VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Union Baptist Church in Virginia Beach hosted a celebration Saturday honoring the lasting legacy of the Princess Anne Training School, later named Union Kempsville High School, and the successful graduates it produced.
Former students from the 1940's and 50's, along with descendants, friends, and community leaders Bobby Dyer and Aaron Rouse, gathered to celebrate the enduring legacy of the first high school for African Americans in Virginia Beach, according to Bonita Billingsley Harris, a representative for Princess Anne County Training School/Union Kempsville High School Alumni and Friends Association.
During a time when racial segregation and "separate but equal" was the law of the land, Virginia refused to provide funding for a school for Black high school students. Black residents, educators and community leaders of Princess Anne County, which merged to become Virginia Beach in 1962, answered the call to create a training facility for its high school students of color.
Community members worked together to raise funds to purchase land near Witchduck Road to build what was first just a one-room schoolhouse. That small schoolhouse later transformed into a thriving high school community that produced many successful leaders, athletes, educators, and business owners, according to a website for the museum about the school and it's history.
From 1938-1969 hundreds of African American students entered the doors of the Princess Anne County Training School until integration shut its doors in 1969.
While the school no longer stands, an array of school artifacts and photographs can be viewed at the Princess Anne County Training School museum which is housed at the Renaissance Academy on Cleveland Street in Virginia Beach. For more details or to schedule a self-guided tour, please visit the school museum’s website at http://www.pacts-ukhs.org/museum.html.