Our Folks' Tales

10/30/2025

YES!!!

In a very rare and likely precedent-setting agreement, the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Boston has agreed to return two works from 1857 by the Black potter David Drake (around 1800-around 1870), who made his ambitious jars while enslaved, to his present-day descendants.

By the terms of the contract, one of those vessels will remain on loan to the museum for at least two years. The other—a masterpiece known as the “Poem Jar”—has been purchased back by the museum from the heirs for an undisclosed sum. Now the work comes with “a certificate of ethical ownership”.

“In achieving this resolution, the MFA recognises that Drake was deprived of his creations involuntarily and without compensation,” a museum spokesperson said in a statement. “This marks the first time that the museum has resolved an ownership claim for works of art that were wrongfully taken under the conditions of slavery in the 19th-century US.”

Read more: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/10/29/mfa-boston-returns-david-drake-pottery-heirs

10/29/2025

Wow!!

10/22/2025

Monticello identifies six more people enslaved by Thomas Jefferson: https://shorturl.at/s5n1n

10/21/2025

Trustees of the Cuckoo Colored School and the Louisa County Historical Society (LHS) gathered on October 11 to celebrate the elevation of the school to the Virginia Landmarks Register.

The two-room Cuckoo School was built in 1925 and served as an elementary school for African American students during the era of racial segregation in Virginia’s public schools. It housed grades one through seven until its closure in 1955 due to a fire. The school was added to the Virginia Landmarks register in June.

The Virginia Department of Historic Resources cites that the school, listed as the Cuckoo Elementary School, is a “rare surviving” example of two-room schoolhouses, and that the school “remains an important link to Black history and culture in Louisa County.”

The Cuckoo School was built on the site of at least two previous schools, according to the registration form to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The first building was established pre-1875 and was first mentioned as the Cuckoo School by 1880. The original building was documented as a log cabin, with the land for the current and previous schools donated by the Pendleton family from land which was formerly part of their plantation. This establishes a direct link between the former enslavers and the descendants of the formerly enslaved.

The Cuckoo School always had two teachers. In 1938, they were B.D. Ellis and Lillie Anderson. There were twenty-five buildings serving Black students in Louisa County 1949; all of them were listed at overcapacity, with the Cuckoo School serving 56 students that year. Two stoves, one in each classroom, heated the building. Electricity for lighting was first installed in 1950.

Over a dozen alumni of the Cuckoo School gathered at the October recognition ceremony.

Edna Hackney attended the Cuckoo School from ages five to 12 from 1944-1952. Her mother was Lillie Anderson, her school teacher for her first three years.

In the year that Hackney graduated, she was supposed to go to the Louisa Training School, a school established in 1926 for African American high school students. The training school operated until 1953 when it was replaced by the A.G. Richardson High School. By that time Hackney graduated, A.G. Richardson was already built. She was in the first class to “go all the way through.”

“My best years were spent right here on this ground,” Hackney, who is currently 84 years old, said about the Cuckoo School. “It’s so wonderful to have everyone here to honor this place. I’m so glad that our school is getting the recognition it deserves. In the Black community, there is so much history being erased. With this being on the Virginia register, it can not be ignored, it can not be erased. I’m very happy about that and I’m just so thankful that I lived to see it.”

Continue reading about how the building was “mothballed” by clicking the link below:

https://www.thecentralvirginian.com/news/cuckoo-school-added-to-va-landmarks-register/article_19ddd38a-04aa-4aeb-a9bf-a2e4c302963c.html

10/19/2025

Don't delay! Reservations for our catalog launch celebration on Saturday, October 25th, are going fast. (Really!) Space is limited, so reserve your spot, today.
Everyone who registers will receive a free catalog. Registration is also free. Here's the link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/visions-of-progress-catalog-launch-tickets-1564093558939?aff=oddtdtcreator&mc_cid=a27eefb208
Many thanks to our partners:

10/15/2025

Join me on 10-18, 1p EST

10/13/2025

The Storm Black Americans Saw Coming: The Second Trump Era and the Future of Black America

Season 9 of Genealogy Adventures opens with a bold, necessary conversation about the Second Trump Administration - and what its impact means for generational Black Americans. This premiere episode explores how the Trump Administration's present-day policies, rhetoric, and unrest mirror earlier periods of backlash against Black progress, from Reconstruction to Jim Crow to the Civil Rights era.

It's 10 months in - and we're tired.

Hosts Brian and Donya invite viewers to trace the throughline of this history: how fear, power, and control continue to shape the Black experience in America. They unpack why many Black Americans aren’t taking to the streets in protest today - and how centuries of resilience, survival, the ancestors, and strategic silence inform that decision. The discussion is not just about politics; it’s about preservation, community, and collective Black memory.

This episode is both a warning and a roadmap. It urges viewers of every generation to recognize the stakes, to organize politically and socially, and to protect what our ancestors fought to build.

Tune in live for this thought-provoking season premiere - and join the discussion in the comments to share your thoughts, questions, and hopes for the road ahead.