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A new research center dedicated to African American history in the Danville region is on its way to a physical home. Ressie Luck-Brimmer, a local genealogist and historian, is rehabilitating a historic house on Holbrook Street — located in a historically Black Danville neighborhood — to house the Danville Research Center for African American History, according to Cardinal News.
Luck-Brimmer founded the center roughly five years ago, but it has operated without a fixed location since then. The Holbrook Street property will give it a public-facing presence for the first time.
The facility is designed as a one-stop resource for genealogical records, donated artifacts, and rotating gallery exhibits covering Danville, Pittsylvania County, and Caswell County. Luck-Brimmer told Cardinal News she can trace connections across nearly every African American family in that three-county area through her existing database.
Her basement currently stores donated historical artifacts. Those will move to the new space. The plan also calls for a small gallery with changing exhibits — not a static display.
Danville has no standalone African American history museum. An exhibit covering the city's 1963 civil rights movement exists within the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History — assembled by Luck-Brimmer and fellow historian Emma Edmunds before Edmunds died in 2020. The research center will effectively double as the museum the city currently lacks.
Sonja Ingram, executive director of the Fine Arts and History Museum, told Cardinal News that Black history materials are frequently scattered across private collections. When families move or elders pass away, oral histories and documents disappear. A permanent institution, she said, could anchor preservation efforts and support further collection of photographs, records, and community landmarks.
Luck-Brimmer also frames the center in practical terms. She is regularly contacted by city officials seeking historical data to support grant applications for infrastructure and development projects. Black history documentation, she told Cardinal News, directly feeds economic development work across the region. The volume of weekly requests she fields reflects how urgently that data is needed.
The push to preserve African American records extends beyond Danville. On August 31, 2026, the William & Mary Bray School Lab is hosting a free online event via Zoom featuring the Library of Virginia's ongoing project, Virginia Untold: The African American Narrative. That project is digitizing records documenting the lived experiences of enslaved and free Black and multiracial Virginians. Registration is open to the public.
The Holbrook Street rehabilitation is ongoing. No opening date has been announced, per Cardinal News reporting.
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Danville Genealogist Moves Decades of Black History Research Into a Permanent Home – theroanokestar.com
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