Va. white supremacists disrupt Fairfax PTA: 1954
White supremacist seized a meeting room at Annandale high school April 30, 1954 from a Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) study group on integration and forced the workshop outside onto the school lawn (photo above).
The Fairfax County Federation of PTAs was attempting to hold a workshop on problems presented by the U.S. Supreme Court 1954 decisions outlawing segregation in public schools.
About 100 people led by the Fairfax chapter of the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties disrupted the meeting inside the school for more than one hour with loud booing and hissing and charging that the PTA was “packed” with “pro-integrationists.”
The white supremacists were led by Manning Gasch, president of the Defenders group, Lee Sweeney, a member of the Defenders and Harley Williams a member of the Fairfax High School PTA.
The planned workshop was held by about 80 people in abbreviated form outside while the white supremacists carried out a meeting inside.
In 1954, the political organization of U.S. senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr., controlled Virginia politics. Senator Byrd promoted the "Southern Manifesto" opposing integrated schools, which was signed in 1956 by more than one hundred southern congressmen.
On February 25, 1956, Byrd called for what became known as Massive Resistance. This was a group of laws, passed in 1956, intended to prevent integration of the schools.
A Pupil Placement Board was created with the power to assign specific students to particular schools. Tuition grants were to be provided to students who opposed integrated schools. The linchpin of Massive Resistance was a law that cut off state funds and closed any public school that attempted to integrate.
In September 1958 several schools in Warren County, Charlottesville, and Norfolk were about to integrate under court order. They were seized and closed, but the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals overturned the school-closing law.
Simultaneously, a federal court issued a verdict against the law based on the "equal protection" clause of the 14th Amendment.
Speaking to the General Assembly a few weeks later, Gov. J. Lindsay Almond conceded defeat. Beginning on February 2, 1959, a few courageous black students integrated the schools that had been closed. Still, hardly any African American students in Virginia attended integrated schools.
After Virginia's school-closing law was ruled unconstitutional in January 1959, the General Assembly repealed the compulsory school attendance law and made the operation of public schools a local option for the state's counties and cities.
Schools that had been closed in Front Royal, Norfolk, and Charlottesville reopened because citizens there preferred integrated schools to none at all.
Fairfax resisted integration until token efforts were made in 1960. The school system was not largely integrated until the 1966-67 school year—12 years after the U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Desegregation efforts continued into the 1970s.
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHskWK3q68
Photo by Walter Oates. The image is courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.
Va. white supremacists disrupt Fairfax PTA: 1954
White supremacist seized a meeting room at Annandale high school April 30, 1954 from a Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) study group on integration and forced the workshop outside onto the school lawn (photo above).
The Fairfax County Federation of PTAs was attempting to hold a workshop on problems presented by the U.S. Supreme Court 1954 decisions outlawing segregation in public schools.
About 100 people led by the Fairfax chapter of the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties disrupted the meeting inside the school for more than one hour with loud booing and hissing and charging that the PTA was “packed” with “pro-integrationists.”
The white supremacists were led by Manning Gasch, president of the Defenders group, Lee Sweeney, a member of the Defenders and Harley Williams a member of the Fairfax High School PTA.
The planned workshop was held by about 80 people in abbreviated form outside while the white supremacists carried out a meeting inside.
In 1954, the political organization of U.S. senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr., controlled Virginia politics. Senator Byrd promoted the "Southern Manifesto" opposing integrated schools, which was signed in 1956 by more than one hundred southern congressmen.
On February 25, 1956, Byrd called for what became known as Massive Resistance. This was a group of laws, passed in 1956, intended to prevent integration of the schools.
A Pupil Placement Board was created with the power to assign specific students to particular schools. Tuition grants were to be provided to students who opposed integrated schools. The linchpin of Massive Resistance was a law that cut off state funds and closed any public school that attempted to integrate.
In September 1958 several schools in Warren County, Charlottesville, and Norfolk were about to integrate under court order. They were seized and closed, but the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals overturned the school-closing law.
Simultaneously, a federal court issued a verdict against the law based on the "equal protection" clause of the 14th Amendment.
Speaking to the General Assembly a few weeks later, Gov. J. Lindsay Almond conceded defeat. Beginning on February 2, 1959, a few courageous black students integrated the schools that had been closed. Still, hardly any African American students in Virginia attended integrated schools.
After Virginia's school-closing law was ruled unconstitutional in January 1959, the General Assembly repealed the compulsory school attendance law and made the operation of public schools a local option for the state's counties and cities.
Schools that had been closed in Front Royal, Norfolk, and Charlottesville reopened because citizens there preferred integrated schools to none at all.
Fairfax resisted integration until token efforts were made in 1960. The school system was not largely integrated until the 1966-67 school year—12 years after the U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Desegregation efforts continued into the 1970s.
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHskWK3q68
Photo by Walter Oates. The image is courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.