JAMES: Leesburg dates back to 1758, and that's when it became an incorporated town in Virginia.

And the story, of course, is the story of America.

It's a story of Virginia and the south.

CALEB: This is Oatlands Historic House and Gardens, an 1804 mansion that was originally a plantation.

Oatlands is probably one of the most important historic pieces of property in Leesburg.

One of our jobs at Oatlands is to understand how people lived back then, and of course the records of those people who are enslaved were not kept.

We've been researching that for ten years, and we found about 130 descendants, and for multiple years we have an event that brings the descendants of the enslaved here.

But one of the most important things we're doing this year is we're bringing the descendants of the enslavers and bringing them together.

So we're a balance between the history of the United States and the plantation, and events.

Our whole motto is to learn about history in order to inform a better future.

JAMES: The first stirrings against segregation started in the 1930s in Virginia and other parts of the south.

The Black community was very strong.

They would not accept separate treatment, and demanded equality, and really spoke for themselves on that.

The protests were at the Tally Ho theater where Black people had to go up and sit in the balcony, and so they protested there in the 1960s.

The Balch Library was constructed in 1922.

It was not desegregated until after the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

And when the town took over the library, one of the things that all of us were dedicated to was that this library would now be an inclusive library historically.

And we had a special obligation, we thought, to tell the Black history of, of this library.

The Balch Library is an archive that has collected written material, photographic material, oral histories.

We've got plantation records, and we actually have the protest signs in our archives.

CALEB: Leesburg's got many, many important messages for the United States, especially now.