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Historical Highway MarkersCalfee Training SchoolKE-7
Pulaski Graded School, later renamed Calfee Training School, was built in 1894. The building, which served Black students eventually through grade 11, burned in 1938. With help from Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP, faculty members Chauncey Harmon and Willis Gravely petitioned the school board in 1939 for equal facilities and teacher pay. Calfee was rebuilt as an elementary school using Public Works Administration funds, and Black high school students were sent away to Christiansburg Industrial Institute. In Corbin v. County School Board (1949), a federal court ruled that Pulaski’s Black high school students were unlawfully denied equal educational opportunities. Schools were desegregated in 1966.
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References/Bibliographic Citation: Southwest Times, 11, 15 Nov. 1938, 1 May 1939, 21 Nov. 1950. Norfolk Journal and Guide, 11 Feb. 1939. Corbin v. County School Board of Pulaski County (1949): https://casetext.com/case/corbin-v-county-school-board-of-pulaski-cty Pulaski Town Council Minute Book 2 Margaret Edds, “Calfee Elementary School: Pulaski Federal Court Case” (typescript, 2022). N. Wayne Tripp, “Chauncey Depew Harmon Senior: A Case Study in Leadership for Educational Opportunity and Equality in Pulaski, Virginia,” Ed.D. Diss., Virginia Tech, 1995. Amanda Brooke Dean, “‘We Don’t Want Them in Our Schools’: Black School Equality, Desegregation, and Resistance in Southwest Virginia, 1920s-1960s,” M.A. Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2023. |