In dedicating the Rock House, we honor Charles Holt and countless others, black women and men who prevailed against a system designed to crush them . . . like its builder, Rock House is once again rock solid. 

Julian Bond, April 18, 2006

 

In 1926, the year that Charlottesville opened its new segregated facilities – Jefferson High School and Booker T. Washington Park – Charles B. Holt engraved his name in the concrete steps to his new home to commemorate its completion.  Holt, a carpenter and umbrella repairman, was an African American, the son of a slave.  He was born in 1872, less than a decade after emancipation and a few years before the enactment of the Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised blacks and segregated the South.  Building the house of rock required hard work, vision, and sacrifice – it was a remarkable personal achievement.

The Rock House later became home to Asalie Minor Preston, an African American schoolteacher.  Along with her sisters, she endowed the Minor-Preston Educational Fund, which annually provides more than $150,000 in scholarships for students in the Charlottesville community.