Resilience Amid Resistance

Creating a student-led exhibition

Thursday, June 19, 2025, 7 pm

With Beau Dickenson and Members of the Student Exhibition Team

Join this event to meet the students and mentors who created the current featured exhibition: Resilience Amid Resistance. Hear about the students’ work to become public historians and exhibition designers—work that included museum visits, primary source conversations, and archival research.

Along the way, the students discovered the brave people—also, students—who wanted better learning conditions, sparked the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case, fought with resilience against Virginia’s policy of Massive Resistance against school integration, and finally integrated classrooms.

The program is presented on the first day of Civics Season (Juneteenth-July 4th) to promote history and encourage civic engagement. In recognition of the importance of civics in education, entrance to the Rocktown History museum will be “Pay As You Can” from June 3 to July 5, 2025.

Beau Dickenson is the Social Studies Coordinator for Rockingham County Public Schools. Dickenson and his colleague Owen Longacre, a Spotswood High School Social Studies teacher, created the Farmville Tour Guides Project in 2015. In addition to the current featured exhibition, FTGP students also created the Knocking Down Walls documentary in 2023 and designed and established the new Resilience Amid Resistance historic marker in Harrisonburg in 2025.