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Tuesday 12pm - 5pm Thursday 12pm - 5pm

http://www.christiansburginstitute.com/

Christiansburg Institute, Inc., 125 Arrowhead Trail, Christiansburg, VA (2026)

05/15/2026

📚 This week on ‘Digging in the Archives,’ we’re taking a closer look at the library at the Christiansburg Industrial Institute (CII), a vital academic space that supported student learning across disciplines. Located initially inside Baily-Morris Hall, and then moved next door to the Edgar Long building, the library was spacious, centrally located, and designed to be an essential resource for both students and faculty.

📝 At CII, developing strong library skills was considered an important part of every student’s education. All students were required to take a semester of library science in the 8th grade, where they learned how to effectively navigate research materials and utilize library resources. Some students even assisted the librarian by filing catalog cards, gaining hands-on experience in organizing information.

📖 The library was more than just a place to store books. It supplemented, complemented, and implemented classroom instruction, providing valuable resource materials for research and independent study. It also played a key role in helping students develop strong study habits, while encouraging critical, creative, and analytical thinking skills.

🎞️ In addition to books, the library housed audiovisual equipment and materials, expanding the ways students could engage with information. It also offered dedicated study spaces where students could focus and collaborate.

👩‍🏫 In the 1960s, the library was overseen by librarian Mrs. N. Banks, who helped maintain this important academic hub.

🔎If you would like to read some of the books that were held within the CII library, check out the CII Library Collection in-person at the Christiansburg Institute Museum and Archives (CIMA).

This can be done by scheduling an appointment with our Outreach Coordinator, email: [email protected].

Christiansburg Institute, Inc.

05/14/2026

📣 SAVE THE DATE! 🖤

05/12/2026

🌯 Support Local History While Enjoying Chipotle! 🌯

Mark your calendars and join us TOMORROW for a delicious way to give back to support our work!

📅 Wednesday, May 13
⏰ 5:00 PM – 9:00 PM
📍 Chipotle – 2545 Market St, Christiansburg, VA (only this location qualifies for the fundraiser)

When you dine with Chipotle during our fundraiser, 25% of event sales will be donated to Christiansburg Institute, Inc. to support our mission of inspiring community education, intergenerational empowerment, and the responsible stewardship of African American history in Southwest Virginia.

✅ Order online for pickup using code: D4WQHRQ
✅ Or show this flyer in the restaurant

Every burrito, bowl, taco, and salad helps support the work of the Christiansburg Institute, Inc. and our educational programs for students and the community.

Thank you for helping us preserve the past while investing in the future! 💛🖤

🌍 www.christiansburginstitute.com

05/11/2026

✨ Alice Walker, a celebrated writer, poet, and activist is incredibly influential in the portrayal and understanding of African American life and culture. Born February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia, she was the daughter of sharecroppers. In her youth she suffered from an injury that left her blind in one eye, thus her mother made the decision that Walker’s efforts should focus on education. Alice had a particular talent for writing, her teachers recognized this and within four years of her schooling, her curriculum completely revolved around books and writing. And, upon graduating high school, she was even valedictorian of her class.

📖 Due to her literary capabilities and academic achievements, she received a scholarship to Spelman College. She studied here for two years before transferring to Sarah Lawrence College, where she graduated in 1965. Immediately after finishing her post-secondary education, Walker joined the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. Alice taught and wrote poetry, short stories, and essays, producing her first book of poetry, Once, in 1968. In addition, she was also part of the first in*******al marriage in Mississippi in 1967, marrying a civil rights lawyer at the time.

✍🏽 Her writings flourished and received much acclaim. Soon after her first book of poetry, she published her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, in 1970. Then in 1973, alongside Charlotte D. Hunt, Alice Walker had made a huge discovery, finding Zora Neale Hurston’s unmarked grave– leading her to write “In Search of Zora Neal Hurston,” in 1975 for Ms.Magazine, where she served as editor, which revived the interest for Hurston and her literary works as well. By the late 1980s, Walker wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Color Purple. Other major works of hers include: The Temple of My Familiar, By the Light of My Father’s Smile, Now is the Time to Open Your Heart, You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down, Revolutionary Petunias, and much more. Throughout her various essays, poems, and novels she has used her literary voice to navigate sexuality, class, feminism, oppression of the Black body, and love and activism.

💐 Alice Walker still contributes to literature and activism, but her legacy has long been cemented. She stands as a literary architect of Black feminist thought, giving voice to those historically silenced and reshaping how stories of Black womanhood are told and understood.

‼️ Alice Walker’s life and legacy continue to challenge, inspire, and provoke critical reflection on the nature of resistance, justice, and identity. If you would like to join us in reading her classic novel: The Color Purple, then please come be a part of our book club, The BlackInk Society! You can access more information here and we would be happy to welcome new faces to our dialogue about such a pivotal figure in not only Black history but national history as well.

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Christiansburg Institute, Inc.

05/08/2026

🏆 Graduates of the Christiansburg Industrial Institute frequently recall an entire display case full of trophies in Scattergood Hall. These trophies were the culmination of decades of students’ victories across disciplines at CII. There were trophies commemorating sports victories, high-steppers victories, parade float design contest winners, science fair winners, agricultural science competition winners, and many others. These trophies indicated the prowess and athleticism of students at the school in all of their endeavors, and invoked a sense of inter-generational pride in students and staff alike.

📦 Today, only 6 of those trophies are held safely within the Christiansburg Institute Museum and Archives (CIMA). The rest of the trophies' whereabouts remain unknown.

🏛️ If you would like to see some of these trophies for yourself, come to the museum at the Christiansburg Institute Museum and Archives (CIMA) or check out the Smokehouse Collection at the Christiansburg Institute Digital Archives (CIDA), accessible at https://hub.catalogit.app/christiansburg-institute-digital-archive/folder/smokehouse-collection

Christiansburg Institute, Inc.

05/08/2026

Our office is closed today.

Thank you for your continued support, patience, and understanding 🖤

We look forward to connecting with you soon! ✊🏾

05/05/2026

Christiansburg Institute, Inc. is proud to continue its new educational program: a community book club designed to bring people together through shared reading, thoughtful discussion, and collaborative learning.

From May through June, the Black Ink Society will read The Color Purple by Alice Walker. The Color Purple is a powerful novel that follows the life of Celie, a Black woman in the early 20th-century American South who endures abuse, racism, and oppression. Through a series of letters, Celie finds her voice, builds deep relationships, and gradually reclaims her sense of self-worth and freedom. The story ultimately highlights resilience, healing, and the transformative power of love and sisterhood.

Please visit our website for more information and to register!

05/05/2026

🏫 Scattergood Hall was built between 1953 and 1954 as a modern, multipurpose educational facility on the Christiansburg Industrial Institute (CII) campus, housing a gymnasium, industrial arts facilities, and classrooms. It was named after J. Henry Scatterhood, treasurer of the Friend’s Freedmen’s Association, who had owned CII from 1885 to 1947.

🏗️ Preceding the construction of this building, the facilities at CII were markedly outdated and inadequate for the new set of vocational skills demanded in postwar America. This was compounded by a decade of relative financial neglect from Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), which diverted an uneven share of funding away from CII and toward local white schools. A high-profile lawsuit would ultimately change MCPS’s funding policy and push the construction of Scattergood Hall.

⚖️ In 1947, Dr. Percy Corbin, an African American doctor in Pulaski County, VA, filed a joint lawsuit alongside 22 other Black parents in Pulaski County on behalf of their children against the Pulaski County School Board for failing to provide equal high school facilities for Black students. At the time, Pulaski County was sending its Black high school students to CII, which the NAACP lawyers who acted as legal counsel argued had inferior facilities and college preparatory opportunities compared to the white high school in Pulaski County. In 1949, after a lengthy legal battle, the judge ruled in favor of the parents and the NAACP. Montgomery County Public Schools, which operated CII through a regional board of control with Pulaski County Public Schools and Radford City Public Schools, were suddenly under increased pressure to invest in campus facilities. Shortly thereafter, Scattergood Hall was constructed.

🧱 The object pictured is a time capsule that also served as the cornerstone of Scattergood Hall at the Christiansburg Industrial Institute. The accompanying picture depicts the laying of the cornerstone, marked with celebration and accompanied by speeches from many of the school’s administrators. The contents of the time capsule reflect what students at CII in the early 1950s wanted future generations to see: a small child’s shoe, coins, and a slate plaque inscribed with the names of students enrolled in a science class. We are left to wonder what the students were thinking as they chose which objects to part with for the future generation to discover. The Christiansburg Institute, Inc. recently gained possession of these artifacts after they were removed from the building by its current owner and donated to the museum.

🔎 For more information about Scattergood Hall and the time capsule, explore the John F. Banks Collection [1910–1979] in the Christiansburg Institute, Inc. Digital Archives (CIDA), or visit our museum in person to see what was placed inside.

Also check out the great work that the Calfee Community and Cultural Center is doing in Pulaski County around the history of African American education in the region, as well as their 2354 project which considers the history and impact of Corbin et al. v. County School Board of Pulaski County. Access their website here: https://calfeeccc.org/.

Christiansburg Institute, Inc.

05/05/2026

📣 The Old Hill School Community Center invites the community to mark their calendars for GospelFest on Sunday, May 17th at 3:30 pm, hosted at Schaeffer Memorial Baptist Church.

🎼 This year’s program will feature the Schaeffer Memorial Choir, Melissa Holland, and the 1st Missionary Baptist Church of New River. The event will also include a special mini-concert by The Glory Landers of the New River Valley.

05/04/2026

👏🏽 Mary McLeod Bethune was an educator, civil rights leader, and trailblazer. Born on July 10, 1875, in Mayesville, South Carolina, Mary was a part of one of the first generations to be born post-emancipation with her parents and some of her older siblings having been enslaved for a period of their lives. She began working on the land that her family owned (bought from the previous slaveholder of her mother) at age five, however, her eye was set on education. She began learning through the Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church, then with the help of benefactors attended Scotia Seminary in North Carolina, and finally received a scholarship to the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago as the only Black student to attend.

🏫 Originally, she had imagined herself as serving as a missionary in Africa but as she witnessed and lived among the conditions of the Black community in the United States, she shifted her focus. Bethune began teaching across Georgia and South Carolina once finishing at the Institute. And within a short time she found herself in Florida, teaching at a Mission School while also visiting prisoners in the county jail, helping them in any way she could whether that was reading or singing to them or working to free those who were not guilty. But, it was in 1904, that Mary McLeod Bethune accomplished her dream of expanding opportunities for African-American girls by opening the Daytona Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls. She acted as President of the school for more than 40 years and during her time she opened a high school, a hospital for Black individuals, and oversaw the school’s merger with the Cookman Institute, making it the Bethune-Cookman College, now known as the HBCU: Bethune-Cookman University.

⚖️ Beyond education she was engrossed in social work: she worked to integrate Red Cross, became the President of the Florida Federation of Colored Women, the President of the National Association of Colored Women, and formed the National Council of Negro Women in 1935. A year later she found herself as the appointed director of African American affairs in the National Youth Administration and a special adviser on minority affairs by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She held these positions for eight years, becoming the unofficial leader of FDR’s “Black cabinet.” In addition, Mary organized a conference on the Problems of the Negro and the Negro Youth, became Vice President of the NAACP, was a member of the advisory board that created the Women’s Army Corps, and was the only woman of color at the founding conference of the United Nations in 1945.

💛 Mary McLeod Bethune’s legacy is one of unwavering dedication to education, empowerment, and equality. Through her work, she not only opened doors for generations of Black students but also reshaped the landscape of civil rights and public service in America. Her life stands as a powerful reminder that education, leadership, and community care can be transformative forces for lasting change.

Christiansburg Institute, Inc.

Christiansburg Institute, Inc.

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