THE EDWIN WASHINGTON PROJECT
26128 Talamore Drive, South Riding, Virginia 20152
www.edwinwashigntonproject.org 703-8672056
10/17/2017
Dear Al,
Thanks for your support for our project. I’d like to request your support again, for more
funds and for suggestions on additional donors.
Any contribution will be appreciated; but this go around, I am asking you to consider
supporting either of two very important aspects of our project.
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Completing the acquisition of archival boxes and folders. $2,000.
Supporting our acquisition of Past Perfect software and related equipment,
which will enable anyone remote access to our files. This is very important so
that family members, now spread about the nation, will not be forced to come to
Loudoun to learn of their ancestors. Academics will also find this tool very useful.
$3,700.
In addition, we are examining all of the old schools, which requires a lot of gas.
Records directly related to “colored” schools in Loudoun are in the archives of
Swarthmore in Pennsylvania, the Library of Virginia and at Virginia State University. We
plan to do each of those trips, operating under US government per diem rules. We also
need to continue digital preservation of all of the records so that if a fire ever happened,
this history will never be lost.
2017 was a very busy year. Thanks to your initial contribution, which we have kept
anonymous, we have been using a ScanSnap scanner, which has enabled us to make
significant progress scanning records. We anticipate completing that project in 2018.
We also began identifying which textbooks were used in “colored” and white schools,
briefed many communities in Loudoun and have begun an analysis of the impact of
segregated education on African-Americans. In addition, we interviewed many people
who either taught or studied in the “colored” schools and have made much progress
identifying where the schools were, which is not always clear from the records. This