Karice Luck-Brimmer, a Danville historian and genealogist, has been involved with applications for several state highway markers to recognize the city’s Black history. But not everything fits the state marker criteria, she said — that doesn’t mean it should go unrecognized.
That’s why Luck-Brimmer also holds Black history tours through Danville, gives talks and preserves oral histories.
“The marker program is near and dear to my heart, because it legitimizes the history on a state level,” she said. “But there are a lot of things locally that are significant to us. … We have all these other things, so what do we do with them?”
Her latest project, a collaboration with fellow resident and genealogist Andrea Burney, is an effort to preserve hyperlocal history.
“A Tale of Three North Danville Neighborhoods” is a documentary that tells the story of several historically Black communities through the voices of people who grew up there.
“This history is very important, and it’s also untapped,” Luck-Brimmer said. “People don’t usually talk about the north side of Danville.”
Historically Black neighborhoods in the southern part of Danville, like the Holbrook-Ross and Almagro communities, have been recognized for their historic significance through state programs, Luck-Brimmer said.
But Camp Grove, Crooktown and White Rock Hill in North Danville also have rich histories that need to be told, she said.
Luck-Brimmer and Burney worked together for about a year to produce the documentary.
They interviewed 33 people — residents, business owners and parishioners in the three neighborhoods — and sifted through hundreds of documents and photographs.
Luck-Brimmer has served as a historical consultant for documentaries on local Black history before, like “The Movement,” which focuses on the city’s civil rights movement in the 1960s, and a film on C.B. Claiborne, a Danville native who was Duke’s first Black basketball player.
This is the first documentary that she has produced herself.
It was well received by North Danville residents, she said, who attended a premiere in August. Luck-Brimmer and Burney are scheduling a series of additional screenings with local churches and other organizations throughout the fall and winter, especially during Black History Month in February.
Preserving stories for the next generation
The initial idea for a documentary project started several years ago, when Luck-Brimmer and Burney were participating in a summer speaker series about the history of North Danville churches.
At the end of the summer, Burney put together a pamphlet with information from the talks that attendees could take home.
“We had wanted to do, not necessarily a documentary, but a shorter video, and then we realized we didn’t have the money for that, so we made a pamphlet,” Burney said.
“After that, Karice and I started talking about other projects we could do, and last fall, we came up with the idea to do something on the three historically Black neighborhoods.”
The two women are always talking about their next project, Luck-Brimmer said, and they were both interested in producing something much bigger than a pamphlet.
“We said, ‘We need to do a documentary,’” Luck-Brimmer said. “A documentary is a way to get these stories out there and make sure they’re preserved for the next generation.”
Funding for the film came from a $25,000 grant from the Danville Regional Foundation, an organization that supports initiatives like education, wellness and economic development in the area.
Luck-Brimmer and Burney are natives of North Danville themselves, hailing from the Camp Grove and White Rock communities, respectively.
This made it much easier to find people to interview.
“Between the two of us, we know everybody from both of those neighborhoods,” Luck-Brimmer said. “If they’re not already family, they’re married to someone you know. We just all know each other.”
They focused on interviewing community elders, who could share stories about growing up in North Danville during segregation and how much things have changed in the city.
A common theme throughout the film was how tight-knit these communities were.
“Everybody felt like family,” White Rock resident Antionio Harrell said in the documentary. “You could go sit down at anyone’s home and eat and have fellowship.”
Spotlighting older residents meant that finishing the documentary was somewhat of a race against the clock. Two of the people interviewed for the project died before it was complete, Luck-Brimmer said.
She and Burney also combed through records like church documents and family histories.
In each of these neighborhoods, the churches are “anchors” for the community, Luck-Brimmer said.
“The church is the center of the community. In every community, it’s the heart,” she said. “It’s also where you find a lot of historical data.”
Church anniversary booklets can go back decades and often include names of parishioners, pastors and early members, which can be a good source for genealogical research, Luck-Brimmer said.
“A lot of the churches — the ones that didn’t burn, because it seems like all of our historical Black churches mysteriously burned at one point or another — had a church historian who wrote up everything,” she said.
Because churches were so prominent in these communities, almost all of the interviews for the documentary are filmed in a church space. Many of the screenings will be held at neighborhood churches, too, Luck-Brimmer said.
The documentary features each of the churches across the three neighborhoods, as well as early schools for Black students that were housed in the churches.
As genealogists, Luck-Brimmer and Burney “tell not only the community history, but the family histories and how everything connects,” Luck-Brimmer said.
Plus, Burney has a background in storytelling. She was the Danville Register & Bee’s first Black reporter in 1975.
She’s featured in the documentary speaking about the White Rock neighborhood, and Luck-Brimmer narrates throughout the film.
The film ended up being about 75 minutes, Luck-Brimmer said, though there was enough content for a much longer run time.
“It had to be scaled down so much and a lot was edited and cut out to keep it a watchable length,” she said. “We would like to eventually go back and make some additions, maybe throw in some more pictures, or maybe do a part two.”
Eventually, Luck-Brimmer and Burney would like folks to be able to watch the documentary at home via streaming, they said, and they’re also interested in submitting it for film festivals.
But right now, they’re focused on community screenings and potentially virtual screening opportunities so that folks who live outside of the area can view it, Burney said.
Memories of stores and churches and neighbors who became famous
Camp Grove, Crooktown and White Rock were originally part of Pittsylvania County, Luck-Brimmer explains in the documentary. Much of North Danville was annexed by the city in the late 1800s, but these neighborhoods were added later, throughout the 20th century.
Residents of Camp Grove, which remained part of Pittsylvania County until 1987, talked about the neighborhood’s churches, stores and prominent figures in the documentary.
“I always said that if a robber came to our community on a Sunday, they could clean up, because everyone was at one of the churches,” said Dorothy Moore-Batson, who grew up in Camp Grove.
Camp Grove, like many other Black neighborhoods during segregation, was self-sufficient, she said.
“We didn’t have to leave the community for food,” she said. “There were that many stores.”
Joyce Glaise, one of only three women to have ever served on Danville’s city council, hailed from Camp Grove. She was a council member from 1988 to 2000.
Residents of Crooktown talked about memorable figures from their neighborhood in the documentary, too.
Wendell Scott Sr., a trailblazing stock car racer and the first Black man to win a NASCAR race, hailed from Crooktown. Neighbors recalled the loud noises of his racecar starting up in his garage.
They also spoke of Kenny Lewis, who played football for the New York Jets and was raised in Crooktown.
Several residents shared stories they’d heard about where the neighborhood got its name.
One resident said that he was told that, back in the horse and buggy days, it was difficult to travel through the neighborhood because all the roads were crooked. Another resident said he heard that a man with a crooked leg used to live there.
Each of the residents who spoke shared fond memories of the churches, locally owned stores, schools and community atmosphere.
White Rock residents also recalled local businesses and entrepreneurs. The community was home to barbers, grocers, blacksmiths, restaurateurs, teachers and pastors, Luck-Brimmer said in the narration.
Unlike the other neighborhoods, White Rock only has one church, White Rock Baptist Church, which was founded in 1901. It’s the only church in the White Rock community, and it was established by residents seeking a worship place, Burney said.
Residents shared memories about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. visiting their neighborhood in 1963, when he came to Danville during the city’s civil rights movement.
King stayed with families during his visits, because hotels and lodging in Danville were segregated, residents said.
“Young people in the community today, they might not remember a lot of these stories, so we wanted to talk about them,” Burney said.
Luck-Brimmer said that she’d like to do similar projects featuring other generations from these neighborhoods. Talking to the community elders was a priority, though.
“They’re our library, and we’re losing our library,” she said. “It’s important to preserve these stories for the younger generation so they know who they are and where they came from.”