"Colored" Troops...

[rayezell_2000]

Scouting amongst the black community in the years immediately after the incorporation of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) in 1910 has been an under-explored topic. In many instances there has been a general assumption that black youth did not or were not allowed to participate in the movement (until many, many years later) that billed itself as the premier youth development organization in the world. While Scouting certainly helped to promote character development and citizenship in the lives of millions of mostly white youth in the decades before World War II, its impact in the black community is much less understood and poorly documented. This essay, while certainly not comprehensive, attempts to shed more light on how Scouting was implemented among black communities in its early decades across central Virginia. READ THE ESSAY HERE....