Former Diggs Chapel student tries to preserve school's memory

Posted to: Chesapeake Clipper Community News

By James Thomas Jr.

Correspondent

hickory

Amid the grass, shrubs and trees on a patch of land in Hickory stood a building that wasn�t quite a church, but not a school, either. Yet it served as both until it was consumed by fire.

Nothing remains of the building. Under most circumstances, its history � and its significance to the black community it served � would remain forever buried.

But the little one-room schoolhouse that also served as a place of worship has a champion. If Bessie J. Blount, a former student, has her way, the memory of the school will be preserved for future generations. The Chesapeake native may be the last living soul with historical data on the Diggs Chapel Elementary School in the Hickory section of the city before 1913.

The school was built by black church members at the end of the Civil War to educate the children of freedmen, ex-slaves and Native Americans.

At 93, Blount boarded a bus alone in Philadelphia with an extra suitcase filled with documents and correspondence from Norfolk school officials that she had accumulated over the years about the Diggs Chapel School.

She was back in Chesapeake from her New Jersey home to acquire property to build a museum and library to commemorate the one-room schoolhouse and her lifetime contributions.

It�s been nearly 10 years since her last visit to the school site at Benefit and Eason roads in Hickory. The land, now owned by the Southern Chesapeake Athletic Association, is wooded and undeveloped. No monument or road marker is in place to show that the school ever existed, but just revisiting the old site stirred emotions in Blount.

�My mother (Mary E. Griffin) attended the school here from 1907 �til 1913,� she said. �When Mama went to school she used a stylus and slate. They used their sleeves to erase the writing.

�When I attended the school (1920s), black kids didn�t have textbooks. We later got them from the white schools. But each child would read a verse out of the Bible. That�s how we first learned to read.�

The school was named after �Rev. Diggs, a Methodist minister � I never knew his first name,� recalled Blount. �Church services were held there. That�s why it was called a chapel.�

Blount pointed out an adjacent weed-ridden lot where an old churchyard cemetery exists that was once part of the Diggs Church property. The church was never actually built, she noted, but the cemetery had been in use until the mid-20th century.

In 1913, the school became a part of the then-Norfolk County Public School System. It was destroyed by fire about 1932, and its 95 students sent to other segregated schools in the area, Blount explained. But neither the Norfolk nor Chesapeake school systems can find records prior to 1913.

Clyde Sorey, 81, whose property abuts the Diggs Church cemetery, remembers when the old school existed. His family also figured in the establishment of the adjacent church property.

About 1903 �my wife�s grandmother gave a tract of land to build the church on,� said Sorey. �They were looking to buy it, but (she) told them, if you�re gonna build a church, I�ll give it to you.�

Sorey led Blount on a tour of the churchyard cemetery where headstones of former church members date back to the late 19th century.

Blount had returned to the school site shortly after the fire and retrieved a brick and charred piece of wood that �I picked up and kept as souvenirs,� she said. �I have them at home in my trunk.�

Blount has compiled the names of former teachers and principals at the school. She particularly remembers Carrie Nimmo, a teacher �who beat me on my knuckles for writing with my left hand,� Blount recalled.

It was the discipline of that stern taskmaster, however, that inspired Blount to teach herself to write with her teeth and feet and established the framework of her international career.

�I figured if it was wrong to write with my left hand, then it was wrong to write with my right hand,� she said.

Blount became a physical therapist and taught the skill to war amputees and other severely wounded soldiers during WWII. She also patented an electrical device to enable amputees to feed themselves and was credited with providing them with a sense of independence and dignity.

Blount�s career covers a lifetime of both achievements and disappointments. As a nurse and physical therapist, she cared for and worked closely with Theodore Edison, son of famed inventor Thomas Edison. She invented several devices to improve the lives of disabled war vets, but found no support from the United States Veteran�s Administration.

She eventually gave the patent rights to the French government in 1952 and remarked that it proved that �a black woman can invent something for the benefit of humankind.�

Blount has conducted forensic science research for police departments in New Jersey and Virginia and became chief document examiner for the Norfolk and Portsmouth police departments. She also trained and worked at Scotland Yard, England, where she was affectionately known as Mama Bessie.

She plans to build a library and museum on the Eastern Shore that features the Diggs Chapel Elementary School and her life�s work. Financing must still be worked out, but an Accomack County landowner has donated two and a half acres for her to build on. The school would be the centerpiece for the building.

�This will be a place for your children, grandchildren and future generations to come and see what it was like for slave children right after the Civil War,� said Blount. She also plans to contact state and local government officials to have a roadside marker erected on the shoulder of the road near the site where the school once stood in Hickory.

�I want the Virginia education system to list these things, put them down, the facts of how the school was started. There�s no reason these things should be lost from history,� she said.

Despite her vintage years, Blount doesn�t show signs of slowing down. She is booked to appear on a college radio program upon returning to her home in Newfield, N.J., and vows to continue working to honor her Diggs Chapel Elementary School.

�A lot of people thought I was dead already. But I ain�t gonna die now,� said Blount. �I�m gonna live just for spite. 'Cause my work is not done.�

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James Thomas Jr. or [email protected]