Virginia - Day 28 - friends and Booker T. Washington

Paradise Lake Family Campground, Spout Spring (near Appomattox)
Thursday, 28 March 2019

today's route

In the campground this morning I saw an RV that came in after we went to bed last night, and this is what it looked like.

It's a Travato by Winnebago, and that red is really red.  All other RVs are white or brown or beige or maybe blue or even black, but none of them has any real color to them.  So this thing was really noticeable.  I guess it's a Class B and isn't very big, yet these folks were pulling a Kia behind it.  Don't know why they wouldn't want to just stick with the one vehicle that's smaller than mine, but everybody thinks differently.

Today I headed toward southwestern Virginia, aiming first to meet friends and visit the Booker T. Washington National Monument, and then head over near Appomattox.  If I'd looked at a map when I was making these plans, I'd have planned a different route that reversed the agendas for today and tomorrow.  But I didn't, so I ended up driving the same road several times.  A waste of gas, but otherwise not a hardship.

Speaking of gas, I've been noticing that gas prices have gone up steadily during this month.  When I first came to Virginia, I was paying $2.20-$2.30/gallon in the northeast.  That went up to the mid-$2.30s when I went down to the Norfolk area and continued in that range until last week.  By the time I left Richmond and came west, the price had gone up into the $2.40s in many places.  And by today, it's hard to find anywhere that offers gas for less than that.  I don't know if this is due to some international event that I missed hearing about or is just related to Virginia taxing laws.  But a 20¢/gallon difference in price makes a real difference to me when I'm buying in quantities of 30-40 gallons.

There was frost on the road this morning, so I drove carefully until I was sure the roads were okay.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and I thought the sun wouldn't be a problem as I was heading mostly south.  But trees lined the roadway and the sun shining through the trunks had a strobe effect for me.  The flickering light pouring in continuously for miles at the side of my eyes - I had trouble concentrating on the road and finally had to drive with my hand shielding the side of my face.  The visor is too short for the angle.  This is by no means the first time that's happened and is something I'd never have expected.

The road ran around the eastern edge of Lynchburg (named for its founder John Lynch and chartered in 1786), population 71,000+.  It's the home of the University of Lynchburg, but the main thing you see when you drive down the highway is Liberty University, founded by Jerry Falwell, who has a stretch of the road named after him (Jerry Falwell Parkway).  Liberty University, with 45,000 students, is the largest private non-profit university in the US and one of the world's largest Christian universities.  The buildings for this school stretch quite a way along the highway and made me hope the students had bicycles to get around campus.

I saw a pond south of town with 6 swans a-swimming (I think it was 6, not 7).  The bird book says some swans might winter in eastern VA, which this isn't, but it's late March so I'm guessing they were wild.

The road took me through what I'm sure are the foothills east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which in turn are part of the Appalachian Mountain Range.  It's really pretty country.

Except for the occasional billboards advertising Doomsday Tactical Supply.  I looked them up and they sell a large variety of firearms, apparel and other outdoor supplies.  But what a depressing name.

I went first to a community by Smith Mountain Lake to meet the granddaughter of our long-time family friends from Waco, Mr. and Mrs. Goebel.  Faith brought 4 of her children with her and we had a very nice visit over a late breakfast.  I was sorry not to have been able to time my visit so I could meet her husband and other daughter, but it was nice to talk with them.

Jesse, Eliza, Faith, Os(wald) and Silas

A few miles down the road from there is the Booker T. Washington National Monument.  I'd always had a vague idea that the "T" didn't stand for anything (like Harry "S" Truman), but it stands for Taliafero, who historians believe was his father.

He never knew for sure where or when he was born or who his father was.  The exhibits said he was likely born 1858 or 1859, but a bust at the entrance lists the date as 1856.  They really don't know.

Modern researchers have figured out for us that he was born at this site of what was once the Burroughs plantation, because they've found documents cataloging the Burroughs' property, with a list of slaves including an 8-year-old "Bowker," valued at $400.  78% of the Burroughs' wealth was in slaves, and this was true of many farm owners dependent on slavery.

1860 map of Virginia showing percentages of blacks in each county - over 70% in some.  It's easy to see why West Virginia separated from Virginia during the war.

It was illegal then to educate enslaved people, and young Booker was envious of the Burroughs children who got to go to school.  After the Emancipation Proclamation, he moved with his mother and siblings to West Virginia where his stepfather lived; the male family members worked long hours in the Kanawha Salt Co. mine, but at least they got paid for it.  And Booker spent his off-work time trying to learn to read and write.

From somewhere he heard about the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute for African-Americans in coastal Virginia and walked most of the 500 miles to get to the school.  On the left is his earliest known photograph, believed to have been taken when he was at Hampton.  On the first day he noticed that all the students had at least 2 names, but he'd never been called anything but Booker.  By the time his turn came, he decided his name was Booker Washington.

He paid his tuition at Hampton by working as a janitor there, and came to value labor both for its financial rewards and for the independence it brought.  He graduated with honors and returned to West Virginia to teach.

In 1881 he was hired to start a school in Tuskegee, Alabama.  That was an era of vigilantes who burned schools, so Washington had the first class of 30 student build a kiln and make bricks.  They used these to erect school buildings that would be hard to burn and, 7 years later, the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers had 400 students.  Over time, the school became known for its skills-based curriculum, designed to help students achieve economic success and pass their knowledge on to others.

Other blacks disagreed with this focus, rather than aiming for political gain, but Washington had grown up never getting enough to eat and believed economic opportunities would help blacks achieve success in life.

He used to give speeches to help raise money for the school, and these speeches raised his public profile so much that he was eventually advising presidents and other decision-makers.  He always promoted economic opportunities for blacks, but he also privately financed challenges to the Jim Crow laws.  If you want to get some basics on where these laws came from and what they did, this link offers a primer.  www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month

the lesson he learned from hard work

the lesson he learned about helping others

at the entrance - a quote to inspire us all

After leaving the monument, we retraced the road toward Lynchburg and branched off east for the Appomattox area.

From online comments about this campground, I'd expected a run-down kind of place that wasn't very comfortable, and that's not at all what I found.  They mostly had seasonal campers there, and most of those weren't spending this night in the campground, so we had lots of company in the form of RVs but not much in the way of people.  The office upgraded us to a really nice site by the lake, and I put the dogs out on long leashes and let them nap in the sun for a few hours.  A pleasant, peaceful stay.