Spotsylvania's John J. Wright Museum to Reopen Next Weekend
Featured exhibit, "Being a Citizen," created by founding curator Terry Miller, will be on display through November.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Spotsylvania’s John J. Wright Museum will reopen for the season on Saturday, September 7, at 10 a.m., with a new exhibit titled “Being a Citizen.”
Building on the foundation of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution—which are known as the Reconstruction Amendments and which address citizenship rights and voting rights for Black Americans—the exhibit will explore ways that those affiliated with the John J. Wright School demonstrated their citizenship.
The exhibit, which will be on display through November, is a traveling exhibit of the Carver 4-County Museum in Culpeper, with some new research specific to Spotsylvania. There will be between 20-30 items on display, some highlighting local families, according to a press release from the John J. Wright Museum.
Terry Miller, who curated the exhibit, is the founding curator of the John J. Wright Museum. In 2007, Miller researched and co-authored a book with Spotsylvania native Roger Braxton, Jr. titled African Americans of Spotsylvania County.
On the basis of that research, then-superintendent Jerry Hill asked Miller to create a museum about the history of the John J. Wright Consolidated School—which until desegregation was the only public high school for Black students in Spotsylvania.
The museum is housed in the 1952 school building, which is still in use today as the home of the school division’s early childhood special education program, alternative education programs, and the Gateway and Courthouse Academies.
The 1952 building replaced older structures that had been educating Black students in the county since 1913.
The school was renamed in 1940 for John J. Wright, an education advocate who led the Spotsylvania Sunday School Union—the coalition of 12 African American churches that first organized in 1905 to establish a secondary school for Black children.
The museum opened 14 years ago to preserve and share the history of the school, its teachers, students, and leaders, and the community as a whole. It will celebrate its anniversary with a special program hosted by Deborah Frazier, a member of the Board of Supervisors and Chief Academic Officer of Spotsylvania County Public Schools, on Saturday, September 14.
There will be music performed by soloist Michelle Lewis and a talk by featured guest speaker Lawrence Bolar, an educator and author.
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