As originally broadcast August 26, 2026, on Blue Ridge PBS …
There is a mythological African bird called the Sankofa, whose body faces forward with its head turned back. The significance: in order to know where we are going, we have to know where we have been. Such a place is rising, like that other mythological bird the Phoenix, in the southwestern Virginia town of Pulaski at a place called Calfee.
For more than 70 years, from 1894 to 1966, the Calfee Training School was the only educational institution available for African-Americans during the days of Jim Crow segregation. Shuttered in 1966 once desegregation finally took hold, Calfee served a variety of purposes over the next 40 years. But by the early 2000s Calfee stood derelict and nearly forgotten, seemingly stuck looking in the past. How it kept moving forward is the story we’re honored to share on today’s episode of BUZZ.
We thank Wordsprint, http://wordsprint.com, for providing the pro bono marketing “buzz” for this episode, and 100+ Women Who Care of the New River Valley for underwriting our production.