Resilience Amid Resistance

A-141

In July 1956, two years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, federal judge John Paul of Harrisonburg issued the first school desegregation order in VA, ruling for the NAACP in a suit against Charlottesville City Public Schools. In Sept. 1958, after two years of appeals in this case, Paul also sided with the NAACP in a suit against Warren Co. Public Schools. In response, Gov. J. Lindsay Almond closed the schools slated to admit the Black student plaintiffs in these two cases. This was the first use of the state’s Massive Resistance laws to shutter public schools. The VA Supreme Court and a special federal court declared the closures unconstitutional in Jan. 1959.

Department of Historic Resources, 2024

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Harrisonburg Daily News Record, 13 July 1956. Arlington Daily Sun, 13 July 1956. Northern Virginia Daily, 6 Sept. 1958. New York Times, 15 Feb. 1964. Radford News-Journal, 10 Sept. 1958. Brian J. Daugherity, Keep on Keeping On: The NAACP and the Implementation of Brown v. Board in Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016). Betty Kilby Fisher, Wit, Will and Walls (Euless, TX: Cultural Innovations, Inc., 2002). United States Post Office and Courthouse (Harrisonburg), National Register of Historic Places nomination (2018): https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/115-0108_US_Post_Office_and_Courthouse_2018_NRHP_FINAL_signed.pdf “Massive Resistance,” Encyclopedia Virginia: https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/massive-resistance/#:~:text=Massive%20Resistance%20was%20a%20policy,of%20Education%20of%20Topeka%2C%20Kansas. Charlottesville v. Allen: https://casetext.com/case/school-bd-of-city-of-charlottesville-v-allen