Chapter 3: Education & Public Programming
3.1 K-12 Education
3.2 Higher Education
3.3 Youth Engagement Internship Opportunity
3.4 Establish a Walking Tour of Malden
3.5 Other Tours and African American History Bus Tours
3.6 Black History Month Event
3.1 K-12 Education
Bringing Malden's History to the Classroom
Malden has a history of meaningful K-12 engagement that is worth building on. In the 1980s and 1990s, students toured the town, sang at the African Zion Baptist Church, and served as docents for community tours themselves. They produced Malden pamphlets and participated in programming that made them active stewards of local history rather than just passive recipients of it. That tradition is being revived and expanded.
Current programming already demonstrates what is possible. Local homeschool groups, public school classrooms, and summer camp groups are touring Malden, starting at the African Zion Baptist Church, and stopping at the Kanawha Salines Presbyterian Church (c. 1840) for lunch before continuing to J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works for a hands-on salt-making demonstration and museum tour. Some of these visits are being paired with classroom readings of Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery, connecting students to one of American history's most significant figures through his own hometown. Second-grade classes at Malden Elementary have also received readings of local author Kimberli Milhoan's children's book, Maddie Goes to Malden, about Malden's historic houses, delivered in conjunction with lessons about the writing and publishing process. These are the kinds of layered, place-based experiences that make local history stick.
Informal conversations are already underway with a history teacher at DuPont Middle School, staff at Malden Elementary School, charter schools, and local Girl Scouts troops about deeper programming partnerships. The goal is to formalize those relationships into recurring field experiences, classroom visits, and curriculum connections that give Kanawha County students consistent access to Malden's history.
The anticipated opening of Country Roads Elementary in 2028 makes this work urgent. Students consolidating into the new school will come from areas without an existing connection to Malden and its history. Establishing programming now and deepening it before the transition ensures that the next generation of students understands the significance of the village they will be growing up near and has a reason to care about its preservation. These are the kids who will be the future members of Friends of Malden Village.
In May of 2026 alone, Friends of Malden Village had four elementary school classes take free tours of the African Zion Baptist Church, showing our commitment to the youth of the Kanawha Valley. We have many more scheduled in the following months.
Some of our youth tours in 2026
3.2 Higher Education
Malden as a Living Classroom
Friends of Malden Village is pursuing a partnership with West Virginia State University to establish college-level coursework offered in Malden in historic preservation, archaeology, and the history of the Upper Kanawha Valley. The neighborhood's density of documented historic structures, its archaeological significance, and its direct connections to state and national history make it an ideal setting for field-based academic programming. Bringing courses into the community rather than confining them to a campus puts students in direct contact with the material they are studying and creates a pipeline of trained, engaged young people with a personal investment in Malden's future. Conversations with WVSU are ongoing, and a formal proposal is in development.
WVSU has a demonstrated and ongoing commitment to Malden. WVSU stewards the Booker T. Washington complex of historic sites, including the African Zion Baptist Church (in progress), the cabin area, and Booker T. Washington Memorial Park. The university has conducted archaeological field schools on Malden properties in both 2023 and 2024, with students excavating the grounds of the Hale House, under the direction of Professor and Friends of Malden Village member Michael Workman, uncovering artifacts that have added materially to the historical record of the town.
As WVSU President Ericke Cage said at the conclusion of the 2023 field school, "West Virginia State University has a long history of supporting the community. We're proud to be stewards of this historic place” (Steelhammer, 2023).
3.3 Youth Engagement Internship Opportunity
In past years, the J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works has hosted interns who gained real-world experience in heritage preservation and cultural interpretation. That tradition of meaningful engagement is one worth carrying forward.
Friends of Malden Village sees an opportunity to develop a youth internship program that connects students with the living history of Malden. Whether through partnerships with local schools, colleges, or workforce development programs, internships in Malden could offer young people experience in areas such as historic preservation, nonprofit administration, community event planning, and heritage tourism. The Malden Village Green, the African Zion Baptist Church, the Booker T. Washington Heritage Trail, and other sites throughout the district provide a rich and varied backdrop for that kind of learning.
3.4 Establish a Walking Tour of Malden
Malden at Your Own Pace
Friends of Malden Village is installing a numbered signage system throughout the historic corridor that will allow visitors to explore Malden independently at any time, without a scheduled tour or a guide. Each numbered sign marks a significant property, site, or landmark and corresponds to interpretive information visitors can access on their own devices via QR code, including historical context, photographs, and connections to the broader stories of the salt industry, the Ruffner family, and Booker T. Washington's years in Malden.
The tour is grounded in attorney and local historian Larry L. Rowe's published "Old Malden" pamphlet, which documents the neighborhood's significant properties and their histories and has long served as the authoritative guide to the village. The self-guided format makes Malden accessible to visitors who arrive outside of programmed tour hours, to residents who want to explore on their own terms, and to groups who prefer a flexible pace. The numbered system also creates a natural framework for the trail passport concept described in the Booker T. Washington Heritage Trail section, giving younger visitors a structured reason to find each stop along the route. Maps will be available at key entry points and digitally for visitors planning ahead.
A tour pamphlet of Malden that is currently being updated
3.5 Other Tours and African American History Bus Tours
Malden as a Destination
Beyond the self-guided experience, Friends of Malden Village is developing a portfolio of guided tour offerings that bring Malden's history to life for a range of audiences. In 2026 alone, Friends of Malden Village has had tour groups from Pittsburgh, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, California, West Virginia, and more. One of these tours included a woman whose third great-grandmother was a slave in Malden. The story of Malden and its residents, especially Booker T. Washington, is far-reaching and interest is only increasing.
Walking tours of the historic neighborhood and its significant properties will be offered on a scheduled basis, led by knowledgeable community guides. Some of these tours follow the same corridor as the self-guided route but offer narrative depth, the ability to answer questions, and access to stories that do not fit neatly on a sign. Other tours will be of the African Zion Baptist church and the cabin replicas. The latter of the two can already be experienced today, offering an example of what the town can offer on a larger scale. In May of 2026, Friends of Malden Village provided a tour to a group from Ohio, who brought members of their local history group to Malden. One of the members even has ties to the area, with evidence that her third great-grandmother was a former slave in Malden. During this tour, a father and daughter from Michigan stopped by and got an impromptu tour of the property. Tourism is already beginning to increase in the area and we must keep up with the demand.
J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works already offers an established tour program that runs Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., late April through late November, with general tours at $5 per adult and free for children 12 and under, and experiential salt-making tours available at $18 per person by reservation (J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works, n.d.). These tours are a natural anchor for any visit to Malden and will be incorporated into broader itinerary recommendations for heritage tourists.
African American heritage bus tours represent a significant and underserved opportunity. Malden's history as the boyhood home of Booker T. Washington, the site of the first African American Baptist church in West Virginia, and a community where enslaved workers built an industry that fed a nation is a story with deep resonance for visitors traveling African American heritage tourism routes throughout the mid-Atlantic and Southeast. Coordinating with tour operators and heritage travel organizations to include Malden as a scheduled stop on regional bus tour itineraries would bring consistent, organized visitor traffic to the corridor and position the community within a well-established and growing tourism market.
Oral history collection is another priority. Malden's elderly residents carry firsthand knowledge of the neighborhood as it was, memories of families, businesses, events, and daily life that exist nowhere in any archive. Capturing those accounts through recorded oral history interviews preserves irreplaceable community knowledge, provides material for future exhibits and programming, and honors the people who lived through the chapters of Malden's more recent history. This work is time-sensitive. The sooner it begins, the more of our history can be saved.
3.6 Black History Month Event
In February 2026, Friends of Malden Village participated in Marshall University's Black History Centennial Celebration at the African Zion Baptist Church. Member and local historian Larry L. Rowe delivered a lecture on the life of Booker T. Washington, followed by a tour of J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works. The event also featured conductor Ollie Watts Davis and the University of Illinois Black Chorus, whose performance moved the audience to tears. It was an evening that honored the memories, lessons, and leaders of the past in the very place where so much of that history unfolded.
Ollie Watts Davis and the University of Illinois Black Chorus’s performance
Planning is already underway for a larger Black History Month event in 2027 that will incorporate local schools alongside adult learners, bringing children and community members of all ages together around Malden's role in African American history. The goal is to make this an annual tradition that grows in reach and depth each year, rooted in this community and open to the broader region.