Giles County Historical Society Receives Grant for Oral History Project

The Community Foundation of the New River Valley has selected the Giles County Historical Society as one of its 2012 fall grant recipients. The grant, totaling $826.39, will provide recording, transcribing and storage equipment for the Historical Society's Oral History Project. The Community Foundation funds a variety of projects across the New River Valley, believing the modest grants like this can have tremendous impact on local communities. This fall the foundation awarded over $45,000 to local non-profits. The grant to the Historical Society comes from the CFNRV's Giles Fund - resources raised by Giles citizens to be shared with Giles communities.

The Historical Society has three oral history projects planned for the coming year: Giles County Quilt Documentation, Public School Desegregation, and "Voices from Giles County." Quilt documentation is an on-going project to photograph, measure, and record quilts made in the locality before 1999.

The Public School Desegregation project will be the first time this historic period has been examined in Giles County. In 1954, the US Supreme Court ruled that state law mandating separate schools for black and white students were unconstitutional, paving the way for desegregation of the public schools. Unlike many other Virginia counties which followed the course of "massive resistance," the Giles County school board voted to voluntarily end racial segregation in the county schools. Historical Society volunteers are now conducting background research and identifying interviewees for this project. Tentative informants include members of the local African American community, former students at the segregated high school at Bluff City, students enrolled in Giles High School in 1964-5, and former teachers and administrators in the school system.

For the "Voices from Giles County" project, county residents will be interviewed about growing up and living in Giles County. The project will initially focus on older residents, and areas of interest will include childhood and family life on the farm and in town, education, employment (particularly at the Celanese plant), and historic events affecting county residents, such as the Great Depression, World War II, desegregation/civil rights, and Vietnam. "Voices" will be an
on-going oral history project for the Historical Society