Hanover County Black Heritage Society searches for permanent home to preserve local history

HANOVER, Va. (WRIC) — In a small room nestled inside an Ashland building sits an expansive collection of memorabilia and artifacts that tell the stories of Black life in Hanover County.

For more than three decades, this collection has been curated by the Hanover County Black Heritage Society (HCBHS) after Black residents realized their history wasn't easily accessible.

Today, the society’s growing archive of photographs and documents is at risk of being forgotten as the organization searches for a permanent home.

Carolyn Hemphill, founder of HCBHS, sorts through photographs in the organization's museum. (Photo: 8News)

HCBHS was founded in 1994 by Carolyn Hemphill and other alumni of John M. Gandy, the county’s all-Black high school. Hemphill recalled what life was like as a high school student during segregation.

"I had to walk past the white school in order to get to my school," Hemphill said. "We were given used books from the all-white school here in Ashland. Our books were raggedy sometimes. It was a big difference [between] the two schools."

After graduating, Hemphill said she realized the stories of the lives of Black people in Hanover were shared primarily through oral history and hardly recorded.

"I spent a lot of time with my grandmother sitting at the kitchen table talking about her growing up, passing oral history stories from one generation to the other," she said.

Hemphill and her classmates believed their history would be at risk of being forgotten, so they began the work of formally collecting, preserving and exhibiting information on the contributions made by African Americans in Hanover.

“When people were pulling down houses, when older people passed, I would sometimes reach out to the families asking them if they would donate memorabilia and artifacts to Hanover County Black Heritage,” Hemphill said. “This is how we came up with most of the things that we have.”

Those efforts have resulted in books, traveling exhibits and major community contributions, including research used to design Berkleytown Heritage Park, which honors a historic African American neighborhood in Ashland.

“All the information pertaining to the town came from the archives here in Hanover County Black Heritage,” Hemphill said. “This is a typical example of collecting and preserving that information.”

As the collection has expanded, the challenge has shifted from uncovering history to finding a stable place to keep it. The society has operated out of several locations over the years and recently lost its space inside the Henry Clay Inn next door, forcing another move.

“We’ve been in several locations since we started back then, but we still haven’t found a permanent home,” Hemphill said.

The repeated relocations have taken an emotional toll.

“It makes me sad. Extremely sad,” she said. “I’m so protective over the artifacts [and] the things that we’ve collected over the years, but if we don’t preserve it, it’s going to be lost,”

Hemphill hopes the society will one day have a stand-alone museum where the public can consistently access the collection.

“A stand-alone museum where we could exhibit the memorabilia and artifacts on an ongoing basis … show everything that we do have, and the importance of preserving this history,” she said. “That would be fantastic.”

The Hanover County Black Heritage Museum is open to the public by appointment only. To schedule a visit, call 804-304-2738.