Featured Grants
Long's Chapel
Long's Chapel Preservation Society
$7,500 awarded June 2007
On September 20, 2008, a new State Highway Marker was unveiled and ground broken for the restoration of Long’s Chapel on Fridley’s Gap Road, off Route 11, just north of Harrisonburg, Virginia.
Long’s Chapel--a church which also served as a one-room schoolhouse, and its cemetery--was the heart of the Zenda community of former slaves and free blacks, founded in Rockingham County just after the Civil War. Acquired by the county in a legal action against a former plantation owner, the property which became Zenda, was enlarged in 1869 by the anti-slavery Church of the United Brethren in Christ, which also hired a contractor, Jacob Long, to help build the church structure. Long is believed to have donated the money for construction materials, with labor provided by the freedmen. The building was completed in 1870. By 1900, there were17 families and 80 individuals in Zenda, or “Little Africa”, which thrived through the late 1920s, and where African Americans were able to own property, worship, marry, educate their children, and receive burial in a marked gravesite. Lucy Simms, a former slave and graduate of Hampton Institute, began her career here; she taught at Long’s chapel for two years and for the next 56 in Harrisonburg, becoming a life long advocate for African American public education. The school at Long’s Chapel closed in 1925.
The Long’s Chapel Preservation Society was founded by Alfred Jenkins, Jr. and his wife Robin in 2005. Two years later, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities funded a grant proposal from Mr. Jenkins; Dale MacAllister, the President of the Rockingham County Historical Society; and Nancy Bondurant Jones, author and historian, primarily to underwrite the printing and distribution of Ms. Jones’ book, Zenda: 1869-1930: An African American Community of Hope. Funds from the VFH grant would also go toward a workshop for teachers in October 2008, focusing on Zenda as well as other African American sites in Rockingham County and Harrisonburg.
The ceremony on September 20 was attended by members of the founding families of Zenda, some of whose ancestors (including a veteran of World War I) are buried in the Long’s Chapel churchyard, as well as residents of the surrounding community. A table displayed photos and documents relating to the history of the site and its founding families. Remarks were given by representatives of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, the United Brethren Church, Rockingham County, and the Virginia African American Heritage Program of the VFH as well as by Al Jenkins, Nancy Jones.
Learn more about Longs Chapel in the Virginia African American Heritage Database.
