The Virginian-Pilot
©
The University of Virginia's Center for Politics will hold a conference July 17 in Richmond to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of Massive Resistance.
The conference will feature former students, civil rights leaders and politicians from around the state reflecting on one of the most divisive periods in Virginia's history.
Massive Resistance was a series of state laws passed in the late 1950s to prevent the integration of schools after the Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that segregation by race was illegal.
The 12th annual Virginia Political History Project - with the title "With All Deliberate Speed?" - will have four panel discussions, two highlighting students recalling their experiences from 1958, when several schools, including six in Norfolk, closed instead of admitting black students. Three members of the Norfolk 17, the first black students to integrate Norfolk schools when they reopened in 1959, are scheduled to participate.
Bruce Vlk, deputy director of programs for the center, said it was important to get those voices into the program.
"We wanted to breathe some life into it," he said.
Another session will be a talk on politics and media during the era and will include former Gov. A. Linwood Holton Jr. A late-afternoon panel examining the lasting impact of Massive Resistance will include journalists and legislators. Former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder will be the keynote speaker.
Denise Watson Batts, (757) 446-2504, denise.batts@pilotonline.com
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Twitter
Google
Yahoo
Drain resources?
I cant think of a more uninformed opinion that I have ever read than this one. You defenders of the public school system need to make up your minds about SOL's. Either you like them or you dont and if you dont then you should be in support of schools that dont use them. My guess is that the schools you mentioned educate those kids for about half the cost that the taxpayers pay for the public schools and if you bothered to do any research you'd find a great majority of those grads. get accepted into colleges all over Va. and the country...many of them PRIVATE institutions. They get little if any money from the state and the parents get NO break from state taxes even though they dont use the public school system. You should take a look at the counties in which those schools reside and see how well they do on the SOL's and then redirect you criticisms elsewhere before knocking the competition. The fact that those schools are majority white has nothing to do with race and everything to do with income. Does Obama's kids attend public schools in DC? Get a life!!!!
another part of the story
About 40 years ago, when I went into junior high school, I found myself to be one of a few white kids in a freshly integrated and yet still predominantly black school in a rough area of town. My friends from elementary school disappeared, as their parents put them in private school or moved out of the school district.
Coming from an upper-middle class elementary school, this new school was a culture shock of immense proportions. My incredibly naive friends and I quickly learned that going to the bathroom alone was a *big* mistake and we stopped eating in the cafeteria after suffering unspeakable abuse and violence and threats of more to come if "we ever showed our faces" in that cafeteria again. We feared for our lives - and rightly so.
It was more awful than words can express. My point is, I wish someone would tell *this* story of integration.
Does someone think it is over??
Come out to Western Tidewater. Drive by the segregation academies: Tidewater Academy, Isle of Wight Academy, Southampton Academy, Brunswick Academy, etc. You'll note the children on the playground are 98% white, while the public schools are 85% non-white. It wasn't a cooincidence that these academies were all founded in the same year. Sure they have a 'non discrimination statement' to meet federal laws, but in practice it's the same old segregation.
These schools would like to tell you they are 'college prep', but they don't take the SOL's and don't have any real data to show that their graduates are any more successful overall.
These schools drain students, involved parents and financial resources from America's public education system.
Resistance is not as massive as it once was, but it is still there.