The history of the B.F. Yancey School Community Center building spans more than six decades. The building was a segregated school until 1967, when it became a desegregated Albemarle County Elementary School. In 2019, The Yancey Community Center opened its doors, and since then it has offered countless opportunities to area residents.
Yancey Community Center Program Coordinator Ed Brooks knows the impact the building has had on the Esmont community: His mother attended the segregated school, and his three children recently graduated from its elementary. Now he helps organize and run the dozens of programs and opportunities available, including those that focus on the center itself, such as the current exhibit about the building and community’s history, “African American Education in Esmont: Making a Way Out of No Way.”
The programs and resources available at Yancey Community Center include yoga classes, a food pantry, a community garden, and a basketball court, and it partners with agencies ranging from Piedmont Virginia Community College and the Jefferson Area Board for Aging to the Blue Ridge Health District and Friends of Esmont to provide even more.
Thanks to the many new services and opportunities at the center, “I think people are beginning to now say, ‘Wow, the county is really stepping up this game to provide equal services to the urban ring residents as well as to the rural,’” Brooks says. “It has meant a lot in terms of helping people to think of themselves as full-fledged county citizens.”