African American Exhibit
The Colonial Beach Historical Society and Museum is proud to announce our collaboration with the A. T. Johnson Museum with the creation of a permanent African American exhibit which will change every quarter celebrating African American History in Colonial Beach and Westmoreland County. Click here to view the National Register of Historic Places
Registration Form which gives an extensive background on A.T.
February 2025
Celebrating Black History Month, on February 24th the museum hosted a lecture with Guest Speaker Marian Veney Ashton, Executive Director of the A.T. Johnson Museum. Marian spoke about the history of African American Labor in the Northern Neck & John Wesley Sutton (1897-1978) a biochemist and protégé of George Washington Carver, who exemplified the resilience and resourcefulness of African Americans.
A.T. Johnson High School Director Marian Ashton co-produced the documentary "Kremlin To Kremlin" along with Jon Bachman of Stratford Hall, a museum that is part of the Virginia Historical Society.
In 1931 Oliver Golden, an agricultural specialist who had studied at Tuskegee Institute , organized a group of sixteen black Americans of various professional backgrounds including John Sutton and Joseph Roane to travel to Uzbekistan in Soviet Central Asia to develop an experimental cotton plantation. The men were paid the equivalent of several hundred dollars a month, a fortune during the years of the Great Depression . They also enjoyed a month's free vacation every year in elite Crimean resorts. The group spent three years crossing Uzbek seeds with American seeds and finally produced a new strain of cotton that took 25 percent less time to mature than cotton in the American South.
Agricultural teacher Joseph Roane (1905-1995) exemplifies the high calibre of teacher employed at the school. Roane, a Westmoreland County native, received his elementary education at Kremlin Elementary School but was forced to leave the county to obtain a high school degree. He attended high school in Philadelphia and Petersburg, receiving his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Virginia State College. Roane and his wife went to Russia where Roane served as an agricultural scientist, teaching Russians American principals of scientific agriculture. He returned to the United States in 1937 and began teaching at A.T. Johnson High School, where he taught from 1937 to 1970. After his retirement, he served as a consultant on Northern Neck crops, insects. and diseases through an affiliation withVirginia Polytechnic University.
Sutton as a science teacher in New York City, he developed the Sutton Fund for Educational Development to help underprivileged children.Many of the skills and traditions that Sutton and others practiced, such as canning vegetables, repairing shoes, and ironing clothes, have roots in the resilience and resourcefulness of African Americans during slavery and our exhibit at the museum exemplifies this legacy.
