Fredericksburg Civil Rights Trail added to existing national system
A year after the Fredericksburg Civil Rights Trail was unveiled, it has been added to the United States Civil Rights Trail system.
The trail was unveiled in February 2023 after two years of collaboration between the Fredericksburg tourism staff and the University of Mary Washington faculty and students.
On Thursday, Fredericksburg officials announced that the United States Civil Rights Trail added four new sites, including Fredericksburg’s Civil Rights Trail, to its system of more than 130 sites in 15 states.
The news was released Thursday afternoon at the Shiloh Baptist Church on Sophia Street, which was packed with residents and officials.
Numerous speakers heralded the announcement, including Fredericksburg’s mayor and vice mayor, University of Mary Washington President Troy Paino, as well as representatives for Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and Rep. Abigail Spanberger.
Another speaker was Frank White, a Black man who graduated from Walker-Grant school in the 1950s. As a high school student he lived in Stafford County, where he still resides, but had to attend Walker-Grant because the county did not allow Black students to attend public schools.
During the ceremony, “Cousin Frank” read a poem, “The Day They Marched,” about Black students protesting segregation during a graduation ceremony when he was a student.
The Black students weren’t allowed to enter the school through the front door for the graduation, so they eventually marched to the Shiloh church to hold their ceremony.
Fredericksburg Vice Mayor Chuck Frye said the Civil Rights Trail is a way to bring untold stories that otherwise would be lost as generations die off.
He recalled when he was young that school history classes bored him. The history lessons at his grandmother’s house, which included stories not recounted in school books, were more interesting, Frye said.
Now, with the trail, “we get to tell the stories of the untold,” he said.
“What’s important is the fact that, getting back to my grandmother, the stories I was told in her little living room are the stories that are going to be told around the world,” he said. “I’m talking about right here in Fredericksburg.”
The other newly inducted U.S. Civil Rights Trail sites consist of a single entity each, but Fredericksburg’s trail system adds 21 stops to the national civil rights narrative.
The local 5-mile trail, officially titled “Freedom, A Work in Progress,” highlights local sites of significance to the civil rights movement from the Jim Crow era to the present with markers and monuments.
Stops include the former site of the slave auction block; the Libertytown neighborhood, which was originally settled by free Black people; the “Colored Cemetery” at Potters Field; and the site of the old Greyhound bus station, which was the first stop on the 1961 Freedom Ride.
There are also four stops on the UMW campus that tell the story of desegregation and the contributions of James Farmer, one of the original Freedom Riders who became a professor at the university.
The U.S. civil rights trail system was established in 2018 and developed by researchers from Georgia State University and tourism departments in numerous Southern states “to create a list of places that bring the greatest triumphs and tragedies of the era to life,” according to the United States Civil Rights Trail website.