No Easy Journey

UNDERSTANDING OUR STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE AND EDUCATION

Five decades after Brown v. Board banned school segregation, the ruling is one piece of a larger mosaic in Hampton Roads.

The children of Newport News Shipyard workers walk to school in this May, 1942 photograph taken by Pat Terry of the Farm Services Administration.

Fifty years after the Supreme Court decision that outlawed racial discrimination in America's schools, Brown v. Board of Education is widely remembered as a revolutionary moment. But the landmark case represented only one clash in an epic struggle that had been under way for years - and which was ultimately fought and won in local schoolyards. One of the first and most bitterly contested cases in Hampton Roads took place in Newport News, where the decision to turn 10 black kids away from a white elementary school led to nearly two decades of legal strife. Even more defiant was the response in Surry County, where whites simply abandoned the public schools rather than integrate. As it did during the Civil War, Virginia became a decisive battleground, witnessing more lawsuits than any other state as black students, parents and attorneys challenged the forces of Massive Resistance. Yet even here, some communities adapted to this wrenching change smoothly. Hampton, in particular, found ways to bridge its racial gaps and reform an entrenched tradition of segregation with far less trouble than its neighbors. The complex history of this long crusade - plus its frustrating and less than clear-cut results - make up the subject of a special Daily Press report that starts today, continues every Sunday in May and marks the May 17 anniversary of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling with special coverage. Beginning with the now-unthinkable inequalities of the Jim Crow era, we will trace this movement's progress for both good and bad, re-examining not only the fight to integrate but also the unexpected losses suffered in the process. We'll survey the state of racial relations and student achievement in our schools today - and consider ways in which their persistent record of shortcomings might be combated. Lastly, we'll invite our readers to a community forum, asking them to size up the impact of an upheaval that - in the span of a single lifetime - has forever changed the society in which we live. We'll publish the results of this dialogue at the close of the series on May 30 - the same day that we review the newpaper's changing, and sometimes backward-looking, role in this historic struggle. -- By Mark St. John Erickson
The Road to Equality

College of William and Mary graduate Jackson Davis took this picture of a Patrons Day event at Salters Creek School in Elizabeth City County, now part of Hampton, in the early 1900s. Davis served as the state's agent for rural black schools. The support shown by the school's patrons typifies the black community's faith in the importance of education.

In rural counties, such as York, James City, Nansemond and Surry, black families opened private academies, which offered a secondary education to black students at a time when even white children often ended schooling in the seventh grade. In the late 1930s, however, black families and teachers began to challenge white officials who refused to improve black schools. Their weapon was a series of lawsuits seeking equality within segregation. Virginia became a key battleground for civil rights lawyers in the two decades before the U.S. Supreme Court ended school segregation in May 1954, in part because Virginia was far less likely to erupt in racial violence than other Southern states. Those early lawsuits - filed in places such as Newport News and Surry and Gloucester counties - sapped the strength of segregation. They planted the seeds for the court-ordered integration to come. But before integration was achieved, racial discrimination was endured, expected and often endorsed by leading white thinkers who cloaked claims of white superiority in supposed scientific fact. School segregation was just one aspect of legalized discrimination. But it was one of the toughest obstacles children faced as they struggled to obtain better jobs, better homes and better lives. ***** In 1892, Homer Plessy, a racially mixed shoemaker, boarded a train in New Orleans with hopes of challenging a state law that required "equal but separate accommodations." He sat in a railcar reserved for white passengers. Four years later, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Louisiana law, noting that state legislators elsewhere had passed similar laws, particularly in regards to schooling. Virginia, for example, had required separate schools for black and white children since passing its first public-education law in 1870. Before the Civil War, educating blacks, whether free or slave, was illegal in Virginia. At the time, the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling gained little notice locally. It simply recognized the status quo. The New Daily Pilot in Norfolk did not deem the story worthy of the next day's edition. The Richmond Dispatch ran a four-paragraph story on page six. A few days later, an editorial suggested drafting similar laws in other Southern states. "It was not a big deal," said Davison Douglas, a law professor who teaches at the College of William and Mary. Racial segregation, whether enforced by law or local custom, intensified significantly in the first two decades of the 20th century, dividing blacks and whites in ways that had never before occurred in the South. Southern segregation assumed the nickname Jim Crow, a stock stage character in minstrel song-and-dance acts performed by white actors with black cork rubbed on their faces. Jim Crow laws pushed blacks to the back of buses, restricted them to living in certain neighborhoods and stripped them of the ballot. Even outside of laws, the Jim Crow culture barred blacks from certain stores, paid them less for the same work and neglected their children's education. Separate was never equal. Not until 1919 did Newport News convert a classroom at a black elementary school into a makeshift high school. Before then, a city survey said parents sent their teen-agers to Hampton, Petersburg, Richmond and Washington, D.C., for a high-school education. Several area localities, particularly rural counties, did not open public high schools for black students until the late 1930s or 1940s. Teachers in Isle of Wight taught most black students in churches and lodges because there weren't enough schools for black children. Georgie Tyler, who worked in Isle of Wight schools for 34 years, once asked officials to donate public land for new black schools. "Criticism started from every direction," Tyler wrote. "I was censured for having suggested such a thing." With little hope of public funding, black parents pooled their money and sought donations from charities and philanthropists to open private academies. Black residents in Gloucester County opened an academy in 1888 with money prominent black leaders. They also built a public secondary school, called the Gloucester Training School, in the early 1920s.

The new Gloucester Training School opened in September 1921 after the black community and private, often Northern donors contributed funds for its construction. Though much of the instruction focused on vocational training, the teachers also addressed academic subjects, leading one black leader to describe these rural centers as "boot-leg high schools."

T.C. Walker, a prominent black lawyer, donated the down payment and led a fund-raising drive after school officials refused to help. In Surry County, former slave John Smallwood built a large, 4-story brick school for the county's rural black youths. The school closed in 1928, about 14 years after Smallwood died. In York County, black volunteers cleared two acres of public land, sawed trees into boards and built a two-story, four-room schoolhouse that opened in 1915. Charles Brown, a black York educator from 1914 to 1933, once said black high schools were often called training schools to avoid offending white officials, particularly in areas without a high school for white students. "It was a kind of 'bootleg high school,' " Brown said. "Nevertheless, a very potent product." Northern philanthropists contributed to improving education for Southern black students. Nearly every city and county in this area had classrooms and schools financed by Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Co. in Chicago. The Rosenwald schools usually featured a peaked roof over an entranceway that led into two to four rooms where classes were taught to students in first through sixth grades. Tall windows flooded the poorly heated schoolhouses with sunlight. Students who arrived at the schools early helped teachers ignite coal-burning stoves. "In the mornings it was cold," said Marion Randall, who attended such a school in Gloucester, "and it was very difficult to concentrate." Black parents and educators also improved their schools - often a center of civic life - as much as they could by donating money for things such as athletic uniforms, musical instruments and cafeteria equipment. Newport News parents supplemented the salary paid to Huntington High Principal Lutrelle Palmer. Families in Williamsburg and Nansemond County, now Suffolk, bought their own buses. Even so, teachers and parents struggled to overcome the chronic poverty and overt racism that handicapped so many black Virginians during the Jim Crow era. A statistical report published in 1941 figured school boards statewide spent about $29 per white child and about $13 per black child. The same report estimated that about 5 percent of white adults could not read or write compared to about 19 percent of black adults. But change was coming. In the late 1930s, teachers and families and lawyers began to sue school districts to force them to make black schools truly equal with white schools. "It was Virginia blacks insisting on their rights," said Douglas, the William & Mary professor, "and their leaders are Richmond lawyers." ***** On a Friday morning in November 1937, a thousand black teachers and administrators applauded as a NAACP official told them during a convention at Hampton Institute, now Hampton University, how teachers in Maryland were winning lawsuits for equal pay. Virginia's black educators had long complained about racial salary differences. Black teachers earned on average $558 annually while white teachers earned $864. A white janitor earned a higher salary at a Norfolk high school than the black principal and teachers. Richmond paid its most experienced black male teachers one dollar less than it paid its least experienced white female teachers. Palmer, the Huntington High principal and a driving force in the pursuit for equal salaries, chastised his daughter for accepting a job in Newport News that paid her a third less per month than a beginning white teacher earned. After the speech, the Virginia State Teachers Association, which had about 3,700 members, voted unanimously to file equal-pay lawsuits in partnership with the NAACP. The vote launched a statewide campaign that helped erode the legal basis for school segregation so deeply that lawyers later pushed for integration. Similar lawsuits were filed in other states. "It's not challenging segregation," said Peter Wallenstein, a Virginia Tech history professor. "It's within segregation, but it's saying separate and equal are not the same." The NAACP, a civil rights group founded in 1909, had decided a few years earlier to fight school segregation - from grade schools to graduate schools - under the leadership of Charles Houston, its lead lawyer. Houston believed that inferior education prevented blacks from getting better jobs, made them less likely to defend their rights and symbolized "more drastic discriminations," according to "The NAACP's Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, 1925-1930." Virginia played a pivotal role in the campaign, Douglas said. Black plaintiffs were less likely to encounter violence here than in the Deep South. Also, Virginia was closer than other Southern states to NAACP headquarters in New York and to Howard University, a black college with a law school in Washington, D.C. Scholars credit a group of Richmond lawyers - Oliver Hill, Samuel Tucker, Martin Martin and Spottswood Robinson - with coordinating most of the Virginia lawsuits, including those in Hampton Roads. These lawyers had graduated from Howard University, just like Houston and Thurgood Marshall, a NAACP lawyer and future Supreme Court justice. At the time, Virginia did not provide a law school for black students. Howard professors instilled students with an obligation to correct racial injustices, said Philip Walker, a Newport News native and Howard graduate involved with the case to desegregate his hometown's schools. "You would develop it if you did not have it," Walker said. "You sure weren't going to get it at the University of Virginia or William and Mary." In 1938, Norfolk teacher Aline Black volunteered to become the first Virginia teacher to sue for equal pay. She lost in a state circuit court. The School Board decided not to renew her employment contract before an appeal could be heard. Leery teachers hesitated to sacrifice their jobs, but Melvin Alston, who headed the Norfolk black teachers group, stepped forward and sued in the fall of 1939. His case seesawed through the courts. Ultimately, the Supreme Court refused in November 1940 to overturn a federal appeals court decision that labeled the pay disparities unconstitutional. Norfolk was ordered to equalize salaries by January 1943. The success prompted other lawsuits across the state. It also encouraged some localities to make changes before teachers filed cases. In Newport News, teacher Dorothy Roles sued for equal pay and won her case in January 1943, but the School Board refused to comply with the court order for more than two years. Six months after the ruling, the School Board dismissed three teachers and three principals, including Palmer, by refusing to renew their annual contracts. Palmer had worked in Newport News schools for 23 years. School Chairman Dorsey Pleasants never publicly linked the firings to the lawsuit, saying only that the action was taken "for the good of the system." Palmer later told people that the superintendent had warned him to drop his support for the lawsuit or risk his job. The dismissals spurred mass meetings and a petition with more than 2,000 signatures. A judge sided with the School Board. Distrust lingered for decades, even regarding the pay raises that finally came. "It was equalized, as far as we knew," said Artemesia Carter, who taught home economics in Newport News from 1948 to 1976. "But there were lots of things that went on behind closed doors." School officials attempted to address the damage in the 1970s by naming schools after Palmer and Roles, who had married and taken the surname Watkins. Lawyers filed few salary-related lawsuits after the Newport News case was settled because most localities had agreed by then to equalize pay. The next round of lawsuits focused on correcting physical discrepancies, such as school buildings, bus service and curriculum. NAACP lawyers again crisscrossed the state searching for plaintiffs. "I was telling people now that we've got the teachers straightened out," said lawyer Hill, who's now 97. "We're going after the schools and bus transportation." Two local lawsuits - one in Gloucester County and one in Surry County - were particularly noteworthy. Both cases were filed in 1947 and resulted in federal court rulings that ordered the school districts to improve black schools. In Surry, black students attended classes in the newly built L.P. Jackson School in 1951.

Industrial teacher Isabella Smith, shown at right conducting a sewing lesson in this undated photo, was a prominent figure in the drive by Gloucester County blacks to establish a training school.

In Gloucester, a new school was built after an attempt to integrate. Lawyers inspected the Gloucester Training School in the fall of 1948 - five months after a federal court ordered improvements to the building, heating system and equipment. They found no major changes, only some used appliances and other items moved from the white schools into the black school. Afterward, lawyers tried to enroll a group of black teens at Botetourt High School, which was for white students, to drive home their point about inequality. The Botetourt principal wrote down their names, and then he told them to enroll instead at the black school. Both sides returned to court. Back in the courtroom, civil-rights lawyer Martin pitched an easy way to settle the dispute. "The school board doesn't seem to realize that it can equalize schools tomorrow," Martin said. The county's lawyer swiveled in his chair and asked how. "They can do it tomorrow by letting those colored children into Botetourt High School." Ultimately, the School Board received grant money to build a new black school in 1950. That funding came after county voters opposed borrowing $300,000 to build the school. "It was a shock," said Marion Randall, who had attended a Rosenwald school. "We left this very primitive building and moved to a modern facility. I thought I was in heaven." One year later, county residents voted to spend $500,000 to build a new high school for white teenagers. As Martin's remarks foretold, the NAACP again changed its strategy at this time. A 1950 Supreme Court decision said that a separate law school created for black students at the University of Texas could never equal the white law school. Separate schools excluded future black lawyers from professional relationships and other intangibles associated with a respected law school. Civil rights lawyers no longer sought equalization. They wanted integration. In Virginia, lawyers like Hill refused to accept any more lawsuits seeking to equalize black schools. ***** In an attempt to head off more lawsuits, state and local officials kept pumping money into black education. Some cities and counties eventually spent more annually in black schools than in white schools. "What lots of Southern states begin to figure out over the course of the 1940s," Douglas said, "is if they don't equalize things, they'll be forced to integrate." In Virginia, the bid for integration came in Prince Edward County, which sits between Richmond and Lynchburg. Hill and his law partners visited the county in April 1951 after a high school senior called them for help. Students had refused to attend classes until local officials improved their school. Hill and partner Robinson filed a lawsuit on behalf of 117 students. They asked the courts to strike down Virginia's school segregation law - a law that traced back about 80 years. A U.S. District Court rejected the request and ordered county officials to equalize the black school. The black families appealed. The Supreme Court considered the case as one of the five lawsuits that made up the Brown v. Board of Education decision. In May 1954, justices ordered desegregation. Many Southern congressmen responded quickly and fiercely, pledging to defy the court order. "The abolishment of segregation in our schools will not enhance but - on the contrary - will lower the standards of public education," said U.S. Rep. William Tuck, a former governor from South Boston. Local officials mostly waited in silence for direction from the state political machine that marched to orders issued by Sen. Harry Byrd, who warned that the decision "will bring implications and dangers of the greatest consequence." A year later, the Supreme Court handed the job of integrating schools "with all deliberate speed" to local district courts. The ruling muddied the outlook for desegregation. District courts, in Hampton Roads and elsewhere, had regularly rejected arguments made by civil-rights lawyers over the prior two decades for equal teacher pay and for equal schools and equipment. The NAACP saw the ruling as a concession to white Southerners who favored gradual, rather than immediate, integration. Much had changed, but much remained the same. The same school officials and community leaders who had endorsed segregation and opposed equalization would oversee integration. None of them could trump the Supreme Court. But, to show their displeasure, they didn't have to. In some places, such as Hampton, integration would come fairly quickly and fairly quietly. In other places, such as Newport News and Surry, integration would come only after almost two decades of struggle. The Supreme Court had ordered change, but it relied upon local people to ensure it happened. Oftentimes, that work had just begun. "We simply could not lose," said civil rights lawyer Walker. "But it took us a long time to win."