december 2024 Edition

The Era From Which We Have Yet To Recover 

In October, the Public Religion Research Institute released survey results that found a third of Democrats, two thirds of Republicans and an overwhelming majority of white Christians, think the American way of life and culture has changed for the worse since the 1950s. Nonwhite Christians, including Hispanic Catholics, Jewish Americans, and those who are not religious at all are less likely to agree. (1)

In the 1950s, nearly 90 percent of America identified as white, the culture centered on a white, heterosexual concept of “normalcy,” participation in religion boomed and the population soared along with the post-war economy. But, schools were segregated, as were buses and trains, parks, pools, theaters, cemeteries, asylums, jails and waiting rooms. White people could stop Black Americans from renting or buying homes and from voting. 

So, how is it so many people are able to think things were better then? To understand this poll, we need to go further back in time, to the end of the Civil War when an opportunity to build a new nation was squandered, slavery was replaced with a racial hierarchy - segregating people based on their skin color - and reinforced with a culture of white supremacy and violence. 

The U.S. victory in 1865 vanquished an unjust economic system built on slavery and oligarchical politics. At its close, the U.S. military began rebuilding the Southern region’s infrastructure, governance and economy. This created an enormous opportunity for our country to finally fulfill the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. An opportunity that extended beyond African American and economically disadvantaged white men to women. There was tremendous enthusiasm among African Americans, as well as among white people who supported abolitionism and women’s suffrage. (2,3,4)

A majority of the people living in the country resided in states that fought for the Union. New Englanders, northern and western Republicans, and white southern Unionists turned Republicans wanted reform, as did African Americans. This bears repeating, taken together, a majority of Americans, men and women, white and Black, wanted reform although they differed on the degree of change they wanted. Eager to build on victory and fortify democracy the union majority believed African Americans needed the vote, without it, they feared the concentrated power in the rebel South would rise again. (5)

Many in Congress at the time believed that rampant illiteracy in the South was “the source of the Civil War” and had to be addressed to prevent future conflict.  This dovetailed with many white reformers and African Americans who maintained that education was central to not just the ability to be an engaged voter - but to all civil rights. If democracy was to survive and thrive, an educated citizenry was essential. (6)

Through Colored Conventions, African Americans had been mobilizing for this fight since the 1830s. Northern white Anti-Slavery advocates and many people of faith had also been advocating for freedom and education for Black people. Frederick Douglass launched the Equal Rights League to push for full rights before the inky signatures of Gens. Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant had dried. (7) 

Once the 13th Amendment that ended enslavement was ratified on Dec. 6, 1865, Douglass wrote, now, the work “begins.” He urged Congress to “enter  vigorously  upon  the work  of  universal  education,” instead of waiting for the states, because “to withhold this boon is to neglect the greatest assurance it has of its own perpetuity.”(8)  

The universal education Douglass proposed was based on New England’s common schools. Massachusetts was a leader among the states in placing schools paid for with local taxes in every community. The Common Schools Movement promoted free schools for all children to learn together regardless of class to build community, fortify democracy and allow merit to overcome birth. Most schools in the state were open to both white and Black children, but in the cities of Boston, Salem and the Island of Nantucket, the schools were segregated. In 1848, Black abolitionist Benjamin Roberts brought a suit against the Boston School Committee, which he lost, sparking demonstrations, boycotts and petitions. In 1855, the legislature over-ruled the courts passing a law “prohibiting all distinctions of color and religion in Massachusetts public school admissions.” (9,10)

New England states Connecticut and Rhode Island didn’t have laws requiring separate schools on the books, but there were some localities that practiced it. While Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, each with small Black populations, didn’t ever segregate the public schools.(11)  

African Americans believed any universal free school system had to be integrated in order to truly liberate their people and break the social hierarchy slavery spawned. So unnatural was slavery it had to be taught both to the enslaved and the enslaver, according to Douglass, who said that while he was enslaved, the white school boys who came to know him would wish for his freedom as much as he did. 

Reformers placed hope in the idea that youth educated together would lead the South out of enslavement culture. Stereotypes would fall away, prejudices might never develop and both would learn how to be citizens together. Douglass wrote, “Let the colored [sic] children be educated and grow up side-by-side with white children, come up friends unsophisticated and generous childhood together, and it will require a powerful agent to convert them into enemies, and lead them to prey upon each other’s rights and liberties.” 

In Virginia & Alexandria

In 1860, Virginia’s native speakers had the highest illiteracy rate among the states. In a 2018 issue of the Stanford Law Review, Derek W. Black wrote, 

“The South had withheld education for a reason: The education of the masses was a threat to the social order that elites were determined to avoid.” 

Southern culture presented education as a privilege, not a right. It was meant for those whose families could afford tutors and private academies. But in Alexandria, there had been an acceptance of education, even for the enslaved if it benefited a city enslaver’s bottom line. As early as 1785 a free school for girls, orphans and poor children operated on the third floor of the Alexandria Academy building, above two private schools. 

In 1789, Alexandria was ceded from Virginia to became part of the nation’s capital. The political distance from Richmond over the next 57 years created space for learning for both free and enslaved Black people. Initially, Quakers and white ministers offered educational opportunities to Black Alexandrians, some for free, but most for a fee. By the second decade of the 1800s, Black teachers were setting up their own schools and earning salaries. All of this ended abruptly after Richmond took control in 1846 and stayed that way until the day Union troops arrived on the docks of the Port City. Almost overnight schools for Black children and adults opened their doors. 

While Black Alexandrians were eager for education, the city’s less advantaged whites, like their counterparts in other southern states, did not pursue schooling at the same clip. A Black preacher said, “the ignorant whites had every chance to learn, but didn’t. We had every chance to remain ignorant, and many of us learned in spite of them.” (14)

Before the end of the war, the Restored Government of Virginia, that operated out of Alexandria during the conflict, ratified the 13th Amendment and a new statewide constitution that funded a system of free schools. Because this small body was recognized by Congress as Virginia’s legitimate government, it was expected Virginia would be quickly readmitted to the United States and could chart a path for the rest of the South. Unfortunately, when conservatives and ex-confederates gained control of the restored government, Congress and the unionists lost faith and Virginia moved to the back of the readmittance line.

In Congress

In 1864, Republicans campaigned on ending slavery, then once the 13th Amendment was law the party took up a new primary issue: universal education. George S. Boutwell, who helped establish the Republican Party, wrote, 

“Opening the public schools of this country to every class and condition of people without distinction of race or color, is security.” Successive generations learning together would maintain equality, he stated, “which lead every human being to recognize every other human being as an equal in all natural and political rights; and the only way by which those ideas can be made universal is to bring together in public schools, during the forming period of life, the children of all classes and educate them together… This doctrine of human equality can be taught and it is the chief means of securing the perpetuity of republican institutions.” (15,16,17)

In Virginia & Alexandria

By 1866, southern lawmakers had enacted legislation that neutralized the 13th amendment. In Virginia, the legislature made vagrancy illegal, allowing the arrest of anyone who couldn’t prove they had a job, elevated misdemeanors to felonies, and permitted the government to use prison labor on public projects. This resulted in criminalizing members of Alexandria’s Black community who were put on chain gangs and forced to build roads, alleys and gutters. (18)

In Congress, Virginia & Alexandria

Wanting to address Southern obstructionists, Congress debated a civil rights bill. Lawmakers from states that practiced various forms of segregation expressed concern over the broadness of the phrase, “civil rights and immunities.” Their anxiety, which reveals they realized segregation was wrong, stalled the legislation. Chair of the House Judiciary, James Wilson, a supporter of the bill, took schools and the jury box off the table and “An act to protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights, and furnish the means of their vindication,” passed. As anticipated, it inspired legislation and lawsuits that challenged school segregation where it still existed. 

At the time, Virginia was functioning under the Alexandria Constitution. Gov. Francis Pierpont had moved the mini-legislature formerly of the Restored Government to Richmond.  To deal with a dearth of experienced lawmakers, Pierpont called for new elections and allowed ex-confederates to hold office. The new members of the General Assembly were a decidedly more conservative bunch.

In Alexandria, many of those who were loyal to the Union during the war had formed into the Union Republican Party that supported voting and civil rights for Black men as well as a public school system. They did not recognize the authority of the legislature Gov. Pierpont had cobbled together. 

Across the river, President Johnson’s veto pen remained a threat and civil rights opponents questioned the constitutionality of the 1866 Civil Rights Act. Advocates were worried it would be reversed by the courts or a future congress. 

To protect it, Congress enshrined the major components of the Act into the 14th Amendment that conveyed citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the U.S. and provided equal protection under the law. Congressional debates from the time make it clear they believed the Amendment ensured both the right to vote and to an education. (20)

In the Stanford Law Review Black explains, the “original intent behind the Fourteenth Amendment included a commitment to guarantee education as a core aspect of state citizenship and the twin pillars of state citizenship at the time: education and voting.” Not surprisingly, many interpreted the Amendment to mean that segregated schools were illegal. Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan and Rhode Island enacted desegregation laws. (21)

At the November 1866 midterm elections the American people gave Republicans in Congress a veto proof majority. Ex-confederates and most southern states were still not able to vote, but the results show that majorities in the union states continued to support civil rights and integrated public schools. 

Undaunted, at the January opening of the 1867 Legislative Session, Virginia’s lawmakers took up the Southern Cross and rejected the 14th Amendment 74-1 in the House, and 27-0 in the Senate. Virginian’s believed it did not and would not apply to them: full stop.

The General Assembly’s arrogance combined with widespread violence across the South targeting Black people, further fueled Congressional anger at Southern obstinance. While debating legislation that would soon become the first Reconstruction Act, Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner proposed a measure that would have forced Southern states to establish integrated public schools in order to reenter the U.S. While his measure was rejected, the vote in the Senate was tied. He later made another attempt to “compel the states of the former confederacy to establish ‘public schools open to all, without distinction of race or color” that lost by just 8 votes (28-20). The two tallies illustrate the support that existed in the Senate for integrated schools.

On Saturday, March 2, 1867, the first Reconstruction Act, known as the Civil Tenure Act, was enacted. It called out Virginia and the other rebel states for not adequately protecting the lives or property of their citizens. It divided the region into districts subject to the authority of the U.S. military. 

Virginia was designated Military District No. 1. In order to rejoin the Union, the state would have to write a new constitution (and allow African Americans to participate in drafting it), set up public schools and adopt the 14th Amendment that they had whimsically rejected a few weeks earlier.

In Alexandria

On the same day the “Military Force Act,” as the Alexandria Gazette referred to it, was enacted at least 300 Black Alexandrians met at the Lyceum to prepare to vote in upcoming elections. 

Conservative white Alexandrians were beside themselves; they did not want Black Alexandrians to vote. A delegation of Conservatives went to President Johnson and asked for assurances they would not have to recognize votes cast by Black Alexandrians. At the same time, Virginia’s Gov. Pierpont stated that the law was clear and the Black community’s votes were to be counted. 

On Election Day, Black men stood in long lines in a bone chilling winter rain to vote. White reformers recorded their choices and tried to force the election commissioners to recognize them. But Alexandria officials refused, arguing the 14th Amendment did not apply because it had not been approved by Virginia or two thirds of the states. 

Unionists complained to Congress and the results of the election were nullified. But, Alexandria’s officials ignored the Federal Government and an illegally elected Council governed the city setting a prescient precedent.

In Virginia & Alexandria

A month after the Reconstruction Bill passed, in April 1867, Virginia Republicans held a mass meeting in Richmond where they adopted a series of resolutions, one of which called for integrated public schools. Alexandrians John Hawxhurst (white) and George Seaton, who was Black, were at the meeting. Each would go on to represent Alexandria, Hawxhurst at the Constitutional Convention, that would require the legislature to establish a system of free schools, and Seaton in the legislature that would implement them. 

By October 22, 1867, when elections for a Constitutional Convention were held, there were three prominent political identities in Alexandria. The unionists, who had led Alexandria through the war, fell into one of two camps - moderate Republicans - who wanted political equality for Black people and to bring ex-confederates back into the fold; and “radical” Republicans who were adamantly against rebels in government and wanted integrated schools, full rights for men and some, wanted to extend suffrage to women. Most African Americans, especially the newly liberated, were “radical” Republicans. The secessionists and ex-confederates, Democrats and most former Whigs, who wanted to keep power in white hands and were against the very idea of free public schools, were called Conservatives. (22)

Voting at the election was by ballot instead of voice - a change made to protect new voters, and white unionists who had been intimidated by secessionists at the polls in the past. When the Alexandria Gazette went to press before the results were in on Election Day, they reported, “As the ballot is secret, of course no correct idea can be formed of how the vote for the candidates stands.”

In Alexandria, 1,769 people voted to have a convention (193 white and 1,576 Black), 846 opposed the convention (838 white and 8 Black). 

John Huwxhurst, the president of the 2nd Ward Radical Republicans, who previously represented Alexandria in the Restored Government and helped write the Alexandria Constitution, defeated the more moderate Republican Lewis McKenzie by about 500 votes. (23,24)

Rev. Linus M. Nickerson (Republican), beat Edgar Snowden, Jr., (Conservative ex-confederate) with a large swath of the Black vote and a smattering of white votes. Snowden, who had the advantages of being part of the city’s Old Guard and the Alexandria Gazette as a megaphone, garnered 878 white votes and 32 Black, losing 910 to 1,676. (25,26)

Both of Alexandria’s winning delegates were white.

In his newspaper column, Snowden described the election this way, “In one of the oldest towns in the State, the colored population, native and imported - (there were some honorable exceptions of old residents) - marching up to the polls, in solid column, and banded together in a phalanx under the guidance of the leaders, voting against and voting down the white people; and even rejoicing in their power to array themselves successfully against the interests and feelings of the white people…the election returns afford many lessons, which it would be well to learn, and consider hereafter.” (27)

In Virginia

The Constitutional Convention opened in Richmond on Dec. 3, 1867 with 105 delegates, a majority of whom were Republicans (72), and 24 were Black men. There were 33 Conservative delegates - all white. The Republican camp was made up of native Virginians, as well as some who moved to the state from the North and brought with them the public school experience.  (28)

John C. Underwood, a fiery ‘radical” Republican who had recently lived in Alexandria while serving as a Federal Judge, was elected to preside over the convention. He too was an advocate of equal rights, free schools and women’s suffrage and made a pitch for each during the proceedings.

Early in the convention, Samuel Kelso, an African American delegate from Campbell County, offered the following resolution, “That the constitution, now to be formed for the State of Virginia should guarantee for the future, a system of common school education, to be supported by the State, which shall give to all classes a free and equal participation in all its benefits.” (29)

Norfolk Del. Thomas Bayne, a powerful voice for the Black “radical” Republicans, helpfully offered to add the words “without distinction of color.” The resolution was sent to the education committee without a vote and without Bayne’s tagline. Had Bayne been successful getting those four words into Virginia’s Constitution public schools would have been integrated from the start. (30)

Delegates were more successful with resolutions that required the education committee to consider integration while drafting language. African American Del. J.W.D Bland, a teacher himself, successfully pushed through a resolution that asked the committee to ensure colleges, seminaries and other “public institutions of learning” admitted students “regardless of race, color, or previous condition, or loyalty, or disloyalty, freedom or slavery.” Bland’s clever choice to add protections for former rebels won over conservative delegates. (31)

Major newspapers such as the Alexandria Gazette and Richmond Times, were constantly criticized for slanted articles that attacked Republicans and advocated Conservative views. As delegates debated free school the Times wrote,“White Virginians still emphasize that free schools can exist, but should exist by separating the races.” The paper encouraged readers to write letters to their delegates that stated, “let no man countenance the idea of mixed schools. It is intolerable.” The paper added that while “many people accept the reconstruction acts” these “extra provisions…breach state rights.”(32)

Reform minded Virginians sent letters too. In one, published in the Convention Record, more than 500 men from Elizabeth City and Warwick County implored delegates to integrate steamboats, railroads, streetcars and schools. “Simple Christian legislation, such as becomes a people who believe that ‘God hath made of one blood all nations of men.’” (33)

On the 37th day of the Convention, Alexandria’s Linus Nickerson, a member of the education committee, presented detailed draft language, instructing the General Assembly through multiple steps to establish free schools. Neither segregation nor integration was specified. (34)

Del. Bayne, who had argued vociferously and persistently throughout the proceedings for such language, offered an amendment that would require the state’s schools to be “free to all classes, and no child, pupil or scholar shall be ejected from said schools on account of race, color, or any invidious distinction.” It was overwhelmingly rejected 56 to 15. 

At the convention, African American delegates successfully blocked attempts to require schools to be segregated, but their resolutions to secure legal language requiring the new school system to be integrated failed. The issue was left open to interpretation by the General Assembly.(36)

The convention ended on April 17, 1868, but due to a clause prohibiting former lawmakers who took part in rebellion from holding office, the constitution didn’t go before voters until July 1869. During the lull: 

• opponents flooded the state with misinformation that played on white fears, including that in new schools African American teachers would beat white children. 
• the 14th Amendment was ratified by two thirds of the states;
• Congress passed new legislation “explicitly conditioning” the readmission of Virginia on the inclusion of an “equal school rights provision” in the new constitution. (37)
• Congress approved the 15th Amendment prohibiting states from denying the vote to anyone based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

White Virginians negotiated with the President and Congress to try and bring the Constitution to a vote. They began preparing for an election once they obtained permission to poll the disenfranchisement clauses separate from the constitution. 

In addition to these questions, Virginians would elect candidates for state office who would be responsible for carrying through the ratifications and enacting the new constitution, as well as, governing Virginia after reunification.  

Incumbent Gov. Gen. H.H. Wells (R) ran on a ticket with a Black candidate for Lt. Governor,  J.D. Harris. Some moderate Republicans worried about winning with a mixed ticket and nominated Gilbert Walker for Governor. They tried to convince Conservatives who hadn’t nominated a candidate to join them. 

Walker tried to appeal to Conservatives by calling the 14th Amendment a cancer and campaigning against public schools. He recommended they support the new constitution in order to get the state back under their control. He promised that if Conservatives won a majority he would nullify it. 

Walker told ex-confederate soldiers, he wouldn’t cast a vote for himself, but for a “better man, Robert E. Lee,” who, like himself, was against the clauses that disenfranchised ex-confederates. 

His message carried. At the Conservative’s statewide meeting John Edmunds said, Walker would bring white voters to the polls giving them a win, then with “the Legislature and the Judiciary in their hands,” they could once again have “a state of affairs such as used to exist.”  

At the same meeting, Col. Baldwin said, Walker ‘would give them the means by which they could bridge over the next four years,” and if the Conservatives turned out for him they would control “his policy” and the State and they could take back the vote from Black people, “suffrage would be dead and the white man’s party would be strong and rule” again.  

On July 6, 1869, Virginians ratified the new constitution, approved the 14th and 15th Amendments and elected representatives to the General Assembly. Wells garnered less than half the vote (46 percent). The Conservative-Republican coalition won control of the Executive branch and the General Assembly. 

In Alexandria

Virginia was on its way to rejoining the Union. The Constitution was overwhelmingly accepted with a vote of 3,507 Alexandrians. The city went for Wells for Governor (1834) over Walker (1680), preferred the Conservative C. Whittlesey to represent them in Congress, but Republican Lewis McKenzie won the District. 

Edgar Snowden Jr. ran as a Conservative for the state Senate and won with 1,674 votes. Thomas Taylor, also a Conservative, won the other seat with 1,673 votes. Together, the two white men represented Alexandria, Fairfax and Loudon. 

George Seaton, a Black Alexandrian, ran for the House of Delegates and garnered more ballots than either Snowden or Taylor, winning by a vote of 1807. His overwhelming win occurred without the Alexandria Gazette amplifying his campaign. In fact, it was despite the paper’s coverage that he triumphed. (38)

James Close was elected to serve alongside Seaton, but he suddenly died before the session opened. Rubin Johnson, a former unionist who leaned conservative, won a special election with the Gazette’s blessing, acquiring 1,681 votes. He beat Conservative D.L. Smoot, a former Confederate who served under Gen. Robert E. Lee. (Smoot later led the charge to change the name of Water Street to honor Lee after the General’s death.) 

In Virginia

More than 175 lawmakers were elected to the General Assembly. The Coalition of white Conservative and Moderate Republicans held a Majority to which Edgar Snowden, Jr. belonged. George Seaton was one of 21 African Americans elected to the House of Delegates and six who won Senate seats, he was in the minority. Still, he was assigned to the Schools and Colleges Committee guaranteeing he would have a hand in drafting Virginia’s public schools into existence.(39)

Snowden and Seaton arrived in Richmond on the 8th day of October for a special session to approve the new Constitution and ratify the 14th and 15th Amendments. “Radical” members, alarmed by Gov. Walker’s campaign promises that threatened civil rights and education, brought resolutions to the floor of both Chambers. 

When addressing the 15th Amendment, some House members attempted to attach a measure to make sure Conservatives wouldn’t disenfranchise Black men by adding language to make sure it would “take effect on and after the admission of the State of Virginia as a coequal State.” 

It lost 101 to 5. 

In the Senate, J.W. D. Bland, a Black Senator representing Prince Edward Co., offered a resolution that would have confirmed the state’s commitment to establishing a public school system. It was tabled. (40)

Sen. Frank Wood, white, from Petersburg, proffered a resolution guaranteeing a second ratification of the 14th and 15th Amendments after joining the Union “if so asked by Congress.” Sen. Bland supported the resolution and said it would show “good faith” and “reassure and allay the fears” of the African Americans in Virginia. 

Sen. David Carr, white from Sussex, urged its adoption, that is when Alexandria Sen. Snowden rose in opposition, according to the Richmond Times Dispatch, saying he “hoped there was some back-bone left in the people of Virginia. Was the good faith of the Legislature to be impugned? What next was to be required of us? We have already done a work of supererogation in the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. As far as he was concerned not another particle of dirt should be crammed down the throats of this down-trodden and oppressed people, and although forced to our knees, it was hardly to be expected that we should fall prone on our bellies and crawl in the dirt. Virginia had in good faith complied with the conditions made for her admission into the Union by the Congress of the United States, and now, having done all, and more than all, that was required by those who had some shadow of authority to force these measures upon us, here was another condition attempted to be enforced by some unknown would-be power behind the throne, or somewhere else, that directly impeaches the honesty and integrity of the representatives of the people…He had done all he intended to do. We had, in the opinion of many, gone beyond the requirements of Congress for the purpose of restoring peace and harmony, and thus giving new life and impetus to the languishing interests of our State. If the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments was not sufficient in itself, he did not know what would satisfy the whims of a faction. The honor of Virginia having been pledged by the action of the Legislature today, he solemnly protested against any further submission and the passage of any other resolution on this distasteful subject.” 

A call to adjourn without voting on the resolution followed Snowden’s diatribe, which incensed him further because he had hoped to vote it down. The Senate President broke the tie vote to adjourn and forced lawmakers out of the Chamber. (41)

In Congress

Concerns over Walker’s leadership and Conservative control of Virginia’s legislature sailed across the Potomac and threatened the reunification vote in Congress.  

Sen. Sumner told his colleagues, the people of Virginia, “were appealed to by the candidate for Governor to choose him, that through him, they might nullify the proposed constitution and trample out the system of free schools in Virginia.”

“Isn’t that grand?” he asked. 

“The election was carried on that appeal…the people came forward and voted for this Gov. Walker because they expected through him, according to his language, to control the State. Through him to nullify the proposed constitution, and then again through him, to trample out the proposed system of free schools.”

The act readmitting Virginia to the Union and giving the state representation in Congress went through and was signed by President Ulysses Grant Jan. 26, 1870. 

In Virginia

Lawmakers were called back to Richmond and the General Assembly opened for official business on Tuesday, Feb.8, 1870. Rep. Seaton and the House education panel were asked to bring a bill to elect a Superintendent of Public Instruction as soon as possible. They did, then the Conservative member’s caucused, Snowden among them, and anointed a nominee: William Henry Ruffner. The former enslaver, confederate soldier, and Presbyterian Minister was active in the recolonization movement. He was an old-line Whig, who the Richmond Dispatch “considered a gentleman of fine ability, and eminently fitted for the position.” (42)

On Wednesday, March 2, 1870, 141 lawmakers elected Ruffner to be the first Superintendent of Public Instruction. Edgar Snowden, Jr., Senator and Richmond Correspondent supported free schools as long as they weren’t mixed. In his column in the Alexandria Gazette, he wrote that Ruffner, “is regarded as a man of great intellectual vigor, sound judgement and finished education, and has been from his boyhood chiefly or indirectly connected with some prominent institution of learning. He is a man of pleasing address, and is thoroughly up to the requirements of the times. He is now forty six years of age, and physically equal to the work before him, and profoundly intent upon the successful organization of the important department which has been committed to his supervision.” (43)

Per the Constitution’s mandate, Ruffner was given 30 days to develop the plan to launch the statewide system of tax supported schools. He went straight to work, building on New Jersey’s and Pennsylvania's school systems and consulting legal expert John B. Minor, as well as Barnas Sears, Head of the Peabody Education Fund and former President of Brown University. 

Six days after Ruffner’s appointment, Gov. Walker addressed the General Assembly in a letter in which he came out against integrated schools. In order for Black people to vote “intelligently” he wrote, “the opportunity for education should, and under our Constitution must, be afforded them. This cannot, however, be accomplished by any system of mixed schools. Each race must be provided for separately.” (44)

On Monday, March 28th, Ruffner handed lawmakers a defense of the merits of public education and a plan for setting up the system. Sec. 26 required segregation, “Separate schools shall be provided for white and colored [sic] children under the same general regulations.” (45)

In his opening salvo, Ruffner, justified the need for free schools, explaining to reluctant white Virginians that suffrage demands education and private schools were not up to the task. “A great interest like this, so essential to the prosperity of a state, cannot be safely left to private enterprise, or to the laws of trade,” he wrote, adding that “free schools are not only cheaper than private schools, but as a rule, they are better, and for these reasons, to wit: Every teacher is proved by examination to be competent, the pay is sure and prompt, the schools are organized and conducted by the best methods, the school houses are more comfortable and better provided with school apparatus, and over all is uniform system and intelligent supervision.”(46)

Based on Ruffner’s outline, the Senate drafted SB 150, “An Act to Establish and Maintain a Uniform System of Public Free Schools.” African American Senators and House Members worked in concert to rid the evolving system of segregation. Lawmakers from Richmond, Norfolk and Petersburg had mixed schools in their cities, and brought their experience with them. (47)

When SB150 was read, Sen. William Moseley of Goochland, who was Black, moved to strike the segregating words, “Provided that white and colored persons shall not be taught in the same school, but in separate schools, under the same general regulations as to management, usefulness and efficiency.” The measure failed. Sen. Snowden helped kill it. 

After the Senate passed the bill and handed it off to the House, Del. J.B. Miller, Jr., a Black member also from Goochland and a teacher, proposed striking the same words Sen. Moseley had recommended in the Senate. Seventeen Black legislators, including Alexandria’s Del. Seaton voted for the amendment. Two white lawmakers, McCracken and Wentworth joined them. But an overwhelming number of white members voted against it. (48)

If children were going to be educated in separate schools, African American Delegates needed to make sure they were able to govern their schools. Petersburg Del. William Stevens moved to amend the section on school governance by adding, “But it is especially provided that no distinction shall be made in the appointment of the schools trustees provided for in this section on account of race or color.” This too was rejected, but it had the support of 35 members, including Rep. Seaton who was a founding trustee of two Alexandria schools.

In addition to fighting segregation, African American delegates pushed back hard against attempts by white lawmakers to defund Black schools. Rep. William Willey Arnett, an ex-confederate Colonel, who represented Clarke Co., offered an amendment that would require white only school districts and ensure white people’s taxes paid solely for their children’s education.  

In the end, they lost - schools were going to be segregated and governed by white officials. As the vote was tallied, 24 Delegates voted against it, including Del. Seaton and 16 other African American legislators.(50)

Gov. Walker signed the bill into law on July 11, 1870. 

In Congress

Virginia was the only reconstructed state to require segregated schools.  South Carolina and Louisiana’s new constitutions prohibited segregated schools, other state constitutions, like Virginia’s were vague, but no other General Assembly had the temerity to taunt Congress in such a way. 

Massachusetts Sen. Sumner introduced another Civil Rights Bill, written with the help of Virginian John Mercer Langston, who later served as the state’s first Black Congressman. (51)

This legislation guaranteed all citizens, regardless of color, “equal and impartial enjoyment of any accommodation, advantage, facility or privilege” ending segregation in public spaces, including, and fundamentally, in schools.

“The equal rights, promised by the great Declaration” must not be sacrificed to prejudice,” Sumner said. The idea, he said, that separate schools were equal was a “slave doctrine,” an “odious discrimination…ill-disguised violation of equality.” 

“It is, plain oppression,” he added. (52)

Gen. Benjamin Butler pushed a companion bill in the House. Most African Americans in Virginia were counting on the federal statute to force states to treat them fairly, but year-after-year it languished. 

In Alexandria

Conservatives held a majority on the City Council, which meant segregation was the bedrock upon which Alexandria’s school system was built and maintained. The city paid extra to operate four schools instead of one. Boys and girls were separated by gender and skin color into four buildings. 

State authorities chose Richard Carne to be Alexandria’s first Superintendent of Schools. He and an all-white School Board of Trustees operated the schools. Alexandria’s First Free School Society, founded by Rep. Seaton, which had funded, built, staffed and operated two schools for the Black community since the end of the war were not included or consulted. From the early 1800s until the repression that followed retrocession, then from the early days of Union control through liberation, Black Alexandrians controlled their education. In 1870, when white authorities took over, Black Alexandrians lost their agency.

The city built schools for white students and paid rent (at least, initially) to the African American Trustees to continue educating children from Black community in their buildings. Insultingly, Carne changed the name of the Seaton School to honor Edgar Snowden, Jr. African American boys in Alexandria were made to attend the Snowden School for boys. The girls attended the Alfred Street school building, located near Princess, that Carne renamed Hallowell after Benjamin Hallowell who had educated Alexandria’s elite. 

Ironically, since the two schools Alexandria’s Black children attended were already operating before 1870, their experienced teachers provided them with a higher quality education than their white peers initially received. Not surprisingly, Black students had better outcomes on examinations. (53)

In Congress

Progress hit a roadblock in 1873, when the Supreme Court narrowly interpreted the 14th Amendment. The Slaughterhouse Decision implied that Congress didn’t have the power to tell states to integrate which “changed the tenor of the debate” on Civil Rights.

Then on March 11, 1874, Charles Sumner died. His last wish was for the Civil Rights Bill he had crusaded for - that included desegregation of schools - to become law. His colleagues in the Senate prioritized passage of the bill.

In Virginia

Superintendent Ruffner was promoting universal education with the passion of a missionary, giving speeches, debating and writing articles, all in an attempt to sell public schools to Virginians. As part of his crusade, Ruffner fought integration because he believed whites would abandon mixed schools. When Sumner’s death resuscitated the Civil Rights Bill, Ruffner wrote in Scribner's Monthly,

“Would it secure the co-education of the races? Impossible! Would education be facilitated in anyway? It would inevitably be destroyed, as a public affair. There are now more than a million and a half of children, white and Black, in the public schools of the fifteen ex-Slave States. What would be the subsequent reputation of any statesman who would aid in passing a law, the only practical effect of which would be to turn these school children out of doors?”

Black people can “justly claim” that their schools be “equal in all respects” to those of white students, Ruffner stated, admitting it cost more, but as long as white people will pay for it, he suggested they keep it that way.  

Ruffner’s article, a misogynist, anti-Black, antisemitic commentary, also showed disdain for those with less means. Ruffner approved of school boards manipulating districts, especially in cities, to keep the “fouler classes as far as practicable from the more decent,” adding that the “poverty that is so often the legacy of slavery disinclines an influential part of the Southern people” from supporting the schools. Any attempt to mix the races he said, “should be regarded as base and malicious. 

It would defeat the public school system.” (54)

In Alexandria

As momentum grew for Congress to approve the Civil Rights Act, Alexandria’s School Board members discussed their fears. Superintendent Carne, like Ruffner, believed passage would be a death knell for white schools. Perhaps, he mused, the churches could teach Alexandria’s white children when the system collapses under the weight of equality.

An earlier version of the legislation allowed the U.S. President to take over local schools that refused to desegregated while locals footed the bill. Carne lamented that hundreds of northern teachers would return to force integration upon them and Alexandria’s taxpayers would have to pay for the injustice. “It would be better,” he said, to support mixed schools for the short term and avoid bringing such a “great evil upon us.”

Some board members wanted to send a delegation to Congress armed with a resolution expressing their opposition to integrated schools. But Board Member Edgar Snowden, Jr., said it wasn’t necessary because the City Council and the General Assembly would never bend on segregation.(55)

In Congress

In November 1874, polls opened as the Civil Rights Bill was still wending its way through Congress. Democrats campaigned on Civil Rights, turning what had been a winning issue for Republicans in ‘66 against them. Between those who were against Civil Rights - many in the newly reconstructed states- and the reformers frustrated the bill hadn’t passed after four years of debate, Republicans lost 89 seats in the House and nine in the Senate.

Rep. Gen. Butler believed if they had moved faster on the bill they wouldn’t have lost, “The people turned from us because we were a do nothing party, afraid of our shadows.”  

When Congress returned in December, Democrats claimed they had a mandate, but they weren’t in power yet. Republicans were determined to get as many protections as they could for African Americans before leaving Washington. The Judicial Committee managed to pull enough votes together to offer a bill that again sacrificed schools, but desegregated inns, common carriers, and other public accommodations. 

An amendment was offered on the House floor to restore schools to the list, but it failed 114 to 148. Each of the 114 votes was cast by Republicans, but those who had to run again in ‘76 “abandoned the cause in droves.”(56)

Upon the bill’s return to the Senate, no one attempted to restore the schools clause and it passed on Feb. 27, 1875 - a month before the Democratic majority took over the House. President Grant signed it in March, but never enforced it and in 1883, the Supreme Court overruled it. 

In the Virginia Law Review, Michael McConnell argues that the drafters of the 14th Amendment believed it established integrated schools. McConnell found that from 1871-1875 there were 10 Senate and eight in the House votes in which a majority (but less than two-thirds) voted “for legislation premised on the unconstitutionality of school segregation.” In addition, separate-but-equal schools were defeated 100 percent of the time and “there was a high correlation between votes on the 14th Amendment and votes in favor of school desegregation.” 

Procedural challenges, such as filibuster tactics and the need for supermajorities are the reason it was so difficult to keep integrated schools in the Civil Rights Acts.

Before the Democrats routed Republicans in November 1874, at least 70 percent of Congress and 90 percent of Republicans consistently supported integrated schools. Even after the ill-fated election, 64 percent of Republicans backed school integration, according to McConnell. Not surprisingly, by the 1880s, almost every former union state had abolished school segregation. (57)

These facts undermine arguments that at the time, separating children into schools based on the color of their skin was normal and acceptable. There were majorities (although not supermajorities) who recognized it was wrong and wanted change even in the 19th century.

In Conclusion

At the end of the Civil War, the majority of Americans lived in states that supported the Union and  wanted to shore up Democracy by giving Black men the right to vote, and the nation’s children the right to an education. Many Republicans - white and Black -believed civil rights rested on subsequent generations being educated together. It was the best path to break the culture of slavery and oligarchy that engulfed the South. 

Republicans dominated Virginia’s Constitutional Convention and while they were in power progress was made toward equality. After the Constitution was ratified without the rebel disenfranchisement clause, Conservatives returned to power. They segregated schools, criminalized Black people, instituted chain gangs and eventually made good on their promise to disenfranchise Black men. 

If only Thomas Bayne’s four words “without distinction of color” had made it into the Constitution, Virginia would have had integrated schools for at least two generations. Lynchings might not have become commonplace, Jim Crow may not have risen, and the Brown Decision may not have been an issue for Virginians.

The moment Congressional Republicans lost their nerve and failed to support the vote to keep mixed schools in the Civil Rights Bill of 1875 it was game over. African Americans were relegated to living a step beyond slavery’s iron chains and the 1950’s so longed for by two-thirds of today’s Republicans, was assured to become reality. 

Segregated classrooms were the foundation of the incredible scaffolding of lies and misinformation needed to uphold the hierarchy - a nouveau slavery. Generations of cloistered children were sold a nostalgic story of a mythical past that perpetuated discrimination while comforting all classes of white people. So successful was the propaganda, the South was able to export their southern comfort culture of segregation, dejure, de facto, voucher, to the rest of the Union. 

In 1870, Virginia’s General Assembly, the first to require separate schools, led the south in segregation. After Brown vs. Board, Virginia again led the states in a campaign of Massive Resistance to integration. Southern lawmakers enacted more than 450 laws to avoid desegregating and to defund public schools. From 1950 to 1965, private school rolls burst across the nation as white students abandoned their community schools. In Alexandria, more than 1,000 white families fled the schools citing low standards, discipline and safety as reasons - perceptions some still have today that are rooted in propaganda from the past.

The Equal Justice Initiative said, after Reconstruction, white Americans launched an “era from which this nation has yet to recover.” That is why so many white Americans are capable of thinking life was better in a time when there was grave inequality and injustice.

By Tiffany Danitz Pache, Alexandria Community Remembrance Project Coordinator.

Endnotes:

1. The Public Religion Research Institute American Values Survey states: Two thirds of dems (68 percent) and 49 percent of Independents say the country has changed for the better since the 1950s. A third of Republicans agree with them. By contrast, the percentage of Democrats who agree that American culture and way of life since the 1950s has changed mostly for the better has steadily increased, from 55% in 2013 to 68% in 2024. Republicans are at 31 percent, up from 23 percent in 2013, but lower than a higher percentage for this group since then.
2. Oligarchy and Democracy From The Civil War to the Present, by Bill Moyers and Heather Cox Richardson, Aug. 2020.
3. The Confederacy was made up of 11 states, the U.S. forces represented 20 states and five border states (some with divided loyalties). A majority of the people  of the United States lived in the Union before, during, and after the Civil War.
4. An opportunity that had the ruling people been ready for, should have included Native Americans. Because that was not under consideration, but women's suffrage was, it was not included in this paragraph.
5. How the South Won the Civil War, Oligarchy, Democracy and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America, by Heather Cox Richardson, Oxford University Press, 2020.
6. “Source of the Civil War,” according to The Constitutional Compromise, by Derek Black’s Stanford Law Review, 2018, Vol 70, Issue 3.
7. The Black Convention Movement and Black Politics in 19th Century America; Alexandria held a Colored Convention at the Lyceum in August 1865; Douglass presided over a meeting in Syracuse, New York in early 1865 that led to the founding of The Equal Rights League.
8. Emily Hess, “It Must Develop Men: Frederick Douglass and Education in 19th Century America.” p. 122, Ashland University.
9. Massachusetts was the first place to provide widely accessible taxpayer-funded schooling—Boston’s schools banned racial segregation years before the Civil War—and  made elementary school compulsory. Schools focused on reading, writing, arithmetic and civics. The very idea of taxing people to pay for other people’s children to be educated was a new concept to many of Virginia’s old guard and difficult for them to accept. Believing that the entire community benefits by the education of all of its children was central to the Common Schools Movement.
10. Although it had become illegal to force Black citizens to use separate cars on the railroads in 1842, the State Supreme Court allowed the segregation to continue. Benjamin Roberts, a Black abolitionist, filed the suit in 1848 when his five year old daughter was denied admission to the white public school. She was expected to attend a Black school that Roberts said was inferior. He demanded integration of all Boston schools and $600 in damages. Massachusetts Supreme Court Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw first uttered the “separate but equal” doctrine with his decision. The Bay State legislature then passed a law “prohibiting all distinctions of color and religion in Massachusetts public school admissions” in 1855.
11. Minnesota also had integrated schools and a small Black population.
12. New York State had a higher number of illiterate, but they. had many more foreign born residents. When looking just at native speakers who were illiterate, Virginia had more -83,300. With Virginia's foreign residents added the number of illiterate rises to 86,452, according to the Census, p. 7.
13. Dwayne Yancey, Cardinal News, June 19, 2023.
14. Emily Hess, “It Must Develop Men: Frederick Douglass and Education in 19th Century America.” Ashland University, 121.
15. The Republican Platform 1864 Read: Resolved, That as slavery was the cause, and now constitutes the strength of this Rebellion, and as it must be, always and everywhere, hostile to the principles of Republican Government, justice and the National safety demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic; and that, while we uphold and maintain the acts and proclamations by which the Government, in its own defense, has aimed a deathblow at this gigantic evil, we are in favor, furthermore, of such an amendment to the Constitution, to be made by the people in conformity with its provisions, as shall terminate and forever prohibit the existence of Slavery within the limits of the jurisdiction of the United States.
16. Hess, 120.
17. George Boutwell was at the center of efforts to abolish slavery, establish the Republican Party, assist President Lincoln in funding the Union war effort, facilitate Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, impeach President Andrew Johnson, and frame and enact the Fourteenth and Fifteenth civil rights amendments.
18. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was passed by Congress on April 9, 1866; Senate: The Senate approved the bill on February 2, 1866 by a vote of 33-12. House of Representatives: The House of Representatives approved the bill on March 13, 1866 by a vote of 111-38.
19. Michael W. McConnell, "Originalism and the Desegregation Decisions," 81 Virginia Law Review 947 (1995), p.960.
20. The 14th Amendment overruled Dred Scott v. Sanford and guaranteed that all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. are citizens. States could not take away or deprive anyone of the privileges and immunities of citizenship, including life, liberty, or property without due process of law, and they could not deny anyone equal protection of the law.
21. McConnell, pp.967-969.
22. There were also Conservative Republicans and war Democrats who supported the union during the conflict. In addition to Conservatives who became Democrats, moderate Democrats also held office at this time. After the war, some conservative Republicans became Democrats.
23. “Conservatives battling to hang on to Virginia’s old ways. John Hauxhurst again proposed many far-out innovations, as many as he had during the fashioning of the Restored Constitution of 1864. The public schools which he advocated in 1864 was approved again; and his proposal to allow blacks to testify in court (voted down in 1864) was this time approved, with the added provision that blacks could also serve on juries. Hauxhurst also led in pushing through the proposal to obtain most of the state’s revenue through property and income taxes instead of the poll tax, thus making Virginia’s taxing system a progressive one.” The Friendly Virginians America’s First Quakers, Jay Worrall, Jr., 1994, Charlottesville, VA p. 445.
24. Lewis McKenzie was a unionist and a moderate who served in city government (mayor), helped establish the Restored Government and West Virginia, he served in Congress and the Virginia House of Delegates.
25. Linus Nickerson was a native of New York who joined the Union Army and moved to Fairfax after the war. He was a minister and a teacher.
26. Alexandria Gazette, Oct. 23, 1867.
27. Ibid.
28. The Friendly, p. 444.
29. Virginia. Constitutional Convention (1867-1868)., Samuel, W. H. (William H.). (1868). The Debates and proceedings of the Constitutional convention of the state of Virginia: assembled at the city of Richmond, tuesday, December 3, 1867: being a full and complete report of the debates and proceedings of the convention, together with the reconstruction acts of Congress and those supplementary thereto, the order of the commander of the First military district assembling the convention, and the new constitution. Richmond: Printed at the office of the New nation. p. 96.
30. Thomas Bayne, who was literate, had been enslaved by a Dentist and worked as his assistant in Norfolk, VA. He liberated himself, taking the underground railroad to Massachusetts in the 1850s where he opened a dental practice. Bayne returned to Norfolk where he continued working as a dentist and a preacher.
31. Convention, Ibid, p. 216.
32. During the Convention, Deconstructing Virginia, May 23-31, 1867.
33. Convention, Ibid, p.150.
34.  Alexandria delegate Linus Nickerson successfully included a specific provision in the Constitutions that prevented any further attempts at Virginia secession.
35. Convention, Ibid, 704: Education Plan.
36. Delegates to each of the Southern constitutional conventions advocated for mixed schools but few were successful. Louisiana and South Carolina were the only states to offer constitutions prohibiting segregation. However, all attempts requiring schools to be segregated were blocked by Black delegates. In the end none of the state constitutions required segregated schools, although Congress didn’t like it when Virginia's General Assembly, after being readmitted, required segregation, according to McConnell.
37. The strongly worded clause stated: “The Constitution of Virginia shall never be so amended as to deprive any citizen or class of citizens of the United States of the school rights and privileges secured by the Constitution of said State.”
38. Alexandria Gazette, Sept. 28, 1869, p.3
39. Seaton was also assigned to the Banks, Currency and Commerce Committee.
40. JWD Bland was killed when the floor of the courtroom in the Capitol collapsed on April 27, 1870. He was succeeded by John T. Hawlett on June 2, 1870.
41. The legislators were sent home to await Congressional approval and recognition. In the meantime, they were expected to begin meeting with their committees so they could hit the ground running in the new session.
42. William Ruffner didn’t agree with his father’s view that all of the enslaved in Western Virginia should be emancipated and he thought it was in line with God’s Word. However, “it was an economic burden, and on that account should be gotten rid of.” He was a preacher and re-colonization advocate; he leased at least four enslaved African Americans and served in the Confederate Army. 
43. Richmond Dispatch, Wed. March 2, 1870;Alexandria Gazette, Wed. March 2, p.2.
44. This decision that gave a green light to segregation contributed to a growing dismay between Republicans and Walker. At a meeting in April they passed resolutions of no confidence in Walker, especially in his obligation to carry out the 14th and 15th amendments; Richmond Dispatch, Wed. March 9, 1970, p. 3.
45. Outline plan of School superintendent that the legislature used to implement the public school system, article IX, section 26 - separate schools for black and white children. P. 707 of the Senate Journal.
46. Ibid, pp.3-4.
47. Schools established by the Freedmen’s Bureau were only for African Americans. There were mixed schools after the war in Petersburg, Richmond and Norfolk. These were dismantled after “white supremacist Democrats asserted control again” culminating in the Constitution of 1902 which reduced the vote by half. This is from an article in the online encyclopedia of Virginia, African Americans and Politics in Virginia 1865-1902.
48. The next day, when SB 150 returned to the House floor, two of the lawmakers fighting the segregation clause were out attending to an African American Delegate who was jailed in Richmond “in violation of his rights and privileges.”
49. 24 reps voted against it (64 voted for it); their names are below - if in Bold they were Black representatives.
50. The House Delegates who voted against SB150: Brisby, Cox, Dugger, Edward, Hamilton, CE Hodges, JQ Hodges, PK Jones RGW Jones, McCracken, JB Miller jr., F.S. Norton, R. Norton, Owen, F.M. Perkins, Ragsdale, G.L. Seaton, Stevens, Steward, Toy, Thayer, Wentworth, White, Wilson.
51. Langston was elected to Congress in 1890-91.
52. McConnell, p.977.
53. When exam results were released at the end of the first full school year, in June 1872, the Superintendent praised the staff at Hallowell School where student “reading was decidedly better than that of the white schools which had [also] been examined. In arithmetic too, the work of some of the children was surprisingly rapid and in all other studies they did well, especially in spelling, in which some of the white schools have been found deficient.” Veteran Black teachers Sarah A. Gray, Jane Crouch, and Harriet B. Douglass taught the girls at Hallowell at the time.
54. "The Co-Education of White and Colored Races," William Henry Raffner, Scribner's Monthly, May-October, 1874.
55. This discussion occurred in May, 1874, see Black Education in Alexandria, Part 2.
56. McConnell, p.1107.
57. McConnell, p.967; McConnell Analysis:: From 1871-1875, over the course of 10 votes in the Senate and eight in the House, a majority found segregated schools unconstitutional. Every attempt to pass legislation that advocated separate but equal schools failed. Lawmakers who supported the 14th Amendment also voted for mixed schools.

Helpful Documents

https://review.law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/03/70-Stan.-L.-Rev.-735.pdf

The Constitutional Compromise to Guarantee Education Derek W. Black*

Stanford Law Review, March 2018, Vol.70,738-743

Michael W. McConnell, "Originalism and the Desegregation Decisions," 81 Virginia Law Review 947 (1995). 

House Journal:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.78113714&seq=7 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.78113492&seq=608&q1=June

Journal of the Senate:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112108214807&seq=654

Report of the Superintendent:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=miun.abe5964.0001.001&seq=1

Constitutional Convention of 1867

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.li14pl&seq=1

May to October 1874 - Scribners William Ruffner

https://community.village.virginia.edu/howwememorialize/wahwm_images/sources/ruffner/RUFFNER-F-Scribners-monthly.pdf

Alexandria Community Remembrance Project

About ACRP

The Alexandria Community Remembrance Project (ACRP) is a city-wide initiative dedicated to helping Alexandria understand its history of racial terror hate crimes and to work toward creating a welcoming community bound by equity and inclusion.

In Memoriam

• Joseph McCoy
• Benjamin Thomas
   

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