More Than a “Pile of Rude Boards”: Space, Power, and the Ordeal of a Schoolhouse in the Reconstruction South

Abstract: This article examines architecture as material culture by offering a biography of one Reconstruction-era structure—the Holley School building in Lottsburg, Virginia—charting its life from beginning to end, from the studs to the furnishings. It describes the building not as an empty vessel filled by the students and teachers but as a structure that, with each alteration and with each material object placed inside, became deeply implicated in the contestation for social and political power in the rural South during Reconstruction. The Holley School building’s rise was in no way spontaneous or immediately achieved. Black residents of Lottsburg instead engaged in a hard-fought contest with white residents over land and costly supplies, over design, and over who, ultimately, would have control of the space over time. The article concludes that buildings like the Holley School—all the houses, churches, and schools built by freed communities during Reconstruction—should be understood as artifacts of a persistent struggle over material resources and the built environment that was at the heart of daily life in the rural South.