1961 US Commission on Civil Rights Report Book 2 - University of ...

white counterparts. Their overall average was "C" which was also
the average of the desegregated schools as a whole. 130
Virginia
Although the largest segregated school district to be desegregated by
court order was in Texas, the largest number of school districts so desegregated
was in Virginia where four of the seven that desegregated during
this period did so under court order. Desegregation suits were pending
in two of the remaining three.
"Massive resistance" to the School Segregation Cases is legally dead
in Virginia, 131 but its spirit lingers on. In 1959 the general assembly
enacted a new program designed to limit desegregation and to permit
white students to avoid attendance at schools enrolling Negroes. The
spirit of the new approach was expressed by Governor J. Lindsay Almond,
Jr., on January 28, 1959, in an address to the general assembly. 132
I pledged to the people of Virginia that I would resist with every
source at my command that which I know to be wrong and would
destroy every rational semblance of effective public education in Virginia.
I have kept that pledge and you have kept it. Only those
Virginians whose hearts are not in the fray give up in adversity.
To be strong, a battle lost is but a challenge to redouble effort,
energy, and devotion to scale the heights of worthy achievement.
One of the Virginia communities in which desegregation began in
September 1959 was Charlottesville. Its school system had been under
court order to desegregate since I958, 133 but after the closing of the
schools for the fall semester of 1958-59, a stay was granted until September
1959 to permit the tutoring of the Negro pupils to prepare them
to enter in the fall. The white students had attended private schools
organized for them when the schools were closed. In the fall of 1959,
12 Negro pupils were enrolled in i elementary, and i high school with
about 1,200 white pupils. Early in the school year, however, one of the
Negro elementary school pupils retransferred to a Negro school at the
request of her parents. 18 *
Mr. Fendall R. Ellis, Superintendent of Schools for Charlottesville,
reported to the <strong>Commission</strong> at its Gatlinburg conference that desegregation
took place without "demonstration" or "incidents." 135 He reported
further that social and athletic activities had continued at the high
school, but that Negroes did not participate. 136 No mention was made
as to whether their nonparticipation was administratively imposed or
self-imposed. It has not been reported that the Charlottesville School
Board banned Negro participation in such activities, as three other
Virginia school boards did after their schools were desegregated. 187 55