On Friday February 21^st, before COVID- 19, my justice class took a field trip to the Virginia Museum of History and Culture to see the exhibit “The Determined: The 400- Year Struggle for Black Equality” to focus on the inequalities that the African Americans in Richmond faced, as well as the implications regarding schools. This was an excellent exhibit because it walked through the very first arrival of slaves from Africa to the United States and how the process of civil rights got us to present day. The exhibit was very interesting because it really showcased the laws and legislation that the United States has had throughout time regarding African Americans and how far they have come. I thought that it was very well done because along with every milestone that indicated each part of the exhibit, there were multiple perspectives of people from Virginia about how their experience with slavery or the Jim Crow Laws or recent discrimination. I thought that it was especially interesting how in the very beginning they highlighted a story of a nameless woman’s journey from Africa to the US and her experience being sold into slavery. I think that these personal touches throughout really made much more of a lasting impact of the overall experience.

While I already knew the basic history of slavery and the civil rights movement in the United States, I did not realize how long it took, and is still currently taking, Virginia to desegregate its schools. Virginia is one of the states that took the longest to desegregate schools and had to jump through many hoops to do so. I think that it is crazy that Prince Edward County closed all public schools and opened only private schools for white children to avoid having to desegregate. I also cannot fathom how the Virginia state government allowed and encouraged similar things all over the state. Although Virginia has come a long way since that time, schools in Richmond are still segregated, but not by law. The income needed to live in a good suburb and go to a good public school is dominated by white people, and the African American children are still in lesser school because they live in poorer areas. I think that this exhibit is very important to have in Richmond because it reminds us of our past and how far we have come, and it also reminds us how far we still have to go.