While the museum gallery’s perimeter focuses on the civil rights movement, contextualizing the Calfee Training School story, its center space is occupied by a multi-media projection space where the stories of the school’s legal challenges, struggles, and victories are told.

The museum experience not only occupies a gallery space within the former school, it is also found activating other interior spaces of the building, the grounds outside the building, as well as significant sites around the community.

Calfee Community and Cultural Center

The institution that came to be known as the Calfee Training School first opened its doors in southwest Virginia as a school for African American children in 1894. After years of Civil Rights activism and struggle, the public school system was required to desegregate by 1966, and the Calfee Training School was forced to close. Inspired by the legacy of Calfee School, today the Calfee Community and Cultural Center (CCCC) is committed to honoring the school’s rich past, meeting the community’s current needs, and creating a stronger future for Pulaski County.

Quatrefoil has been honored to create a master plan for the project. A central pillar of the facility will be the African American Heritage Center at Calfee (AAHCC) – a dynamic and interactive museum that tells the story of the Calfee Training School, the vibrant community it helped to sustain, and the nationally resonant struggle for equality at the heart of its history.