Meadville Community Center

Meadville Community Center. Nathalie, Virginia. , The Mead Community Center is the realization of a dream of Caleb Robinson, who imagined an African American gathering place to enhance and educate the community. Professor Robinson was born in Jamaica in 1864 and graduated from Virginia Union University in Richmond. In 1893 he formed the McKinley Institute on land he purchased in the Meadville section of Halifax County. He imported Northern teachers to train African American girls in reading, writing, and industrial arts at the school. On his deathbed, Professor Robinson gave the land to the school's executive board. He had expressed to them his dream of an African American gathering place to enhance and educate the community, but at the time the community, but at the time, the community was relatively impoverished, and his idea lay dormant for a quarter of a century., Then, in 1975, three African American Baptist organizations (all of them members in the larger Banister, Staunton, and Sunnyside Baptist Association) joined with local leaders to charter the Meadville Community Center. Through determined community efforts, the present-day center was financed, built, and finally dedicated on October 10, 1978. Dr. Martin Luther King Sr. was the guest speaker at that occasion. The building left the Banister Baptist Association in debt by more than $90,000, but through sales and raffles, personal gifts, church assessments, and schoolchildren's pennies, the debt was paid in full, and the mortgage burned, in 1991., Today, the center, which seats 400-500 people, is a significant educational and community focal point, enriching the lives of residents of Halifax County and surrounding counties.