FRONT ROYAL — Before he died in 2003, civil right activist James Wilson Kilby had a vision for sharing his legacy.
Instrumental in the desegregation of Warren County High School in the 1950s, Kilby envisioned a memoir and a museum. The memoir, which he wrote with his daughter, Patricia Kilby-Robb, came out in 2000.
The James Wilson Kilby African American Museum and Education Center — the first African American history museum in the county — is located in the family home on Shenandoah Shores Road. It opened Saturday.
Curated by Kilby-Robb and created with help from her husband, Nathaniel Robb, the museum tells the story of her parents — James and Catherine Ausberry Kilby — through original documents, genealogical research, photos and artifacts.
James Kilby
James Kilby was born in 1917 in Madison County.
“They came from slavery and, after Emancipation, they became sharecroppers,” Kilby-Robb said of her ancestors. In the 1930s, James Kilby met Catherine Ausberry.
“Dad was smart. He had a car and he would drive teachers to the PTA meetings. At one PTA meeting, he met Mom. She was running for Miss Rappahannock — and she won,” said Kilby-Robb, the couple’s youngest daughter and the fourth of their five children.
Married in April 1941, the couple moved to the Happy Creek area of Warren County a few years later. Kilby partnered with two other men — Ruben Barbour and Thorl Jackson — to buy 100 acres on what is now Shenandoah Shores Road. The men split it three ways and Kilby, who did not want to farm someone else’s land, created a large homestead for his family while working at the Viscose plant.
“We didn’t know that you could go to the grocery story to get groceries,” laughed Kilby-Robb, adding that the family had fruit trees, a large vegetable garden, dairy cows, pigs and chickens. ”We had everything.”
The couple grew their family, welcoming James, John, Betty, Patricia and Gene over the years.
As the older children approached the age at which they would have to leave the Front Royal Colored School, located on Criser Road in what is now the Warren County Public Schools’ transportation building, their father became more and more frustrated with the educational opportunities available for his children.
Because schools were segregated and there were no schools in Warren County for Black children beyond the seventh grade, James Kilby Jr. attended a residential school in Manassas for his seventh grade year. Then he and his brother John Kilby were bussed to Berryville to school, Kilby-Robb recalled.
“Dad believed in equal education, he was not allowed to go to school full time. They were sharecroppers — they had to work to survive,” she said, adding that her father drew a line at having his daughters bussed for their education. “Dad had this protective nature of all of his children, Mom too, but when it came to the girls, he wanted to make sure that nothing happened to them. When my sister was ready to go, he said absolutely not. I’m not letting my daughter get on any bus to go anywhere.”
Filing a lawsuit
Ultimately Kilby along with other Black fathers in the county and with help from the NAACP, sued to desegregate Warren County High School in 1958.
Kilby-Robb’s older sister, Betty, was the lead plaintiff in the case.
“There had been other cases in Virginia … nothing was happening. Those schools were in litigation for a long time, but when we came along, we only had one high school in the county and because of that we were able to get a decision right away. We filed the petition in August and in September the judge declared that they had to admit us because it was the only school,” Betty Kilby said in an interview earlier this year.
Instead, Virginia Gov. J. Lindsay Almond shuttered the school under the state’s Massive Resistance laws.
As the Virginia Supreme Court weighed the legality of those laws, Warren County High School remained closed.
On Feb. 18, 1959 — three days before her 14th birthday, Betty Kilby, her older brothers and 18 other students entered Warren County High School for the first time.
“It’s etched in my mind forever,” said Betty Kilby of that first day. “The night before, shots were fired at the house. That set the tone for the next day.”
The family’s role in the civil rights movement is chronicled in a room dedicated to their father, complete with a collection of original documents.
The toll on the family was great.
“This window is where bullets came in,” said Kilby-Robb in the museum, adding that the family was subjected to threats, including a noose on the porch and a burning cross on the yard. “That’s how I will acknowledge those things.”
She added that she served as her father’s secretary as a young girl, attending meetings with him and taking notes.
“He was PTA president. He was chairman of the education committee for NAACP. And I was taking notes. The Front Royal Colored School gave me a good foundation,” she said.
“When he was negotiating, Dad was a humble man. He was a very religious man so all of his strength came from God. He had the faith. Never used profanity or raised his voice, but his voice was loud and clear in what he felt the needs of African Americans in this community were.”
She said that local officials agreed to build the high school for Black students, telling her father that they would not integrate Warren County High School.
Catherine Kilby
With her older siblings attending school in Washington, D.C. while the desegregation case was settled, Kilby-Robb and her mother grew close as they grieved their absence.
“I was aware of the pain. I was aware of the fact that we could not do what other children could do and that was to go to any school we wanted to. I always felt bad that my siblings had to leave me. I felt alone. My story is a little different from theirs,” said Kilby-Robb, who was about 10 at the time.
Despite that closeness, which continued with weekly visits until Catherine Kilby died at 101 in 2020, Kilby-Robb said there were things about which her mother refused to talk.
“She knew her ancestors. She knew about the plantation. She knew about slavery. She knew that we were half white. She had secrets she wanted to protect,” said Kilby-Robb, noting that her own DNA test indicated almost an equal split between Caucasian and Black genetics. “I want my kids to know everything so we’re having to research and dig deep and find out.”
A Deaconess at church for 77 years, Catherine Kilby was an avid collector of hats, which are on display at the museum.
“The hats are a part of Black culture. You did not go to church without wearing something over your head,” said Kilby-Robb, noting that some of her mother’s hats are 80-plus-years old. A museum room dedicated to her mother also includes comprehensive documents on Ausberry family genealogy.
Kilby-Robb, 76, worked in education at Washington, D.C. Public Schools from 1968 until her retirement as a school principal in 2000. A Howard University alum with a doctorate degree, she joined the Department of Education later that year and continues to work full time as an education program specialist.
Her educational background — and her husband’s artistic touch — was helpful in curating the museum, she said, noting that she wanted to emphasize culture and community.
“From Dad’s perspective, he wanted his grandchildren and great grandchildren, to know he existed,” she said, adding that the museum is also a reflection of her experience growing up in the Happy Creek community. “What I experienced was a two-parent loving family and having a community where I felt protected. We didn’t stray too far outside of this Happy Creek community. Back then, it was basically all African American. That’s where the culture came in. I learned a lot about how people survived and how they progressed. And you don’t look at what you can’t do. You learn how to do. You learn how to go to the next step. You learn how to make life better and be ethical and moral and just have a love for people. So I hope when people come here it will not only be a learning experience, but a feeling experience. People talk about healing, I want this to be that kind of place. I don’t want us to make the mistakes of the past.”
Happy Creek community
One area of the museum is dedicated to the Happy Creek community and the other families that were there in the 1940s — Barbour, Ashby-Jackson, Williams, Pines, Coleman, Fletcher, Baltimore, Robinson and Dean.
“It’s inviting the community and saying, ‘We told dad’s story. We told mom’s story.’ But we want every family to have their story. I have a special love for all of these people,” she said, noting that she hopes the families will share documents and memories with the museum.
Kilby-Robb credited the Afro-American History Association in The Plains with helping to train interns for the museum, two of whom are her grandchildren, Brandon Fletcher and Dayanna Robb.
“They took every document, organized it and put it into notebooks. All of our data is on a timeline and the next step is to make it virtual,” she said, adding that the interns had also produced films that will be shown in the museum. “They had a good time working together.”
Kilby-Robb said that while she loves sharing her family’s history, she is also interested in looking forward.
“What happened after slavery? What did we do after slavery? What did we do after Emancipation? What did we do after Jim Crow to bring us up to where we are now?” she said. “Our ancestors did not get caught up in the past, they got caught up in trying to make life better. I want to create something that God wants me to do. This was Dad’s mission and I think he would be so happy because we’re putting all the information together. His grandchildren will know.”
The museum is open by appointment only at this time. For information, email [email protected].
