Luther H. Foster High School

This school, built at a cost of more than $600,000, provided secondary education to Black students from 1950 until 1970, when Nottoway County fully desegregated its schools. Although planning for the new high school had begun by 1946, the county proceeded with urgency in 1948 after a federal court ruled for the plaintiffs in equalization lawsuits elsewhere in VA. The school was named for Halifax County native Dr. Luther Hilton Foster (1888-1949), a nationally known figure in Black higher education and former president of what is now Virginia State University. Despite racial discrimination, many graduates became educators, attorneys, physicians, civil servants, and military service members.