Cainan Townsend, director of education and public programs at the Robert Russa Moton Museum and Farmville 701 District Prince Edward County School Board representative, was announced by Gov. Terry McAuliffe to be appointed to the Task Force for the Identification of the History of Formerly Enslaved African Americans in Virginia.

He said the task force is comprised of private citizens, historians, delegates and state senators.

“It’s really designed to tap into some of lesser tapped into history,” Townsend said.

He said it’s focusing on history of enslaved Africans and African-American history in Virginia.

“A lot of that is going to be used, hopefully be used toward the 2019 commemoration,” Townsend said, “2019 is the 400th anniversary of 1619 which was the arrival of enslaved Africans to the colonies as well as women to the colonies so it’s going to be a whole big celebration next year.”

He said the task force’s job is to compile research and put things together in ways that hasn’t been done for historic sites in Virginia before.

“The way I got involved, so you can apply to serve on a board of commission for the governor which everybody has to do if they’re interested,” Townsend said. “I just kind of have been chatting with some folks about interest and they encouraged me to apply and I did and they asked if I was interested in this and I said absolutely.”

He said his role is going to be on the tourism side of things “so figuring out how to market sites in Virginia that have been less than marketed, how to get these groups to collaborate to maximize the experience of people who are visiting Virginia and really just to market Virginia as the African-American history kind of state just because so many things happened here in Virginia and we can just do a better way of marketing ourselves.”

He said it’d be great for Moton because the task force is working closely with the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, “which is a group we have a pretty good relationship with thus far but this will definitely solidify that.”

“It’s good to know that people from Moton have kind of a seat at the table when we’re talking about history,” he said, “when we’re talking about Virginian history in the Civil Rights and African-American history, you know, Moton is becoming what people say in their first breath if not their second.”