Lesson Plan – School Desegregation and the Voices Not Heard, 1956

In 1896 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racial segregation did not violate the "equal protection of the laws" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Virginia and other southern states employed the doctrine of "separate but equal" to enforce segregation in public places, including schools. Schools for Black students never received equal funding from cities and counties in the commonwealth, and their facilities were inferior. On May 17, 1954 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that segregation in schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. In fact, the Supreme Court established that separate facilities were "inherently unequal," no matter the state or condition of the segregated school. 

Initially Governor Thomas B. Stanley reacted cautiously to the Supreme Court's ruling and spoke of his plan to meet with white and Black leaders to determine how to carry out integration in Virginia's schools. However, he quickly succumbed to pressure to resist school integration from U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, white community organizations such as the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties, and Richmond News Leader editor James J. Kilpatrick, who publicly argued that the state had a right to "interpose" itself between its citizens and the enforcement of federal laws including Supreme Court decisions.  

On August 27, 1956, Stanley spoke to a special session of the General Assembly. He urged the assembly members to pass legislation that would prevent schools in Virginia from integrating and to include provisions that would remove state funding from any school or school system that attempted to integrate. The General Assembly passed a law that denied state funding to any public schools where Black and white students were taught in the same classroom. It created a pupil placement board that forced all Black students to apply to attend white schools, which deliberately slowed down the integration process. In 1958 the governor closed schools in Charlottesville, Front Royal, and Norfolk when they attempted to integrate in violation of state law. These policies, collectively defined as "Massive Resistance," effectively thwarted any attempts at integration.

These laws were overturned by the federal district court and the Virginia Supreme Court in January 1959, but school integration progressed slowly in Virginia. Prince Edward County officials closed public schools entirely for five years rather than integrate. Other school districts ignored court orders until the 1968 Supreme Court decision in Charles C. Green et al. v. County School Board of New Kent County, Virginia required localities to demonstrate actual progress in desegregating their schools. Even then, integration continued to proceed slowly and often only after a specific local court order was handed down.

In this audio clip excerpted from his 1956 speech to the General Assembly, Governor Stanley claimed that the responses he received from Virginians from all walks of life unanimously supported the idea that integration should be prevented. However, Virginians who supported integration also wrote to the governor between 1954 and 1956. This group of selected letters to Stanley represent the many voices that were left unheard in his speech.

Citations: 
Governor Thomas B. Stanley Speech Before a Special Session of the Virginia General Assembly, 27 August 1956 (WRVA-160), WRVA Radio Collection, Accession 38210, Library of Virginia. These recordings are for educational use and permission must be requested in writing from WRVA to reproduce any sound recordings. Excerpt is 4 minutes long.
Letters in Governor Thomas B. Stanley Executive Papers, Accession 25184, Box 110 (Integration folders, 1954, 1955, 1956), State Government Records Collection, Library of Virginia.

Find additional information about school desegregation and Massive Resistance in these related Document Bank entries:
Governor Stanley's Address to Virginians after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education Decision, May 17, 1954
Interposition and Massive Resistance, 1955
Lindsay Almond School Integration Speech, January 20, 1959
Robert Kennedy, Visit to Prince Edward County Schools, May 11, 1964

Learn more about Massive Resistance in Encyclopedia Virginia.

Goals and Guiding Principles
Students will be able to explain the social and political events resulting from the Brown v. Board decision. They will be able to identify some of the goals of Massive Resistance. They will understand how some Virginians denounced Massive Resistance, and how those individuals participated in civic discourse with civility through expressing themselves in print to help bring an end to Massive Resistance. Students will understand the relationship between state and local governments, and how civil rights were protected by the courts and ultimately by federal law.

Timeline Plotting (15 minutes)
VS, USII, CE

Plot a timeline using the events of desegregation and massive resistance found at Encyclopedia Virginia's entry on Desegregation in Public Schools  (https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/desegregation-in-public-schools/) and incorporate Stanley's speech and the letters you have read. What do you think about the length of time between the events? Given the fact that those in favor of desegregation did not have immediate success, do you think their efforts were valuable? Why or why not?

Decision Making (15 minutes)
USII, CE, VUS, GOVT

These individuals all wrote letters to the governor to share their opinions about school desegregation. What other actions could they have taken to help promote the court-ordered desegregation of the schools? What efforts, if any, do you think may have had a more immediate effect, and why? Is there anything in these letters that you would have included? Why or why not?

 
Chart It (15 minutes)
USII, CE, VUS, GOVT

Make a table that includes the arguments made by letter writers. In subsequent columns, write down in which letter those arguments appear. How often do the same ideas/arguments occur, and why? Are there similarities between the people or organizations using the arguments, and if so, what are they? What does that tell you about how people were talking and thinking about desegregation at the time? How do these letters challenge what the governor said about Virginians in his speech?

Example of the chart:

Exit Ticket (10 minutes)
USII, CE, VUS, GOVT

Fill in the rest of these statements:

After listening to/reading the governor’s speech and letters I learned _____________________.

I was surprised by_______________________________.