Two Lynchburg students recently became the first recipients of the Dunbar High School Legacy Fund scholarship, created to remember the school’s rich history and tight-knit community.
For 47 years, Dunbar helped provide the city’s black students opportunity and education.
Now the scholarship, established by Dunbar High School’s class of 1965, will help provide opportunity and education to Heritage High School grad Damian Booker and E.C. Glass High School grad Lewedwyn Kippur Taylor.
Booker, who will attend Hampden-Sydney College in the fall, and Taylor, who will attend Virginia Military Institute, will each receive $1,500.
Taylor, whose father went to Dunbar, said the receipt of the scholarship is important because it embodies Dunbar’s legacy.
“My dad went to Dunbar,” he said. “The scholarship, it stands for a lot.”
Hylan Hubbard, the fund’s founder and chairman of the scholarship selection committee, was a graduate of Dunbar’s class of 1965. He said he remembers the school as a special environment that gave many black students a chance.
Dunbar first opened in 1923 as a high school for black students and remained primarily black even after integration. Dunbar closed in 1970 after integration finally reached the Hill City. The school was demolished in 1979, much to the dismay of community members and alumni.
Hubbard said in the days of segregation, black students needed extra support and at Dunbar they got it.
“The school recruited the best educators they could find,” he said. “It really became sort of family. That history and all those sets of values, you know a lot of alumni appreciate that.”
Dunbar evokes a special sense of pride in alumni and community members with ties to the school — that, Hubbard said, is what scholarship is all about.
“What we’re looking for is students who reflect the essence,” he said, adding his committee wanted students with community involvement, academic achievement and a positive attitude.
The fund, which was first established in 2005, is administered through the Greater Lynchburg Community Trust. This year marks the first time scholarships have been given out. Hubbard said alumni and friends of the school donated the scholarship money. This year the committee received about 10 applications.
When Booker filled out his application, he said he knew there was a lot behind the scholarship and now he has a lot to live up to.
“I knew that Dunbar itself is a landmark or a pillar of Lynchburg and I knew it has a lot of history behind it,” he said.
“I feel like I just have to make sure I stay on the right path and do what I have to do and make sure I don’t let the scholarship committee down.”
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