The Buckingham County School Board scored a perfect 100 with its decision last week to name the location of the Buckingham County Primary and Elementary Schools The Carter G. Woodson Education Complex.

That is a straight A choice.

Full credit to the School Board and also the many, many Buckingham County citizens who so persuasively urged the School Board to honor of Dr. Woodson-the Father of Black History, who was born in Buckingham County's New Canton area in 1875-with such a naming.

A wonderful decision, it allows Buckingham County to join the dozens of other cities and towns around the United States of America who have named schools, campuses, libraries and educational buildings in honor of Dr. Woodson, the son of former slaves who would earn a doctorate from Harvard and was renowned as a historian, author and educator.

Naming the location of both schools The Carter G. Woodson Education Complex is actually better than naming one of the two schools in his honor, embracing every classroom in both schools in Dr. Woodson's name, recognition that is so deeply deserved.

Though there are so many localities from sea to shining sea that have raised Carter G. Woodson's name high, this decision in his native county of Buckingham will resonate most deeply of all.

Think of the young people of Buckingham County who will attend school during those powerfully formative and foundational grades K-5 years of their lives at The Carter G. Woodson Education Complex. Ponder on what that sign will tell them each day.

Life is so full of obstacles, nightmares and negativity, teeming with temptations to accept failure or mediocrity, naysayers bombarding young minds with reasons why their dreams will not and cannot come true and reasons why they should not even bother to dream about dreams coming true, or dream of anything at all.

But life is equally full of solutions, the profoundly positive, electric with signs pointing young minds toward ways and means to make their dreams come true. Not just little dreams, but large dreams too.

The sign that says The Carter G. Woodson Education Complex will be one of those signs, perhaps the most important such signage for young people in Buckingham County. To amplify a previous editorial supporting such an honor for Dr. Woodson, each day the young people of Buckingham County will look and see that name. A name that will emphatically tell them that they can be born in Buckingham, they can be raised in Buckingham, they can go to school in Buckingham and then they can go and change the world in ways that make this world a better place for everyone.

The Carter G. Woodson Education Complex spells out this message to the county's children: the sky is the limit, there are no chains that can bind you, your future is what you make of it and we, the people of Buckingham County, believe in you and want, so very much, for you to believe in yourself.

The sign will be a symbol that speaks the truth.

A reverberating symbol that can drumbeat that truth of self-worth in every child's heart.

Beautiful.

-JKW-