A BIT OF HISTORY
©2021 SARAH BECKER
VA Civil Rights Memorial in Richmond. Photo courtesy of Richmond on the James
“I
am absolutely convinced that the forces of ill will in our nation, the people on the wrong side in our nation— the extreme rightists of our nation, have often used time more effectively than the people of good will,” Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote in 1967 in The Future of Integration . “And it may well be that this generation has to repent, not merely for the vitriolic words and violent action of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say ‘wait on time.’” After more than 110 years, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s statue has been removed from the Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol. If Virginia’s Lost Cause advocates are riled others are quietly rejoicing. March is Women’s History Month and the Commonwealth has chosen to honor sixteen year-old, black student activist Barbara Rose Johns (1935-1991) instead. “It was time that Negroes were treated equally with whites, time that they had a decent school, time for students themselves to do something about it,” Johns explained. “There wasn’t any fear. I just thought—this is your moment. Seize it!” Barbara Johns 1951 “plan was daring, even risky: Convince the entire all-black student body to walk out of [Farmville, Virginia’s, Robert Russa Moton High School] and not return until the government gave them a bigger, better building—one like the white students had,” The New York Times noted in 2019. “The case Johns would join, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, would not only have the largest group of plaintiffs; it would also be the only one that was led by students.” The Davis case was one of five consolidated cases known as Brown v. Board of Education of
Old Town Crier
Celebrating Women’s History Month Topeka (347 US 483). On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. Virginia’s Byrd machine resisted. “Human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability,” Dr. King continued. “It comes through the tireless effort and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. Without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation.” “We all know the history of the system of segregation,” Dr. King made clear. “It had its legal beginning in 1896 when the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a decision [known] as the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision. This established the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ as the law of the land. Of course, we all know what happened as a result of the Plessy doctrine. There was always a strict enforcement of the ‘separate,’ without the slightest intention to abide by the ‘equal.’” With Plessy v. Ferguson
Drawing of Barbara Rose Johns from the Morton Museum in Farmville, Va.
(WNVMorton Museum.)
black newspaper editors like Alexandria’s Colored Republican Magnus L. Robinson denounced racial discrimination. On May 14, 1896, Robinson convened “a conference of colored delegates from the South…to arrange a plan of action in order that [blacks] may get full justice.” Until the mid-1930s enterprising Alexandria
blacks traveled to the District of Columbia for high school: to attend either Armstrong or Dunbar High Schools. Samuel W. Tucker—born in 1913—bootlegged his Armstrong High School education. Yet there was a white segregated public high school within sight of his home. “Justice requires us to remember that when any citizen denies his fellow, saying, ‘His color is not mine’ or ‘His beliefs are strange and different,’ in that moment he betrays America,” President Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX) said in his 1965 Inaugural Address. President Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 on July 2. “President Johnson’s highest priority legislative request— the Civil Rights bill—is lodged these days in the tiny, midVictorian chambers of the House Rules Committee in the southeast corner of the Capitol,” The New York Times wrote on January 12, 1964. “There amid antique mahogany and fading velvet, the 80-year old House Rules Committee Chairman,
Representative Howard W. Smith of Alexandria, Virginia, rocks back and forth in his swivel chair…This seems ever so quaint but it isn’t…A dedicated conservative, a Southern Democrat, Smith has killed, watered down or postponed more progressive legislation than any other Congressman in modern times.” “It comes back to the old question of the differences in philosophy between the liberals and the conservatives,” The New York Times continued. All ten Virginia members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted against the 1964 Act. In 1966 Gov. Mills Godwin threw “a blinding searchlight on one of Virginia’s sorest spots, education.” We have “nowhere to go but up” the Alexandria Gazette concluded. “[The fact] is inescapable,” the 1966 editorial explained. “Our education trails the nation – 38th place among the 50 states in almost every aspect. This must seem incomprehensible to the outsider since we are near the top of the heap in the matter of per capita income.” “There were many experiences in Barbara Johns’ life that had led her to organize the [1951] protest, but the catalyst came one morning when she had a particularly difficult time getting to school,” The New York Times recounted in 2019. “She had just finished helping her four younger siblings get dressed, shuffled them out the door and left for school herself when she realized that she had forgotten her lunch and ran back home to retrieve it. By then she had missed her school bus and wound up stranded on the side of the road trying to hitchhike a ride to make it to class on time.” “An hour passed, no luck,” The New York Times said. A BIT OF HISTORY > PAGE 10
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