History

Learn the History The humanity, family life, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit of African Americans has endured in spite of hundreds of years of injustice and inequity. This experience is a story of extraordinary achievement.

Afro-American Historical Association of Fauquier County is headquartered in The Plains, Virginia. Its Resource Center and Museum comprise a treasure-trove of Black history, from enslavement to the present day. This history has shaped our local culture and is vital to understanding who we are.

Museum staff fine-tune an exhibit; Left to right are Norma Logan, Director Karen Hughes White, Christine Taylor Lewis, Robert Doane, Jerry Williams, and Angela Davison.

Click to visit the museum’s website for a virtual tour and plan to visit the museum itself. Be sure to check out the Events section for Zoom meetings available free to the public on a wide variety of interesting topics. The museum also has a page that features weekly updates and a channel well worth tuning in.

AAHAFC FaceBook YouTube

Some Samples from the Museum

The African-American Comunities of Fauquier were created after the Civil War by free Blacks and formerly enslaved people. Their first buildings were usually churches and schools like this one in Morgantown near Salem, now called Marshall. There were over 30 such villages in Fauquier, most of them still extant in some form.

Until 1964, most Black children in Fauquier attended schools like the one in Morgantown, one- or two-room wooden structures with outdoor plumbing. Teachers, male and female, were recruited for each of the schools. Littleton Jackson taught in Orlean.

Morgantown School

Teacher Littleton Jackson

From Emancipation to Enfranchisement

Despite the promises of the 19th Amendment, African Americans faced many obstacles when using their new right to vote. It was a precious right highly valued in the Black communities of Fauquier County and one never taken for granted. One of the first Black citizens of Fauquier to cast a legal ballot in the election of 1867 was Douglass Ford.

In 1920, Black women joined other American women in celebrating the passage of the 19th Amendment in August of that year, giving them the same right to vote that men enjoyed. Lavinia E. Washington was born in 1887 and lived in Rectortown. She taught at Rectortown #12 School and was one of the first women to vote in Fauquier County.

The right to vote is a sacred part of the American system of government and equal access to the polls for all citizens.
It is still an issue in many states.

Lavinia E. Washington
Voter 1920

Douglass Ford
Voter 1867

Front and Center

For a long time, Black performing artists have graced the stages of Fauquier County and then gone on to achieve global acclaim.

Avon Stuart

Davone Tines

Davone Tines first stunned audiences as
a teenager in student productions at Fauquier High School. Now a world-reknowned bass-baritone, he was recently featured in The New Yorker for “Changing what it means to be a classical singer.”

The museum’s archives contain records of great singers in other genres who sprang from the fertile cultural soil of this region to “make it big.” Spiritual singer Avon Stuart of Rectortown found his greatest success in Paris. His work is still known internationally.

Chauncy DePew Brown

John Jackson

Chauncy DePew Brown wrote the jazz standard (and the Harlem Globetrotters' theme song), “Sweet Georgia Brown” about his wife, Georgia White Brown. He was one of Duke Ellington’s favorite jazzers. The Browns were "players" in the social and charitable life of Warrenton and beyond, through Chauncy’s influential government and equestrian contacts. You don’t get more Fauquier than that!

Singer John Jackson, son of local tenant farmers, hit the road to play his distinctive “Piedmont blues” wherever he could. That included Europe. Considered a true legend by the 1960s, he was featured in the Smithsonian Institution’s American Folklife Festival.

Come to the Museum to learn about all the contributions made to Fauquier life by her Black citizens, throughout history to the present:
in religion, the military, science, law, medicine, the trades, journalism, the arts, retailing, education and so much more.