend school within their community would have to get on a bus and drive half an hour every day to go to a new school. This is the issue professors Laura Browder and Patricia Herrera targeted in their community problem solving seminar offered fall 2017.

The course, Documenting a Historic Black High School: A Richmond Community Project, centers around Armstrong High School, located on Cool Lane, and its role in the community’s history. The course’s purpose is to expose UR students to a Richmond high school that has a rich history clouded with segregation and inform them of its grim future.

This course is one of the community-based learning programs here at the University in which professors embolden students to reach past the confines of college and enter the greater society with a newfound understanding of societal issues.

For their course, Professors Browder and Herrera first engaged students with research of the school’s profound history then worked with them to compose a play to articulate their findings.

“We spent many classes at Armstrong,” Browder said. “We went to the archives to conduct research and conducted oral history interviews.” 

After learning about Armstrong and the history of its surrounding neighborhoods that have been stricken by poverty, the students interacted with both current Armstrong students and Armstrong alumni.

“That phase of the class was about what kind of relationship we could establish with the students there because ultimately we wanted to be writing a documentary drama based on the experiences and history of Armstrong,” Herrera said. “What are the students at Armstrong experiencing now and what did alums experience because there’s a big contrast. 

Throughout the course, the students had the opportunity to meet with Armstrong alumni and learn about their individual experiences with the school that has been increasingly neglected over the years, partially due to its impoverished neighborhood.