Historical Context and Contemporary Antiracist Education in Albemarle County Public Schools

• In Event: To Resist: Examining a District-Wide Implementation of a Middle School Anti-Bias Curriculum in the Current Socio-Political Climate

Abstract

This paper explores how the deep and complex historical context of Albemarle County, Virginia—particularly its legacy of racial injustice and Black resistance—informs and shapes contemporary efforts in Albemarle County Public Schools (ACPS) to implement antiracist education. Albemarle County, located in and around Charlottesville, Virginia, is home to Monticello, the plantation of Thomas Jefferson. In the early 1800s, more than half of Albemarle County’s population was enslaved, many by Jefferson himself, who enslaved 607 people over the course of his lifetime (Monticello, n.d.). But alongside this history of enslavement runs a powerful legacy of Black agency, resistance, and community-building that continues to shape the community today.
Throughout Albemarle’s history, Black people pushed back against the conditions of white supremacy. After emancipation, many acquired land, established churches and schools, and built strong communities, despite facing systemic barriers at every turn. The gains made during Reconstruction were threatened repeatedly by segregation, racial covenants in housing, and mid-20th century urban renewal projects—most notably the razing of Vinegar Hill—that displaced entire Black neighborhoods in Charlottesville (Mapping C’ville, 2023; Yager, 2024). These historical injustices remain present in the collective memory of the community and are mirrored in current racial inequities in housing, wealth, education, and health outcomes. The 2017 Unite the Right rally, a violent white supremacist event held in Charlottesville, was a searing reminder that these issues are far from resolved.
In this charged and historically layered context, students in ACPS took action. In 2019, a group of students organized and advocated for the adoption of an official antiracism policy. The policy, passed unanimously by the School Board, was the first of its kind in Virginia and explicitly calls on the school division to actively identify, disrupt, and dismantle racism in school culture, discipline practices, curriculum, and hiring (ACPS, 2019).
This paper examines how that student-initiated policy led to the development of an antiracist middle school advisory curriculum. The developmentally appropriate curriculum is designed to be antiracist and culturally responsive, inquiry-based, and centered on dialogue. Lessons focus on identity, race, and justice with students studying multi-racial coalitions of the past contributed to the dismantling of racial injustice. One key strand of the curriculum is Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), through which students investigate issues in their own schools and communities and propose solutions grounded in community conversation and place-based history (Cammarota & Fine, 2008). These YPAR projects explicitly connect students to the stories and struggles of their own community—enslaved people who resisted, Black families who built in the face of oppression, and young people who continue to lead change today.
Ultimately, this paper posits effective antiracist education must be place-based and rooted in truth-telling. In Albemarle County, this means grappling with the contradictions of Jefferson’s legacy, recognizing ongoing systems of racial inequity, and honoring the deep tradition of Black resistance and activism. The work in ACPS with middle school students shows how a school division can use local history to empower students to shape a more just and inclusive future

Author

• Neeley Minton, Albemarle County Public Schools