In 1956, U.S. District Court Judge John Paul ruled in Allen v. School Board of the City of Charlottesville that city officials had to integrate Venable Elementary School and Lane High School. Photo by Leo Zhang.
The Charlottesville City Council recently announced plans to vote on a resolution that would apologize for Council’s role in the Massive Resistance effort during the nationwide school integration of the 1950s.
The Massive Resistance movement was an attempt by several Virginia school systems, including Charlottesville’s, to oppose integration of black and white students, Council member David Brown said.
Mayor Dave Norris said the resolution would be a symbolic statement for Charlottesville and commemorate the anniversary of the movement’s end.
“That the city was party to a serious injustice 50 years ago … I think it’s only right that you acknowledge an error,” Norris said.
After the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, Virginia implemented its Massive Resistance program to prevent schools from integrating. In 1955, black parents petitioned the Charlottesville school system to let their children attend white schools and were subsequently denied.
In 1956, U.S. District Court Judge John Paul ruled in Allen v. School Board of the City of Charlottesville that city officials had to integrate Venable Elementary School and Lane High School. Two years later, the governor of Virginia at the time ordered that the two schools be shut down. The doors of Lane and Venable remained closed for five months and the Charlottesville school system remained segregated. Finally in 1959, Paul ordered the immediate transfer of 12 black students into the city’s school system — nine to Venable and three to Lane.
“It’s important as a community that we recognize that chapter in our history,” Brown said, adding that the proposed resolution honors the “bravery of students and families who sued in order to have an equal education.”
Norris added that although the resolution is “not going to undo anything that was done, it’s definitely an important step in the ongoing effort to improve race relations in our community and to hopefully never see that kind of thing happen again.”
The resolution is part of a larger effort to address issues and to improve race relations in the community. In December, Charlottesville will kick off a community-wide conversation about how citizens of different races and backgrounds experience life in the Charlottesville community, the barriers that prevent community advancement and how the city can overcome these social divisions. Although Charlottesville has come a long way in 50 years, it still has far to go, Norris said.
“We’re still very segregated socially, economically and otherwise and that’s not good for our community,” he explained.
An event to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the movement’s end will take place tomorrow from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at Venable School. Council will vote on the resolution Oct. 5.
When I was growing up, I not taught about the Vinegar Hill district, how Charlottesville city closed their schools during the desegregation movement, or the some 60 African American businesses that were thriving during the 1950-60′s in Vinegar Hill. It wasn’t until college that I found out about Prince Edward County and how they closed their schools for five years until President Kennedy demanded that they reopen their schools. Instead, I was taught a misguided representation of the civil rights movement (only focusing on the racism in the deep south) and an inaccurate picture of some of our local historical figures such as Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. I was taught that slavery really wasn’t all that bad and that most slaves went back to their slave owners after the war. I wonder what has changed in Charlottesville? What I do know, is the street I grew up on in is still primarily an African American neighborhood (Morgantown Road). When I was younger, racism was so strong that I was told by my friend’s parents that their kids weren’t allowed to play with me because I lived in the wrong neighborhood (the wrong side of the railroad tracks)…but what I wasn’t taught is that, that neighborhood was the first neighborhood colonized after slavery and had rich historical roots.
During the 1960′s, several UVA students went into Vinegar Hill and transcribed audio recordings of interviews with the residents of Vinegar Hill. I can see it now, going in to the Jefferson Museum and picking up a phone and listening to some of these historic interviews. I can see people watching some of the recent plays written about Vinegar Hill at the Museum and going on African American Heritage walks throughout our historic district.
I am also disappointed to find out that Washington Park does not have a monument or plaque which records some of the history of the Park. Most people think the park was named after George Washington and little in the Park represents whom the park was actually named after. Did you know that there was once a Jazz Bar where the pavilion for the Boys and Girls Club now stands? Jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong and Dizzie Glipspe used to play there. There is a man I work with at the Aquatic Center, who even has pictures of these musicians staying at his house in Charlottesville because of the lack of hotels open to African Americans at the time.
We need to tell the stories of Burley Moran, the Jefferson School, the civil rights movement, the slave auctions, and the great educators, doctors, and business owners that once proudly served Charlottesville. So much about this history has been pushed aside, redeveloped and hidden from our youth. The Jefferson School and downtown African American Historic District is constantly in threat of becoming a forgotten thread of our past. In order to truly be the diverse and hip city we claim to be we need to claim our past both good and bad. Preserving this school and creating a historical museum that represents the true history of African Americans in central Virginia, creating memorials that talk about the history of Washington Park, and civil rights walks which take people through the historical sections of charlottesville would all be adequate responses.
However, simply apologizing for the past and not moving forward by preserving the history of this population is not acceptable. Our city deserves better than that.
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@Pattie Murray
I totally agree with the last paragraph of your comment. When will governments learn that token apologies don’t do anything to rectify the contemporary effects of past mistakes? These half-measures are only about APPEARING to change, rather than actually doing so.
-thp
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