Samuel Wilson Crump (Photo courtesy the Crump family)
Samuel Wilson Crump, one of Virginia’s first African American officials elected to public office under the state's 1902 constitution, will be honored Wednesday, Jan. 15, with a historical highway marker at the New Kent County courthouse.
The marker is being erected to spread awareness of Crump’s accomplishments during his time in office and the influence he continues to have on New Kent.
County Administrator Rodney Hathaway says he hopes that, after seeing the marker, people will hold that same kind of appreciation for Crump that he does.
“I hope everyone gets to read a little and learn a little about his and New Kent’s history,” says Hathaway, the first African American to serve as county administrator in New Kent. “Personally, I’m extremely grateful. He’s opened so many doors for me and people like me to be a part of New Kent County’s community.”
Crump was born in 1919 and attended Virginia Union University, Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) and the Richmond Technical Center, building a reputation as a scholar. Soon after, Crump went overseas to fight in World War II. Back in Virginia, he began a 44-year career at Newport News Shipbuilding.
In 1955, Crump became the New Kent County Board of Supervisors' first African American member.
For many, his decision to come back to New Kent after the war signaled an awareness that he was needed in his home community. Board of Supervisors member Patricia Paige, the first African American woman to serve on the board, sees Crump's return as a sign of his character and devotion to New Kent.
“I believe he came back because there was a calling to him to come home and he truly believed there was more work to be done,” Paige says. “Myself, I never wanted to live anywhere other than New Kent, and I think he felt the same way, saw that there was work to be done, and came home.”
Paige, who was a young girl during Crump's time on the board, saw his strength and courage as a significant reason why she would eventually follow in his footsteps and run for office more than 50 years later.
The historical marker states that Crump's electoral victory in 1955 “followed a countywide effort to increase the number of qualified voters.” After initial advances for African Americans during Reconstruction in the latter 1800s, Virginia disenfranchised the vast majority of black voters with its 1902 constitution.
Crump's 12 years on the New Kent board coincided with Virginia's Massive Resistance to school desegregation, a policy the state adopted in 1956, and the historical marker notes that he often provided the lone vote against measures designed to maintain separate schools for black and white students.
Crump himself recalled in an article published March 17, 1990, in the Daily Press that he walked out of the 1958 inauguration of Gov. J. Lindsay Almond after Almond denounced the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that racially segregated schools are unconstitutional.
“I was stunned. I arose from my seat, stood momentarily in full view of those who would look my way, then walked out, slowly,” Crump wrote, noting that he was "sitting in the midst of white faces."
“Perhaps I did not walk as erectly as I normally do, for I was carrying upon my shoulders the weight of every black citizen of the Commonwealth. Conspicuously, Afro-Americans were absent. I was there seemingly alone."
Without using Crump's name, a news report at the time stated, ‘The lone Negro in the bleachers stood and walked out during the gubernatorial address,” according to his article.
Though he must have seen moments like these as setbacks, Crump did not give up easily. In the same article, he tells about returning to the Virginia State Capitol 32 years later on Jan. 13, 1990, to witness the inauguration of L. Douglas Wilder, the first African American to be elected governor in the United States. Hathaway and Paige both see Crump, who died Dec. 26, 1995, as the gold standard for public service.
“Because of him and people like him, I know it’s not just my accomplishment that got me to where I am,” Hathaway says. “I definitely stand on the shoulders of those who came before me, including Samuel Crump.”
The dedication ceremony for the marker begins at 1 p.m., at the sign’s location at the New Kent County Courthouse in the village of New Kent.
