by Larry Chowning –
At the Middlesex County Board of Supervisors (MCBS) annual planning meeting on Friday, Jan. 7, new board Chairman Lud Kimbrough created the Middlesex Historical Committee with the charge of making the county’s historic courthouse and grounds “to serve an educational function.”
“We need a historical committee charged with framing the context of what needs to be a part of this educational process,” he said. “We can make it distinctive and attractive so that it will bring people to the county and tell a more balanced story of our history.”
As the new chairman of the board of supervisors, he created the committee and appointed himself to be on the committee. “I will not be chairman, but I will serve on the committee,” he said.
The Middlesex County Historic Courthouse grounds have several military monuments, a monument to Dr. Percy Jones, ancient clerk’s office and jail buildings and the 1852 historic courthouse building. Inside the courthouse building are portraits and plaques dedicated to the accomplishments of mostly white males.
The only African American honored inside the courthouse is the late Josh Holmes, the first Black sheriff of Middlesex County, whose portrait hangs on the wall. Also, Oakes Landing Road is named in Holmes’ honor.
On the grounds, a state historical highway marker speaks to the Irene Morgan/Middlesex Sheriff Beverley Segar incident. Morgan became a pioneer in the American Civil Rights movement when she refused to move to the back of a Greyhound bus. Her fight for equality happened on July 16, 1944 on a bus in Saluda. She was jailed for not adhering to the law of moving to the back of the bus when a white person came and asked for her seat.
The case of Morgan vs. Virginia resulted in a federal Supreme Court decision that whereas the Virginia Jim Crow law enforcing African Americans to sit in the back of buses crossing state lines was unconstitutional.
nside the new Middlesex County Courthouse, Middlesex County’s ancient court records tell the county’s history through the ages and research of those records could well speak to the truth of how life was!
