Marking Lexington History

Events Thursday To Celebrate New Markers, Panel

This article was written by Eric Wilson, executive director of the Rockbridge Historical Society, and draws on materials prepared by the groups collaborating for Thursday’s dedication: Virginia Department of Historic Resources, city of Lexington, Historic Lexington Foundation, and RHS.

Thursday brings another historic day for our area: a day that honors local histories, and continued journeys between past and present.

Beginning at 11 a.m. at the Lexington Visitor Center, a two-site dedication ceremony invites community members to recognize three new additions to our commemorative landscape. One was awarded by the state last year, one newly relocated to provide more accurate and affirming context, and one recently developed and installed by local preservationists.

Leaders from the city of Lexington, Historic Lexington Foundation (HLF), Rockbridge Historical Society (RHS), and Virginia Department of Historic Resources (DHR) will share remarks through the three-stage event. HLF will front the first presentation, having sponsored the state’s new roadside marker thumb-nailing “Lexington and The Green Book,” newly installed by the visitor center parking lot.

A bus will then shuttle attendees to Evergreen Place, where the second unveiling will occur at 11:30. There, joint reflections from RHS and the city will narrate some of the “hidden histories” – and significant locational shifts – marking Lexington’s first civic burial ground, reserved for 19th-century African American residents. In March, the state’s 2007 marker was finally moved from the U.S. 11 bypass to this current site: adjacent to Evergreen Cemetery, the effective successor to those burial traditions since the turn of the 20th century.

At noon, the three-part ceremony concludes at the neighboring entrance to Evergreen itself, showcasing a new interpretive panel and guidebook, also developed by HLF.

Marking Local History

It will not be surprising to area residents how central history remains here, in public consciousness. Fully 33 state highway markers herald distinctive sites, figures and events within our borders. For a population our size, that ratio is not merely an index of significant developments across four centuries, but a witness to current community engagement and advocacy.

On April 14, Rockbridge added another to its roster, when a revised and relocated DHR sign for New Providence Presbyterian was moved from near the church’s original site in Augusta County, to stand by its current edifice in Raphine. Over the past decade, other DHR markers supported by HLF, RHS, area universities and private citizens include nominations honoring Timber Grove, Lylburn Downing School, Jackson House, Pierre Daura and John Chavis. In the coming months, the newest will stand on Va. 39 at the oncebustling 19th-century transportation nexus known as Cedar Grove.

Development of Lexington’s Two Black Cemeteries Along with “The Green Book,” Thursday’s dedications feature cemeteries within Lexington’s city limits, the first two it formally owned. Three years ago, RHS President Larry Spurgeon wrote in these pages: “The town of Lexington owned two ‘colored’ cemeteries long before it took title to Lexington Presbyterian Cemetery and renamed it for ‘Stonewall’ Jackson in 1949. The stories passed down about them are a mix of facts and hearsay. The ‘real’ story is more compelling.”

Burials for enslaved and free people of color may have begun as early as the 1840s, near the corner of Washington and Lewis streets. After emancipation, gravesite decorations and attendant Memorial Day services were recorded in newspapers. The town of Lexington obtained the land in 1876, identified as the “Colored Cemetery” on the 1877 Gray’s Map. Its deed signals clear property coordinates with a “Path” neatly bisecting the commemorative site.

Beginning in 1880, a series of real estate exchanges followed a proposal to Town Council to purchase “additional grounds for a cemetery for the colored people of the Town.” In time, the older ground was closed. Some remains are said to have been removed to the open land east of town (eventually called Evergreen), although the scale of reinterments appears limited. The original “Negro graveyard” was still maintained by community and family care, and in 1898, “great opposition” to the proposed sale of the plot of was dramatically signaled to Council: “a sacrilege that the dust of faithful servants should be disturbed, desecrated, trampled on, and des’royed.” For more, see tinyurl.com/Lex-2Black-Cemeteries-RHS.

After consulting with Evergreen’s trustees in 1946, Lexington sold the one-acre parcel for $3,500, subdivided into three lots. Three years later, the town assumed ownership of its third, most-noted burial ground from Lexington Presbyterian Church. City government promptly memorialized the cemetery by naming it for General Jackson, the church’s most famous congregant. In 2020, Council re-named it again, as Oak Grove Cemetery, having now owned Evergreen and its predecessor for nearly 150 years.

The growth of Lexington’s second city cemetery – and the range of individuals, families and cultural contributions witnessed in Evergreen for over a century – has been artfully detailed and illustrated in a walking tour brochure newly produced by HLF. Copies are available at the historic panel they’ve installed at the entrance, or at tinyurl.com/Evergreen- HLF.

The guide and map include biographical cues to 44 different gravesites, with the opening tribute: “Evergreen Cemetery is the final resting place of many of our area’s prominent African Americans. They include physicians, educators, business and civic leaders and military veterans.” HLF’s preservation mission has also has invested in the restoration of many gravestones there, and has worked with city officials to enhance Evergreen’s main entrance.

“The Green Book”

To complement these funereal sites with other and more vital community histories, a deeper dive here steers you into local journeys with “The Negro Motorist Green Book.” You can also follow the online links where these more fully elaborated accounts are accessibly archived.

The Green Book marker outside the visitor center hones in on Lexington, but emerges as part of a national network to support African American travel in the automotive age. Published in the millions, and modeled after contemporary guides for Jewish travelers, these hand-held travel guides were created in the 1930s by U.S. Postal Carrier Victor Green (hence the book’s characteristic color, and cleverly marketed title).

These publications forecast safe, accessible, and more predictable travel through the uncertainties and threats of the Jim Crow landscape, and “Sundown Towns.” Given their popularity with both travelers and business owners, their size and sweep grew rapidly from the Great Depression, through the Civil Rights Era, eventually including international travel, as well.

Green Book listings were sponsored by commercial advertisers, proprietors, and crowdsourced by readers who submitted their own recommendations. Publication ceased in 1966, after the 1964 Civil Rights Act officially desegregated public accommodations. As a quote by Mark Twain blazons on the 1949 cover: “Travel is fatal to prejudice.”

Local Hospitality

Locally, five enterprises in Lexington and Rockbridge County would be specifically featured in these path-finding pages. But those Black-owned businesses on North Main Street, Green Hill and Natural Bridge were only a tip of an iceberg that would include unlisted sites, shared through known networks and word-of-mouth support.

The three local sites most regularly featured in “The Green Book” are the Rose Inn & Tavern (operated by Mary Rose near Diamond and Main streets); the Washington Café (operated by sisters Edna and Estelle Washington at 16 N. Main St.); and the Franklin Tourist Home (owned by Zack and Arleana Franklin on 9 Tucker St., just one block away from the new DHR sign). You can read more about these and related sites on “Black Businesses in Historic Lexington” at tinyurl.com/ BlackBusinessesLexington, collaboratively developed W&L Professor Sascha Goluboff’s class, Rockbridge Regional Tourism, and RHS.

Natural Bridge also relied on several Black entrepreneurs serving travelers and workers barred from whites-only facilities. Among them, Mountain View Cottage was listed after World War II, although it’s not fully clear how long it operated.

Other welcoming establishments nearby included non-advertised enterprises, boarding and feeding visitors for shorter or longer terms. As recounted in recent oral histories, Annie and James Dixon’s large home and farm could feed 20 people in their 12-room house overlooking Buck Hill Road. A mile away on Forge Road, the Watts House hosted others. For a slideshow that broadly “Navigates Jim Crow in Rockbridge,” see tinyurl.com/Green-Book-RHS.

These locally sourced publications, programs, and markers continue to engage other community and state partners and audiences, including the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, whose exhibits now centrally feature the Lexington-Rockbridge listings from 1949. RHS’ Green Book and Civil Rights projects annually support local middle and high school curricula, as well. Together, all these historic roadmaps and signposts guide authentic understandings of the past, present curiosities, and civic horizons.