June 2024 Edition
The 70 Year Struggle To Make Brown Stick
Seventy years ago this month, behind closed doors in the old confederate Capital of Richmond, Virginia, the leaders of the South met and once again plotted rebellion.
On May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court invalidated the “separate but equal doctrine” that had been used since 1896 to deny African Americans full citizenship. The unanimous Brown v. Board of Education decision held that separate schools were “inherently unequal” and violated the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Virginia’s racist unratified 1902 Constitution that codified segregation into law was finally seen for what it always was: illegal.
Virginia Attorney General J. Lindsay Almond, Jr. disparaged the decision, saying that admitting Black students to white schools “will destroy the public school system in the South.”
The Supreme Court delayed questions about compliance until their next session which would be held after the new school year began. Virginia used that time to wage a campaign to render the decision irrelevant - it was successful for more than a decade.
Immediately, southern officials and newspapers smothered the decision with red scare spin saying that Communist propaganda forced the Court’s hand. T.C. Williams told the Carlyle Women’s Club on May 18, “our present foreign policy no doubt had much bearing on the Supreme Court decision as Iron Curtain countries propagandize our segregation laws,” according to the Alexandria Gazette.
In a May 20, editorial titled “A New Law Is Made” the Alexandria Gazette said that Russia and other Communist countries “have whipped up sentiment abroad…depicting white Americans as hostile to Negro [sic] Americans, with segregated schools as “evidence” – a fallacious contention.”
There is a long history of white conservatives linking both the civil rights cause, its leaders and adherents to communism. If there was a foreign influence on the unanimous Supreme Court decision in Brown, it was more likely to have been by the United Nations and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, according to legal scholar David Sloss.
“Adoption of the Charter sparked a chain of events culminating in the Supreme Court decision in Brown v Board of Education, which heralded the end of apartheid in the U.S.,” Sloss wrote in a paper published by Santa Clara University.
The Gazette editors accused the Court of “creating law by opinion,” stating, “The Court has moved beyond the letter of the recorded law, beyond history and custom, and has followed emotions and sociological tenets by its own assertion that ‘equal but separate’ is not truly ‘equal’ and that white and Negro [sic] children must actually sit in the same schools together, using the same toilets and drinking fountains and equipment, to contravene ‘discrimination.’”
To explain the Court’s reasoning, local African American leaders did not invoke communism, but the Declaration of Independence. In a statement, Virginia’s NAACP expressed “sincere gratification” for the “landmark” decision. President Dr. J. M. Tinsley, said he hoped Americans would “reexamine their racial views in light of present day knowledge and needs and that the American ideal of equality of man will develop in a harmonious manner.”
Church bells rang out in Northwest Washington, D.C. announcing services of thanksgiving. Rev. Smallwood E. Williams of Bible Way Church said, “we consider this the greatest thing that has happened to us since Gen. Lee surrendered.” The District made plans to implement integrated schools as soon as September 1954.
Dr. Martin O’ Julius, President of Morgan College in Baltimore, called the decision “a great victory for the American people and the American way of life.” Maryland’s Governor McKeldon, supported the Court’s decision and said the state would move forward “without undue delay.”
Meanwhile, Virginia mulled its options. According to an Associated Press story that ran in the Alexandria Gazette, Virginia could choose to obey the law and integrate; or create “a lease arrangement” where private organizations would take control of and operate public schools as private to keep them segregated; or local school boards could override the law by drawing attendance zones that would maintain segregation.
“Education officials point out that attendance districts in cities would likely be such that many Negro [sic] pupils would continue going to their present schools. Similarly, most white pupils would remain in their present schools. The reasoning here was that attendance districts would be formed on the basis of various neighborhoods and since most white schools are in white neighborhoods, and Negro [sic] schools in Negro [sic] neighborhoods, integration would have little effect,” the AP reported.
Although playing fields for Alexandria’s single white and single Black high schools abutted one another, making this option challenging, T.C. Williams agreed with the concept. Explaining to the Carlyle Women’s Club that less than 14 percent of Alexandria’s children were Black and basically lived in one part of town, “geographical zoning is the only defensible plan that can be used in unifying the school system,” he said.
On May 19, Virginia Gov. Stanley met with John S. Battle and Colgate W. Darden, previous governors of the Commonwealth, and the Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Dowel J. Howard, and Attorney General Almond.
On May 24, he met with five Black leaders representing different parts of the state. Over two hours the Black delegates tried to persuade Stanley to allow schools to integrate voluntarily in September. Stanley also heard from white authorities who hailed from areas of the state where Black pupils outnumbered white. Soon after, the Governor indicated to reporters that “Virginia will make no move to integrate until the Supreme Court issues a formal degree for the end of segregation.”
On May 27, Virginia’s Board of Education advised school boards representing 669,632 pupils, 172,480 who were Black, to continue segregating schools in September.
Alexandria’s Williams, said school officials here would not prepare to integrate “until non-segregation becomes a reality in Virginia. So far, nothing is changed because State laws are still the same,” he stated.
On June 10, 1954, in Richmond, leaders from 12 Southern states met and decided to revolt. They would have their attorney’s general meet over the summer “in an effort to find legal loopholes that would permit the states to continue their traditional system of racial segregation in the public schools.”
The next day, Attorney General Almond said “Negro teachers are not going to be engaged in Virginia to teach white children,” and “no child of any race is going to be compelled to attend a mixed school.” There was, he said, “overwhelming sentiment” for segregation in the legislature.
The Equal Justice Initiative says the meeting in Richmond ended with “bold and unapologetic vows of resistance” that inspired and encouraged white communities to engage in campaigns of massive resistance.” But, the Brown decision signaled the start of a cultural shift in racial dynamics in the U.S., according to EJI.
Alexandria’s schools didn’t begin to cautiously integrate until 1963 after T.C. Williams retired. Under the leadership of his successor, John Albohm, a small number of Black children were assigned to white schools. Two years later, in 1965, they assigned students to neighborhood schools and when they did, the legacy of enslavement and Jim Crow was revealed in eye-popping poverty among the Black neighborhoods in Old Town.
Immediately, white concerns coalesced around a perception that poor Black students would cause the quality of academics to decline and discipline problems to rise.
It would not be until the early 1970s that school authorities would desegregate high school students (1971) and completely integrate elementary schools (1973). The last battle conservative white Alexandrians waged and lost was over bussing – in the end, students had to share the burden equally. In response, more than 1,000 white families fled the school system citing the following reasons: low standards, discipline, and safety. These same white perceptions that continue to dominate public school debates to this day are actually rooted in Massive Resistance to desegregation.
Read more about Black Education, segregation and massive resistance in Alexandria.
Newspaper sources included: The Alexandria Gazette from May 17, 1954-June 20, 1954; the Associated Press, May 18, 1954, Richmond Times Dispatch, May18 and 29, 1954, the Free Lance Star May 23, 1954, the Evening Star, May 18, 1854. The Equal Justice Initiative History of Racial Injustice Calendar’s June 10th, 2024 issue stated that 12 states met in Richmond at Gov. Stanley’s behest. However, the local newspapers at the time recorded that 15 states met. ACRP chose to use EJI’s account.
CORRECTION TO APRIL 2024 NEWSLETTER:
In the feature story titled “Fight Back,” ACRP provided an account of the pre-civil war schism over slavery of the historic Trinity Methodist Church in Alexandria and misidentified the secessionist members. In 1849, a group of congregants who disagreed with Trinity’s antislavery sentiment held a meeting on June 1, 1849 to elect an alternative slate of trustees. In the Alexandria Gazette, June 1, 1849, p.3, the actual trustees of Trinity appealed to congregants not to attend or participate in the meeting. These trustees included: Mathias Snyder, Benoni Wheat, John Wood, John D. Harrison, John Shackelford, Harrison Emerson, H.L. Simpson (father of Mayor Simpson during the Benjamin Thomas lynching), William N. Berkley and John T. Creighton. In the April 2024 story, these trustees were mistakenly said to be the “secessionist members” who formed their own church. According to the June 4, 1849 Alexandria Gazette, p. 3, the alternative Trinity trustees elected on June 1, were: Joseph Greigg, Harrison Bradley, Samuel Reese, James Devoughn, Peyton Ballenger, John Stephenson, Robert Hunter. Others at the meeting included: Charles Pascoe, Thomas Williams, George Harper and William Davis. The next day, the church administration expelled about 100 members who ended up forming their own church (WSUMC) calling a preacher from the Virginia Conference MEC South.
ACRP is committed to 100 percent accuracy and will provide corrections with context prominently whenever needed.
In the News
Juneteenth
Learn the history behind Juneteenth and its link to current times as described by Heather Cox Richardson in Letters From an American, June 19, 2024. In Richardson’s retelling, the Civil War had “irrevocably undermined the institution of enslavement” making it impossible for white southerners to reinstate it, leading them to claim the war wasn’t about slavery. This grew into a states’ rights argument after Congress created the Freedmen's Bureau to assist and defend the rights of the newly liberated. In reaction, “certain white southerners began to claim that their ‘cause’ had been to protect the rights of the states against a powerful federal government that was forcing on them a way of life they opposed.”
Disturbing Poll Finds Majority of People Living in the South Support the Lost Cause Mythology
Axios reported on a survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute that reveals that 60 percent of those living in the South support preserving the confederacy’s legacy. In addition, they found a third of Americans want to construct about slavery and racism to contextualize Confederate monuments and a quarter of Americans want Confederate monuments to be left as they are. Even worse, more than 60 percent of respondents see both the monuments and the namking of public spaces after Confederates as a symbol of “Southern pride.” Only 33 percent stated that they were symbolic of racism.
Public Memories, Private Struggles, Selma Civil Rights Hero Tries To Keep History Alive
WAPO looks into the preservation of key civil rights sites in the South at the same time education about that struggle is under threat. “In courtrooms and in classrooms, in state legislatures and corporate offices, people are reconsidering how the country's most tortured moments should be presented. With the 60th anniversary of the march from Selma to Montgomery approaching next year, [Phillip] Howard wants to ensure that visitors to his state receive a more robust truth, one that goes beyond a paragraph written on a historical marker.”
Backlash Against Truth in History
A conservative content provider that has been kicked out of google play’s app store for hate speech violations has been approved by a growing number of state legislatures to teach history to students. PragerU offers polished videos that appear like newscasts on YouTube, in one entitled What Happened in Charlottesville? They state that the media lied and then misrepresented the facts. Other videos are titled, What Radical Islam and the Woke Have in Common, and in the Don’t Look Up Genre, Is There Really a Climate Emergency?
In one of the videos produced for school children entitled: Christopher Columbus: Explorer of the New World, a student named Leo is ‘stressed by his teachers” who don’t like Christopher Columbus. He timetravels to 1492 to talk to Columbus. Leo tells the explorer that he learned in school that Columbus “spoiled Paradise and you brought slavery and murder to peaceful people.” To which Columbus cries, “Caramba, those are some accusations, the place I discovered was beautiful, but it wasn’t exactly a paradise of civilization and the native people were far from peaceful.” Later he says, “in Europe we draw the line at things like eating people and human sacrifice.” When Leo confronts Columbus on slavery, the character says “slavery is as old as time and has taken place in every corner of the world,” and then, “being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no?” Read more in the June 13, issue of the Washington Post.
The Nation provides food for thought on the ultimate outcome PragerU desires - an a la cart curriculum steeped in parental rights that will further harm the nation’s schools.
Virginia Steps Back From Teaching Truth
Documents obtained by the Washington Post reveal that the Virginia Department of Education proposed “dozens of revisions to an elective course on African American history,” striking references to white supremacy, racism and removing lessons on implicit bias and equity.
Conservatives Take Local Governing Boards In Wrong Direction
Hanover School Board latest to leave the Virginia School Board Association complaining like Warren and Orange Counties that the VSBA does not support their conservative agenda against: teaching Black history (coded as divisive ideas), renaming schools and public buildings with confederate names and a pro-trans agenda, according to news accounts. We The People, a nonprofit that tracks school boards, said Gov. Youngkin’s “parental rights'' campaign politically polarized a number of school boards and empowered far right candidates to run for school boards and chased off “a lot of really great conservative, local school board members across the state.” Some of those leaving VSBA are joining the School Board Member Alliance of Virginia, a conservative leaning nonprofit, members of which are responsible for the return of Stonewall Jackson and Ashby Lee to monikers at two Shenandoah Schools.
Charlotte County was lauded last fall for unveiling signage at a confederate monument that brought historical context to the lost cause era memorial. In January, however, the Board of Supervisors voted against helping pay for the replacement of two old and damaged state historic markers because they had been updated to mention that both sites used enslaved labor. Kathy Liston, who worked on the contextual marker, chastised the Supervisors in an opinion piece, Black History is not a Woke Idea, that ran in the Charlotte Gazette.
GOP Wants To Return Lost Cause Monument to Arlington Cemetery
Another step backwards happened this month when the House GOP voted to bring back a lost cause statue to Arlington National Cemetery.
More States Ban DEI
In at least 22 states ban or roll back DEI measures at state universities, read more at Stateline.org. But don’t lose hope, Thomas Stewart shares ways of Standing Up To Attacks on Black History and DEI.
Upcoming Events
View the Historic Alexandria Calendar
Benjamin Thomas Remembrance
Thursday, Aug. 8 (time to be announced closer to the event)
Please save Thursday evening, August 8th, to remember the protest that arose in Alexandria and Washington, D.C. after the 1899 lynching of Benjamin Thomas.
Fall ACRP Event - Save the Date!
Saturday, Sept. 21
Committee Reports
Alexandria Community Remembrance Project Steering Committee met at 5 p.m. on June 4, at Alexandria Black History Museum.
Benjamin Thomas Remembrance Planning Committee met at 3:30 p.m. on June 4 at Alexandria Black History Museum.
Upcoming Committee Meetings
Benjamin Thomas Remembrance Planning Committee will meet on July 9, at 3:30 p.m. at Alexandria Black History Museum.
*Note the Steering Committee will not meet in July.
Alexandria Community Remembrance Project
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
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Office of Historic Alexandria
City of Alexandria, Virginia
ACRP@alexandriava.gov