Stafford Training School - Stafford, VA

Stafford Training School - Stafford, VA

In 1939, the Stafford Training School was a four-teacher school building built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to educate the county's Black students through the eighth grade. The school was renamed, H.H. Poole Junior High School, after the Superintendent of Stafford and King George County Negro Public Schools. It continued teaching students up until the eighth grade (Black students weren't allowed to attend high school). In 1946, Stafford County started busing children to Fredericksburg so that they could attend Walker Grant High School, Fredericksburg's Black high school. In the mid-1950s, busing to Fredericksburg stopped and H.H. Poole expanded to the twelfth grade. It wasn't until 1962, seven years after Brown v. Board of Education, when Poole's 11th & 12th grade students integrated the all-white Stafford High School. Now, what once was a school is now the Rowser Building, named after Ella Rowser, a teacher and principal at the Stafford Training School/H.H. Poole. The building serves as one of Stafford's parks, recreation, and community facilities.

Samaria Moss

https://livingnewdeal.org/projects/stafford-training-school-stafford-va/

1939

Creative Commons

October 11, 2019

photographs, YouTube recording from one of the students who attended Stafford Training School/H.H. Poole Junior High School

I wanted to visit the Stafford Training School (now the Rowser Building) because I wanted to visit a place that's close to where I'm from. I've passed the Rowser Building many times growing up, and never knew that it was there, or the history that it contained. Stories that can be discovered while researching the Rowser Building include learning about the integration of Stafford's white schools in the 1960s and the hardships and inequality Black students faced while trying to receive an education, prior to integration. In addition, studying this site reveals the multiple measures put in place by the state and local government to prevent integration. Although my site focuses more on the aspect of education, it relates back to the fact that President Roosevelt's New Deal efforts did little to help African Americans in the social, economic, and political aspects of their lives. Even with the creation of the "Black Cabinet," I think the young, Black generation was forgotten about. I chose to use my iPhone to take pictures and record a voice memo off of YouTube. While this was handy for me because I'm always near my phone, I knew that I could rely on the advanced technology of the phone to retrieve photos and recordings and upload them to my laptop, without anything becoming distorted. I think modern technology makes retrieving these materials a lot easier and affords a large population of people, particularly Millennials, to take part in this research and information retrieval.