ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A huge grant that looks to preserve our history and honor the sacrifice and struggle of those who came before us is getting us uplifted.
Before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, and college students at North Carolina A&T boldly sat at "whites only" lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960, another impactful civil rights sit-in took place right here in the DMV in Alexandria, Virginia.
One of the first sit-ins happened at the Alexandria library 85 years ago, in August of 1939.
The sit-in happened at the present-day Barrett Branch Library after a Black would-be library patron was denied a library card.
When the staff refused, he took a book and started to read.
Soon after that, several other young adults repeated the same action, until a sit-in was held at five tables.
Their brave act of defiance ended with them being arrested for "disorderly conduct" for simply reading in the city's only public library.
To help preserve the history of this early act of civil disobedience, the Alexandria library and nonprofit New American announced they are receiving a $150,000 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
Now, as the Alexandria library marks the 85th anniversary of the sit-in, the grant will go toward digitizing 4,370 pages from letters, library board minutes, city government documents and the biographical stories of the sit-in participants. This story needs to be better known and this federal funding will go a long way to help make that happen.