The community rallying to preserve and honor a significant piece of history has been truly gratifying. - Viola Baskerville

In those days, for young black girls, there was the choice of singing in the choir, playing an instrument, (dancing) or girl scouting. I couldn’t dance, I was already taking piano lessons and singing in the choir, so girl-scouting fit right in.

With this initiative, I’m still working for the public good but in a volunteer position, rather than in an elected position. The work still requires listening and responding to others and engaging them and leveraging their energies to get things done.

Everybody was looking at you, so that if you didn’t do things just right, you were somehow speaking for a whole race of people.