Dr. Raymond Hylton points to one of Virginia Union University’s chapel buildings as he walks the campus. “Dr. King would preach there from time to time,” he says. His tone is casual, but the pride in his voice is unmistakable.
Hylton, Virginia Union’s history chair, makes no secret of the gratification he gets from his school’s role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. “I’m quite proud to be at such an institution with such courageous students,” he says. “It probably gives me a broader perspective than someone working elsewhere, a more humanitarian perspective.”
Founded immediately after the Civil War, Virginia Union’s place in the movement’s history was cemented on February 22, 1960, when a large group of politically-minded students marched to heavily-segregated downtown Richmond to demand service. At Thalhimer’s Department Store, 34 students (including Charles Sherrod, who would go on to be field secretary of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee)were threatened and eventually arrested by police for trespassing. “Now, they didn’t stay in jail long;” added Hylton. “They were quickly bailed out and then were escorted down to the Eggleston Hotel where they were cheered, they were congratulated, and where the Campaign for Human Dignity was launched.” This group used Martin Luther King Jr.’s tactics of organized, nonviolent resistance to protest against segregation and institutional racism in the Richmond area and as a result, said Hylton, “most of the stores who had been discriminating gave in within about a year of the launching of the Campaign.”
On Virginia Union’s campus today, students say the school heavily emphasizes this place in history. “We have different plaques that explain the history of Virginia Union,” said Union student Isaiah Freeman, who said he wasn’t aware of the school’s connection to the civil rights movement until he began classes. “We also have to take a course our freshman year that also teaches us about past events leading to the present day VUU.”
Union student Rashard Byrd said he researched the school’s historical significance, which was “one of the many reasons I decided to attend VUU”, but he believes knowing about the incident ahead of time puts him in the minority. “Most students don’t research anything besides tuition,” he said, “but they’re starting to become aware through chapel and professors.”
Regardless of how familiar they were with the story, students still look to the “Union 34” as inspiration. Freeman said it was a positive motivator “knowing that I go to a place where people actually fought and worked hard to make it become what it is today.”
Dr. Hylton says the same values that compelled the Union 34 to take action are taught at Virginia Union today. “The administration tries to remind faculty to inculcate these ideas into our curriculum,” he said, “and of course, we do have very much so, in our mission and goals, a civic engagement component.”
With many of the issues that spurred the civil rights movement still relevant today, Virginia Union student Emily Piercy believes there are always further lessons to be learned from the activists’ examples. “We have a saying at Union, that we’re walking on ‘hallowed grounds and dear old walls’,” Piercy said. “Knowing that you are attending a school that produced such great people that went on to change the world makes you believe that you can go on and do the same things.”
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