I'll Take History Over Football

No, I don't really care about football, but before you write me off as a girly girl, I understand the game, can follow and even appreciate it on occasion and was raised in a family of season ticket-holders, so I've been to my fair share of NFL games (and shivered my way through three hours on the 50-yard line).

I just can't be bothered anymore.

But today would have been the annual Armstrong-Walker Football Classic, a long-time Richmond tradition I'd heard about from several old-timers in my neighborhood (yet another perk of living in such a diverse 'hood).

The two schools began the tradition in 1938 and it ended in 1978 with Walker's closing.

Last year the event was revived with two semi-pro teams playing as a fundraiser at VUU. Noble, but not quite the same.

The rivalry between these two once-exclusively black schools was apparently legendary and the Classic and its attendant events a cultural phenomena that used to draw 25,000+ fans to the traditional Saturday after Thanksgiving game and festivities.

So while I had no interest in attending today's game, it seemed like an ideal time to check out the Pride Over Prejudice: Armstrong and Maggie L. Walker High Schools in Their Time exhibit at the Black History Museum.

But not until after a trip to Roy's Big Burger where, once again, everyone eating in their cars was male. I just don't get it. Girls like cheeseburgers, too; I know it..

But I digress.

I'm a sucker for historical exhibits full of photographs and artifacts and this one, given its local angle, had plenty of both.

Armstrong opened first as an all-black school but quickly became overcrowded, necessitating double shifts for students for five years.

Walker was built in 1938 to alleviate the overcrowding and was more of a vocational school whereas Armstrong was more academically-oriented.

And by vocational, I mean these kids were being taught all the best trades of the day: shoe-repairing, tailoring, masonry, barbering as well as the usual beauty shop and cooking skills.

Significantly, Walker was also the first Virginia school to have an African-American principal and faculty.

Photographs from Armstrong's yearbook showed a smiling group of Cafeteria Staff Custodians and another of them passing out 35-cent hot lunches to students in line.

Students in Armstrong's cooking classes all wore the traditional toque blanche.

They took classes in Negro History long before African-American studies was even a blip on the horizon.

It was interesting to see the progression of the students' and faculty's hair and clothing style as the cultural revolution of the 60s showed itself in their evolving looks.

Afros got bigger and bigger (including L. Doug Wilder's) and demure skirts and blouses gave way to girls in bell-bottoms and guys in fringed vests and platform shoes.

Early photos from school dances (some at the Mosque) showed the girls in full-length formals with tiaras, while later ones showed a guy in tight jeans doing a split in the middle of the dance floor.

The times they were a-changing.

The exhibit is well worth seeing for the slice-of-life look at Richmond teenagers as well as the peek into how the faculty of these two black schools mitigated the effects of "separate but equal" and the prejudice still so much a part of this city's culture right up through the 70s.

And as long as you're there, don't miss the permanent exhibit on my beloved Jackson Ward.

Be sure to take note that the decorative ironwork along Clay Street's Italianate houses is the largest concentration of ironwork in the state (and some of the finest in the country).

Since I live only a few blocks down Clay Street in one of those Italianate houses with the decorative ironwork, feel free to wave as you leave the museum.

And you can know that, in spirit anyway, I'm welcoming you to RVA's best (and most architecturally intact) neighborhood, J-Ward.

Come back soon.