The state Department of Historic Resources announced recently the approval of nine new historical markers, including one in Lancaster County to commemorate a school that served the community’s black student population.
Lancaster County opened Brookvale High School to serve black students in 1959, five years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared public school segregation unconstitutional. The building replaced the old A.T. Wright High School.
The Crusaders Political and Social Club, a civil rights organization, met here frequently. In 1969 the Brookvale Warriors won the last state baseball championship overseen by the Virginia Interscholastic Association, the league for black schools. Lancaster County fully desegregated its schools in the fall of 1969, and the building became an intermediate school. Brookvale’s last principal, Dr. Elton Smith, later became the first black public school superintendent in Virginia.
The marker was sponsored by the Save Brookvale History Committee and will ...