Sunday, May 11, 2008
Tapping the V.I.A.L.'s past
Aaron McFarling
Recent columns
The headline struck me. "Negro High Elevens Meet Here Friday," it said.
It peeked at me through the glass case, next to the trophy and the pictures. It begged me to read on.
I stepped closer.
Turns out this wasn't a clipping from just any newspaper. It was from the one at which I work, The Roanoke Times, dated Nov. 8, 1928. Here is what the first sentence of the article said:
The strength, strategy and speed of the Addison School gridders probably will receive its severest test of the season on Friday when the local colored "Bull Dogs" meet the undefeated eleven representing Genoa high school of Bluefield, W.Va.
"Hmmm," I thought. "Needs some editing."
This is what Harold Cannaday Jr. means when he says "what motivates people to learn is when they see things they can relate to." None of my relatives grace the walls of Cannaday's exhibit. None of my ancestors played in the Virginia Interscholastic Athletic League, the organization for black high schools before integration.
But I am a writer. I occasionally write previews of championship games. I've never used the term "colored," "Negro," or, for that matter, "eleven" to describe a football team.
So I can relate, directly, on a certain level. I can see how things were different. And without really even trying, I gained a better sense of history.
This is the goal of Cannaday's V.I.A.L. Sports Hall of Fame, which opened this month at the Harrison Museum of African American Culture in Roanoke. But the name is a tad misleading. The exhibit is more about preservation than canonization, more about faces and names and connections than touchdowns, home runs and scoring averages.
"If I build it using statistical categories, then what am I doing?" said Cannaday, an instructional assistant for Roanoke schools. "I'm eliminating people And I don't want to eliminate people. I would rather it be a memorial. So I waived all that."
The result is a collection of photos and stories of Virginia high school sports in the segregation era. There are shots of "Big" Joe Hollins and "Fox" Mitchell and Charles "Big Dog" Thornhill. There are big-name coaches and average athletes -- basically, whatever Cannaday could get his hands on from the 52 schools he's found (so far) that were in the league.
The idea to do this hit Cannaday in October 2005, at his father's funeral.
Harold Sr. had told his son the stories about playing basketball for old Addison High School in the V.I.A.L. He frequently repeated one story about the time he scored 27 points to help his team win a championship.
When a mourner placed an Addison High School cap into Harold Sr.'s coffin, it got Harold Jr. thinking: Just how much of this type of history is being lost?
So he met with the Harrison museum's board of directors last summer. In November, they approved the exhibit. He got a post office box and began making calls -- to libraries, to newspapers, to alumni associations -- seeking memorabilia from any of the high schools that played in the league, which spanned the years 1928-'69.
"You don't know when you're calling someone what state of mind the person is in," Cannaday said. "So ultimately I considered it a 50-50 gamble. But I believe in no school being left behind."
Every week, he'd drive to the post office and celebrate a new arrival: A photo of a baseball team in Franklin County, a relic from a hoops squad in Salem, a program from a football team in Staunton.
"Some schools would just send us one picture," Cannaday. "But then you have to treasure that one picture, because it's a representation of the school. I feel like that one photo can serve as a memorial to the many photos I don't have of that school."
The exhibit will run through December, but Cannaday would like it to expand and eventually move to a larger location.
He's invited local government officials for tours in the hopes of getting grant consideration.
The trophy next to that newspaper article is the crown jewel of the exhibit. Cannaday says the artifact, discovered in the basement of Addison Middle School last summer, represents the first championship awarded in V.I.A.L history -- the football title won by Addison at Maher Field in 1928.
That's what connected with me most. But Cannaday hopes people -- especially young people -- find connections throughout the halls.
"It could be your great-grandfather or great-grandmother on one of these pictures," he said. "You'll pay more attention to it then if it's just in a book or something of that nature. I like to have things hanging. This is the start of what I really wanted to do. I'd like to try to make it grow."
The exhibit is open 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays and until 7 p.m. on Thursdays. The museum is located at 523 Harrison Ave., Roanoke.
