Browse Items (216 total)

Local basketball star, Ralph Sampson, Jr. (#50), played for the University of Virginia against James Madison University in this December game. Sampson attended Harrisonburg High School and became the area’s premier sports legend, appearing on the…

Donna Budd dribbles the basketball down the court during a game. The first female All-American at Madison College was Katherine Johnson who graduated in 1977. Johnson was later was inducted into the JMU Sports Hall of Fame in 1988.

Co-captains of the cheerleading squad pose for a picture.

An image from the 1917 issue of the School Ma’am yearbook demonstrates racial insensitivity on campus. With the caption, “A Dark Night at the Normal,” white students have donned ‘blackface.’ Blackface has been critiqued for contributing to the…

A cartoon depiction, titled “The Doors of the Dorms,” utilized racial language and a negative portrayal of university black employees.

Bryan Moore is playing football here for the James Madison Dukes. The campus football team was established 8 years prior, in 1972. During Moore’s stint at JMU, the university made the jump from the NCAA Division III to the NCAA Division I-AA.

This item is a 19th Century poem about slavery, written by an unknown author, presumably a slave themselves. The writer recounts the life of a slave in Tenth Legion, an area in northern Rockingham County, that they describe as “a braggy place, where…

Used for a black recruitment brochure, a JMU student poses for a picture reading The Breeze on the Quad. The Quad has often been a location where many JMU students and even Harrisonburg residents take the opportunity to enjoy the weather on a warm…

Music and performing have always been vital in the community. Here, a JMU student belts out a song on stage complete with backup dancers.

Male and female students in the JMU Black Choir walk and sing together. The choir, and other African American organizations on campus, worked together to create a support system of sorts for minority students adjusting to life on campus.