Cooperative Living March 2022 - 10

SPO LIGHT
a citizens group sought to raise the
profile of James Solomon Russell, a
pastor and educator born into slavery,
who founded St. Paul's in 1888 with
donated funds.
The groups combined their efforts.
The College's Keepsakes
by Steven Johnson, Staff Writer
With Smithsonian's help, St. Paul's is recorded, remembered
I
t took a community to build a
college. And it will take a community
to preserve it.
That is the lesson of a partnership
between the Smithsonian Institution,
state and local agencies, and volunteers
in Lawrenceville, Va., who are sorting
through the vestiges of St. Paul's College,
a historically Black school that operated
for 125 years until it succumbed to
financial pressures in 2013.
Through community workshops,
friends and alumni of St. Paul's are
learning proper archiving techniques to
pass on to other trainees and keep the
heart of the small, but beloved, school
beating in some way.
" We love the memories, but we also
want to see the pictures, we want to see
the diplomas, we want to honor the love
and the passion that the founders and
the students had, " says Dorothea K.
Williams, program manager at the
Smithsonian's National Museum of
African American History and Culture.
" Th schools built to educate African
Americans serve as a source of pride and
developed people who went on to do
wonderful things That cannot be lost. "
As a result, volunteers work diligently
in a Brunswick County office building,
inspecting one item at a time, lft ing
slides to a light to inspect for images,
poring over dated academic records,
logging the details of dated photographs
and trying to figure out why a cache of
8 ● Cooperative Living ●
March 2022
sports trophies sits in a box instead of
on some athlete's mantel.
" To have the Smithsonian show its
interest from a national scale for rural
Brunswick County; it's like a dream
come true, " says County Administrator
Leslie H. Waddington. " So, unfortunate
as it is that St. Paul's is closed, some
good does come out of it. "
RESCUE WORKERS
The reclamation of St. Paul's College
might not have been possible without
Bobby Conner's Dodge Neon. Conner
was working at the county tourism office
in June 2013 when the school, which
had dwindled from 800 students to
around 150, locked its doors for good.
Hoping to preserve some of St. Paul's
memorabilia, Conner, County
Supervisor Bernard L. Jones Sr.,
and others loaded the
Neon, trip ft er trip,
with holdings they hauled
from the school before
they could deteriorate in
unattended buildings or
be tossed by a new landlord.
" There was no order to
it. It was like everyone left
on a Friday and just didn't
come back. It was ripe for
mass disposal, " Conner says.
The rescue team thought
about developing a museum
to promote tourism, even as
co-opliving.com
Th result: the 10-room James Solomon
Russell-St. Paul's College Museum and
Archives, which traces Russell's career
from his first church in Palmer Springs,
Va., to the development of the college.
James Grimstead, a 1958 graduate
of James Solomon Russell High School
in Lawrenceville, serves as director/
chairman. Conner is vice chairman.
" We recognize James Solomon
Russell because he was a master
pioneer, " Grimstead says, noting
St. Paul's students built many of the
buildings in town. " The purpose of
his school was to bring farmers into
school to learn trades, become teachers
and use their minds to take care of
the needs of the communities. "
PUTTING IT TOGETHER
For Dr. Barbara Jarrett Harris,
homecoming was a special time at
St. Paul's because it wasn't just college
kids dressing up for the big game.
She is an expert on the subject; the
retired school principal went to
St. Paul's, as did her four siblings.
" Brunswick County misses that,
even now, because when it was
homecoming in Brunswick County,
with a small college, it was everybody's
PHOTOS BY STEVEN JOHNSON
http://www.co-opliving.com
Cooperative Living March 2022

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