He was “colored.”

Wyatt grew up in Charlottesville, in a society that didn’t allow him to sit in the front seat of the local street car or sip a soda at the drug-store fountain. “Negroes just took for granted that they were not welcome” in the “vast majority of first-class places,” he wrote in “A Different Story,” Ruth Coder Fitzgerald’s book about local black history.

Wyatt helped change those practices as a local activist and a member of the national board of the NAACP.

When city black students wanted a marching band, he helped them buy uniforms—and get a teacher. He pressed city officials to improve the black high school. He counseled young black students in the early 1960s, when they held sit-ins at local lunch counters.

Wyatt succeeded as a dentist, but those who knew him said he didn’t just make a living. He worked to make a life.

Our history
Click here to return to the index page, or navigate the profiles by clicking on the names below.
• Gabriel Prosser, inspired by the Bible • Noah Davis, freed his family • Fannie Richards ahead of her time	• John J. Wright devoted leader, reader • Walker-Grant, the men behind the school name • Buffalo soldiers, one earned highest military honor	• Urbane Bass, city doctor • Maddens of Culpeper, 'We were always free' • H.H. Poole, Stafford institution	• Sadie Combs, first teacher at Snell • Philip Wyatt, Soft-spoken activist • Palmer Hayden, Painter of the people	• Venus Jones, First black graduate of MWC • The Lovings, In the National Spotlight • John DeBaptist, Revolutionary War sailor
• Rachael Steers and Susan Loushing, petitioning for change
Sources: "A Different Story" by Ruth Coder Fitzgerald; HistoryPoint.org of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library; The Free Lance-Star archives; State of Michigan Web site; African Within; The Kennedy Center; We Were Always Free By T.O. Madden Jr.; The Richmond Times-Dispatch; Life Magazine; Westmoreland County, Virginia.