History alumna restores name of local school and creates highway marker in honor of African American teacher

In an effort to promote the significance of local history and those who form it, Liberty University alumna Jennifer Thomson (’07) has worked in recent years to acknowledge the work of Susie G. Gibson, an African American woman whose work as a teacher and community activist during the World War II era helped create unity between the communities of Bedford County, Va.

After graduating in 2007 with her Bachelor of Science in History, Thomson began working at the Bedford Museum & Genealogical Library, about 30 minutes from Liberty’s campus. She currently serves as genealogical librarian, educational director, and public relations liaison. She has designed a summer children’s program called “Hands on Local History.”

In 2018, while researching notable women from Bedford County’s history, Thomson came across the name and work of Susie G. Gibson, who was a teacher from 1906-1926 and the supervisor of the county’s 29 Black schools through the Jeanes Foundation for 22 years. (The foundation supported educational and vocational programming for African Americans in rural communities from 1907 to the 1960s.) Following her death in 1949, a new Black high school was named after her in 1954.

“She was born in 1878, both of her parents were slaves, and yet almost all of her siblings could read and write and one of her sisters became a teacher too,” Thomson said. “She was this great bridge between the two races, and the people of the town had this really high respect for her.”

Despite Gibson’s admirable work and outspoken reverence she received from those she worked with, Thomson soon noticed that Gibson’s name had disappeared in multiple ways since her death. The Susie G. Gibson High School was renamed the Bedford Educational Center following its desegregation, and in doing research Thomson learn that Gibson’s grave could no longer be found.

“In 1970, the name came off the high school, and people have been fighting since then to get it put back on,” Thomson said. “I asked one of the ladies who work at the museum where Susie Gibson was buried, and when she said that we no longer know, I was shocked. There was a school named after her, she is a prominent woman in our history, and we don’t know where she’s buried? I thought, ‘With all of our research and so on, that’s inexcusable.’”

This began an effort by Thomson, alongside members of the local NAACP and Susie G. Gibson Alumni Association, to restore Gibson’s name to the school and locate her grave site. She also led the effort to create a highway marker for the school, a process she was familiar with from having established markers for other figures in local history.

In just two days, Thomson found the cemetery and site where Gibson was buried and is still working on putting a tombstone in place. In December 2019, Thomson’s application for the highway marker was approved. The Bedford County School Board met just a few months later, and a member of the alumni association proposed that they reinstate the name of the school, which at the time was called the Bedford Science and Technology Center.

“They can normally only seat maybe 20 people in the room, but there had to have been 50 people that day,” Thomson recalled. “Even though they hadn’t planned to actually vote then, they took the vote and voted unanimously to change the name of the school back. Here I am sitting on the front row, and I felt like I was in mission control at NASA after a landing. I was so excited.”

The school’s name was restored that night, 50 years to the month after Gibson’s name was removed. To this day, the Susie G. Gibson Science and Technology Center remains in the same buildings as it did in 1954 and remains one of the few places in Bedford County named after an African American. In a gesture of gratitude for her work, the alumni association named Thomson an honorary alumnus of Susie G. Gibson High School.

“I am very fortunate to be in a position to honor and promote the great work of Susie G. Gibson,” said Troy Doss, principal of the Susie G. Gibson Science and Technology Center. “It was her dedication to this community that led to establishing Susie G. Gibson High School. Jennifer has done an excellent job bringing the community together to help preserve her legacy.”

The school offers classes to county high school students in criminology, cosmetology, auto mechanics, JROTC, and early childhood development, among other fields.

Last June, a painting of Gibson and the sign with her name was officially unveiled at the school. A highway marker in front of the school will be unveiled in March. It will be the first marker in Bedford County to recognize an African American’s contributions.

“I was in the auditorium filled with almost all alumni of the high school as they did the presentation for the name unveiling, and I was crying the whole time,” Thomson said. “I looked around at the audience thinking, ‘My simple research (alongside others) and work helped this group of people accomplish something they’ve been trying to get done for 50 years.’”

Thomson said her time in Liberty’s Department of History helped her learn how to take her passion for local history to greater depths.

“I had so many great professors, some of whom are still teaching there,” she said. “I had a professor who would teach wearing costumes showing the period we were learning about, I had professors offer me books from their own libraries, and so on. They wanted us to be as excited about the material as they were. The way they taught is something I use now as I teach the kids at ‘Hands on Local History.’”

Thomson remains dedicated to her work of preserving local history and emphasizes the value of being invested and informed about the contributions of those who came before us.

“It’s important to learn those connections between where you (live) and the surprising things that have happened there,” she said. “It’s important to know those names and the legacy of these local people, no matter who they are. There are so many different cool things that are related to national history that have happened in Bedford County, but you also still want to know about the people who were the teachers or the mayors or anybody else.”