In our blog for Civil Rights in Virginia part three, we examine the particulars of local and grassroots organization in desegregating Virginia schools in the 1950s and 60s. “Grassroots to the Supreme Court” studies the activists of communities located in Virginia and five other states.
The local strategies of the NAACP to implement the Brown decision in Virginia are explored in “Keep on Keeping on”. “Southern Stalemate” documents how the segregationists of Prince Edward County were able to sustain school closings for five years, and “Brown’s Battleground” explains how the African American community responded in an effort to secure their children’s education.
For more book reviews at TheVirginiaHistorian.com in this historical era addressing other topics, see the webpage for Gilded Age, New South, Civil Rights, New Dominion (1889-present). General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
These titles are all used in bibliographies found in surveys of Virginia history of scholarly merit that are currently used in Virginia university history departments. Additional insights are used from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.
Grassroots to the Supreme Court
Peter Lau edited From the Grassroots to the Supreme Court: Brown v. Board of Education and American Democracy in 2004. It is available on Kindle and online in paperback. These essays connect “bottom-up” grassroots social activism both black and white, with the “top-down” court jurisprudence and subsequent school desegregation of the 1950-60s. Although integration was not universally and uniformly achieved, the Brown case was of “seminal importance and revolutionary in nature.” Local chapters include Prince Edward County, Virginia, along with localities in South Carolina, New Orleans, Atlanta, Memphis and New York City.
Local activists not only sought courtroom victories in public school desegregation, they also engaged in larger and more comprehensive campaigns for equality in voting rights and economic justice. But Brown-related jurisprudence on schools and busing led to substantial institutional and ideological changes in black schooling opportunity. While racial integration did not overcome deeper problems of economic inequalities, the Brown case forced a social and cultural confrontation with the nation’s history of racial segregation.
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*George Lewis wrote The White South and the Red Menace: Segregation, Anti-Communism, and Massive Resistance, 1945-1965 in 2004. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “White South and Red Menace” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
Keep on Keeping on
Brian J. Daugherity wrote Keep on Keeping on: The NAACP and the Implementation of Brown v. Board of Education in Virginia in 2016. It is available on Kindle and online new and used. It offers a comprehensive view of the African American efforts to gain equal educational opportunity at mid-20th century focused on the contributions of the NAACP, nationally, in Virginia, and locally, across state and local political organizations and allied civil rights organizations, white moderates and liberals.
Implementation of Brown v. Board of Education in Virginia was initiated by several state and local African American organizations. But they were fiercely opposed by segregationists in a “massive resistance” led by Virginia’s U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd Sr. along with his Democratic Organization.
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*James W. Ely Jr. wrote The Crisis of Conservative Virginia: The Byrd Organization and the Politics of Massive Resistance in 1976. It is out of print but available online. Learn more to buy “Crisis of Conservative Virginia” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
Rise of Massive Resistance
Numan V. Bartley wrote The Rise of Massive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South during the 1950s in 1969, it was reprinted in 1999. It is now available from the LSU Press and available online used. This study looks at an early episode of “massive resistance” to public school racial desegregation. Bartley focuses on politics, yet also considers the movement’s social background, its ideology and the cultural organizations that the hard-line segregationists used to nullify the Brown decision. A series of federal court rulings from 1938 to 1950 had consistently undermined the rule of white supremacy in the South.
Even before the Supreme Court ruling in 1955, Dixiecrats in 1948 and neo-bourbon segregationist leaders in Georgia and South Carolina in 1950 vowed total resistance to school desegregation. Following the Brown decision, the most significant developments were in Virginia where the Byrd Organization led a failed effort to close schools, and in Arkansas where officials were bested in a showdown with federal authority at the direction of President Eisenhower.
Learn more to buy “Rise of Massive Resistance” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
*Robbins L. Gates wrote The Making of Massive Resistance: Virginia’s Politics of Public School Desegregation, 1954-1956 in 1964. It is out of print but available online used. Learn more to buy “Making of Massive Resistance” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
Moderates’ Dilemma
Matthew D. Lassiter and Andrew B. Lewis edited The Moderates’ Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation in Virginia in 1998. It is now available at the UVA Press and online new and used. It discusses the moderate white role in the failure of Virginia’s massive resistance to desegregation of public schooling. Grassroots mobilization of ordinary white citizens in the Virginia Committee for Public Schools and other local associations were as important as court rulings, business leaders or politicians.
Politicians such as Armistead L. Boothe and journalist Benjamin Muse gave public voice to emphasizing the desegregation issue as one of public education. But James J. Kilpatrick supported massive resistance to desegregation as state interposition rather than racial bias. While segregationists in places like Prince Edward County had some success with establishing a viable alternative academy system of private schooling, moderate strategies for local option delayed Virginia’s effective desegregation into the late 1960s.
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Southern Stalemate
Christopher Bonastia wrote Southern Stalemate: Five Years without Public Education in Prince Edward County, Virginia in 2012. It is available on Kindle and online new and used. While losses in court and white parent determination for continued public education led to defeat of school segregationists in most of Virginia’s localities, in Prince Edward County public education was abandoned from 1959 to 1964 due to an all white private school system funded by public taxation. Litigation proved unsuccessful during these years, a black exodus gutted the protest organizational base, and the Byrd county organization demoralized moderate efforts to reconcile to racial integration in the face of social and economic sanctions by segregationists.
Without any violence against African-Americans, segregationists claimed the moral high ground arguing for “color blindness” based on appeals to local control, taxpayer rights and individual liberty. The implementation of one-man-one-vote state redistricting in 1964 forced an end to the rural domination of Virginia state politics, shifting the locus of power to cities and suburbs.
Learn more to buy “Southern Stalemate” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
Brown’s Battleground
Jill Ogline Titus wrote Brown’s Battleground: Students, Segregationists, and the Struggle for Justice in Prince Edward County, Virginia in 2011. It is now available at the UNC Press, on Kindle, and online new and used. The focus of this book is Prince Edward County and its public school closing for five years. The student strike of 1951, the Brown case of 1954, school closings in 1959 and the follow-on Supreme Court case mandating public school reopening in 1964 are all recounted. But the story of the African American community to educate their children is also told. Some families sent their children away to find schooling in adjacent counties or to relatives as far away as Massachusetts and Michigan.
The American Friends Service Committee sought to provide education services for 1,700 students in the Free School. White allies were found in the two local colleges, the Department of Justice, the Ford Foundation and the Field Foundation. Titus explains the pervasiveness of racial separation and miscommunications that led to interracial misunderstandings, even between white and black proponents of public schooling.
Learn more to buy “Brown’s Battleground” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.