Ruth Ward and Nancy (Ward) Luck, two daughters of a Baptist minister who had pastored many of Esmont's residents between about 1935 and 1956, discuss their lives growing up together in Esmont. The two share their recollections of friends and relatives living in their neighborhood and discuss their experiences as young African-American women growing up in the segregated South. Through their descriptions of the commercial, educational, religious and governmental institutions they frequented (through necessity or by choice), the sisters reveals a world in which every aspect of their lives was effected by color lines and race-based restrictions. While Ms. Luck continued to live in Esmont throughout her entire life, Ms. Ward moved to New York in 1959, where she lived for 30 years. The sisters' memories reconverge in the late 1990s in Esmont, where they both live today.

Esmont Oral History Project: Building Digital Communities, Race and Place: African American Community History, Albemarle County, Virginia. Prepared by the Virginia Center for Digital History, Charlottesville, VA, 2001-2002.