Hidden Figures - Margot Lee Shetterly

Virginia closed the public schools,”
lamented Lenoir Chambers, editor in
chief of Virginia Beach’s Virginian-Pilot
and a southern liberal in the mold of
Mark Etheridge of the Louisville Post-
Courier. Undeterred and unchastened by
the 1957 showdown in Little Rock, the
Byrd Machine’s Massive Resistance
movement made good on its threat. In the
fall of 1958, Virginia’s governor Lindsay
Almond chained the doors of the schools
in localities that attempted to comply
with the Supreme Court’s Brown
decision. Thirteen thousand students in
the three cities that had moved forward
with integration—Front Royal,
Charlottesville, and Norfolk—found
themselves sitting at home in the fall of
1958. “I would rather have my children
live in ignorance than have them go to