Edith Heard
Photo courtesy: Edith Heard
Ms. Edith Heard
Oral History
"John D. Rockefeller’s wife wanted to build a school for the Black kids, a better school. So they traded land, so the Bruton Heights that you know of - that’s over there on, across the tracks - was the land that Colonial Williamsburg gave to James City County/Williamsburg for a school for Blacks. And it was a state-of-the-art school."
Heard, Edith, 5.3.06.mp3Interview with Ms. Edith Marie Kearney Heard | Conducted by Daniel Sumerlin and Katherine Stubbs | May 3, 2006 | Williamsburg Documentary Project Collection | Special Collections Research Center | William & Mary Libraries
Heard-Edith-2019-08-03.mp3Interview with Ms. Edith Heard | Conducted by The Village Initiative | August 3, 2019 | The Village Initiative Collection
Oral History
“All of our teachers told us that we must go to college, that we had to have an education and that it was important. And they also made sure that places like Hampton University, Tuskegee, Meharry, Tennessee State, all these schools, were forever mentioned to you. The historical Black colleges. Howard, and Howard was the place you wanted to be if you wanted to be a doctor. And so, everybody, they made us feel that if we got the education, that we were much better than white people. And I grew up believing that.”
Community Forum
Ms. Edith Heard participated in a community forum hosted by The Village Initiative on September 21, 2019, titled Integration: Then and Now. The forum marked the 50th anniversary of school integration in the WJCC School District. The multi-generational set of panelists - Ms. Edith "Cookie" Heard, Mrs. Sylvia Willis, Mrs. Janice Canaday, Mr. Philip Canady, and Ms. Xavia Carter - were asked to reflect on the experiences of integration and its continuing implications for future generations.