Department of Historic Resources (www.dhr.virginia.gov) For Immediate Release November 4, 2021

Contact: Randy Jones, DHR Randy.jones@dhr.virginia.gov 540-578-3031

—Marker highlights Goochland County’s only high school for African American students during the segregation era—

—Marker text below—

RICHMOND – This weekend a state historical marker issued by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources will be dedicated that highlights Central High School, Goochland County’s only high school for African American students during the era of segregated public schools.

The public dedication ceremony for the marker will be held Saturday, Nov. 6, beginning at 10 a.m., at the marker’s location at 2748 Dogtown Road, Goochland, alongside today’s Central High School Cultural and Educational Center. Event speakers will include Jessica Kronberg, director of Parks and Recreation; Gloria Turner, a former Central High School student; Manuel Alvarez, interim County Administrator; and Neil Spoonhower of the Goochland Board of Supervisors. After the unveiling ceremony, the marker’s sponsor, Goochland County Parks and Recreation, will provide light refreshments and attendees can take a self-guided tour of Central High School building. Central High School opened in 1938, replacing the Fauquier Training School, a Julius Rosenwald funded school that burned in 1938. The newly built Central High School was a six-room brick building that was later enlarged. The Public Works Administration, a New Deal agency of President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, provided a grant to build Central High School on an 11-acre campus. Central High School became a junior high school after 1969, when a federal court order forced Goochland to desegregate its schools. The marker was approved for manufacture and installation in 2021 by the Virginia Board of Historic Resources, which is authorized to designate new state historical markers. The marker’s manufacturing costs were covered by its sponsor. Virginia’s historical highway marker program, which began in 1927 with the installation of the first historical markers along U.S. Route 1, is considered the oldest such program in the nation. Currently there are more than 2,600 official state markers, most maintained by the Virginia Department of Transportation, and by local partners in jurisdictions outside of VDOT’s authority. [PLEASE NOTE: DHR markers are erected not to “honor” their subjects but rather to educate and inform the public about a person, place, or event of regional, state, or national importance. In this regard, markers are not memorials.] Text of marker: Central High School Central High School, Goochland County’s only high school for African American students, opened here in 1938. It replaced Fauquier Training School, which stood across the street from 1923, when construction was completed with support from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, until it burned in 1937. Central High, a six-room brick building that was later enlarged, was built on an 11-acre site with a grant from the Public Works Administration, a New Deal agency. Its academic, social, and cultural programs were central to the community. After the county desegregated its schools under federal court order in 1969, the building became a junior high school.

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