Week 48: Not One Positive Step

Virginia used legislature drawn from states such as Louisiana, Tennessee, and South Carolina, which were created for public welfare in continuing segregation of the two races. For example, one of the Pupil Placement Board files shares a bill established by Tennessee: "Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, That boards of education of counties, cities and special school districts in this state are authorized to provide separate schools for white and Negro children whose parents, legal custodians or guardians voluntarily elect that such children attend school with members of their own race" (Records of the Virginia Pupil Placement Board, 1957-1966. Accession 26517, State records collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Va.). Other filed documents point to protocols the Pupil Placement Board created as a result of consultation to the guidelines incorporated by other states seeking to keep the status quo of segregation in school systems.


The creation of a state-wide Pupil Placement Board resulted in a flurry of memos to local school boards around Virginia, including clarifications as the educational system processed this new way of placing students into schools. Memo #5, dated March 11, 1957 clarified "the situation where an irresponsible parent or other custodian might fail or refuse to execute application forms required by the Pupil Placement Act" by stating: "'No child, whose parent, guardian, or other custodian refuses to complete and file the required Application for Placement of Pupil, shall be permitted to attend or to continue to attend school until such application shall have been completed and filed.'
     'No child, whose parent, guardian, or other custodian fails to complete and file the required Application for Placement of Pupil within fifteen (15) days, shall be permitted to attend or to continue to attend school until such application shall have been completed and filed.' " (Records of the Virginia Pupil Placement Board, 1957-1966. Accession 26517, State records collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Va.)

Another clarification on May 21, 1957 begins, "in order to avoid any injustice to innocent children due to the failure of a parent to complete and file the required Application for Placement" and concludes allowing the local school authorities "to determine the causes or reasons for the parent's failure or neglect," with "continued failure... deemed a wilful refusal and be treated accordingly" (Records of the Virginia Pupil Placement Board, 1957-1966. Accession 26517, State records collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Va.). Such failures to comply through conscientious objection in protest to the board were deemed legal; however, the law also gave the board "subpoena powers to obtain such information as may be necessary to assign the child to a proper school" (Records of the Virginia Pupil Placement Board, 1957-1966. Accession 26517, State records collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Va.). The Pupil Placement Board had no way of enforcing its positions; instead, legal enforcement was enacted by local authorities on a case by case basis. The act authorized local school districts to find other ways of providing necessary information, regardless of parental authorization, so that children could be placed by the board.

Continued fine tuning in 1960, included the board's pronouncement that it would "not consider applications for original placement or transfer filed with it or with the local division superintendent of schools after July 1st for the ensuring school session unless a change of the applicant's residence subsequent to July 1st necessitates a new placement" (Records of the Virginia Pupil Placement Board, 1957-1966. Accession 26517, State records collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Va.). 

The details of these guidelines were often used by lawyers to target school districts for purposes of forcing integration. The Pupil Placement Board noted three specific cases in Grayson, Pulaski, and Norfolk, where students sought entry into all-white schools. A document in the PPB files noted 34 such cases around the state by 1964. Grayson County's case led to Virginia's first fully integrated county in 1960 with the result that the division was "restrained from refusing to admit for reason of race and color any high school student" (Records of the Virginia Pupil Placement Board, 1957-1966. Accession 26517, State records collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Va.). As with Shenandoah County Public Schools (see Week 44: An Out-of-area Education), Grayson County did not have a high school for African Americans at that time. 

Records sent to Shenandoah County Schools by the Pupil Placement Board show 42 pupil placement applications in the county approved on January 12, 1960, and 631 applications approved as of December 22, 1960. Of these transfers, enough details are given to determine that at least two are for African American children placed in Sunset Hill Elementary School, which was the African American elementary school in Strasburg, and four are African Americans placed at Creekside Elementary School, which was the African American elementary school in Woodstock (Records of the Virginia Pupil Placement Board, 1957-1966. Accession 26517, State records collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Va.). Elementary-school-aged African American students were placed in African American elementary schools. If they requested transfer to the white elementary schools, prior to 1963 they were denied on the grounds of inadequate qualifications, distance between their place of residence and the school requested, or similar accommodations. For example, on June 14, 1962, "motion was made, seconded, and passed that" two African American students "be denied placement in Strasburg Elementary School because of inadequate qualifications (academic) and distance from their residence to the school requested and placed in Sunset Hill Elementary School" (Records of the Virginia Pupil Placement Board, 1957-1966. Accession 26517, State records collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Va.). But, it shows the establishment of the local tradition: keep the races separate.

A report to Governor Almond from 1960 in the Pupil Placement Board minutes shares a clear overview of the board's actions and intentions: "In various editorials and press reports, as well as in certain arguments made in various courts, emphasis has been placed on the fact that the members of this Board have never voluntarily placed a Negro child in an all-white school... During the period December 29, 1956 to May 1, 1960, 605,762 pupils were placed in public schools by this Board. The parents of 497 children filed the application for placement 'under protest'; only 362 parents refused to sign an application" and another "307" requested "for transfer" (Records of the Virginia Pupil Placement Board, 1957-1966. Accession 26517, State records collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Va.). The report continues: "On the other hand, it can be stated with equal emphasis, that it was not up to this Board to accelerate or make plans to facilitate the mixing of the races in the public schools under the Brown decision. The Brown decision is not a decree to the states to integrate the races in the public schools. It is a negative prohibition only, and the burden of positive action to prove discrimination rests on those asserting it... 
     "A very substantial number of the 605,762 pupils placed, representing every county and city of this Commonwealth, were Negro children. The fact that there was any question at all in only 1,166 cases, and for practical purposes only 307 cases, shows that the overwhelming majority of Virginia parents, both white and Negro, basically favor the State policy as it existed prior to the Brown decision. 
     "It is tribute to our Negro citizens, as well as to our white citizens, that, despite all of the pressures brought to bear by certain organizations to force a mixing of the races, so few of them participated in this unwise attempt to upset the mores and customs of our people.
     "It is also, in our opinion, proof of the fact that the overwhelming majority of our Negro citizens are proud of their race, its customs, its mores, and that neither they nor the members of the white race, wish to upset the historic policies of the State in which white and Negro have lived in mutual friendship, each following his own social patterns but with each according to the other his full legal, constitutional and civic rights" (Records of the Virginia Pupil Placement Board, 1957-1966. Accession 26517, State records collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Va.).

The Public Placement Board shares the following overall policy in its gubernatorial report: "This Board has no hesitancy in saying that it is completely and irrevocably opposed, individually and collectively, to what it deems to be the unconstitutional exercise of power by the Supreme Court of the United States in the Brown case. As stated above, however, the Board had no alternative but to take the position that that decision, accepted as a negative prohibition against segregation, might bind the Board to take actions it felt would be adverse to the best interests to all concerned. That question never faced the Board except in those cases where it was under the compulsive power of a potential contempt citation in the United States District Court.
     "The Board has no hesitancy, whatsoever, in saying that its main policy was to fight, with every legal and honorable means, any attempted mixing of the races in the public schools. Under its construction of the law, the Board does not feel that it was, nor should its successors feel that they should be obligated to take one positive step toward the mixing of the races in the public schools. Only in the case when they could not forbid a given child to attend a given school except on the sole ground of race would they be compelled, by considerations of honor and law, to do that which was not best for the child" (Records of the Virginia Pupil Placement Board, 1957-1966. Accession 26517, State records collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Va.). 

And in conclusion: "In the belief that both the white and Negro people agree that separate-but-equal-facilities is the best policy for the people of both races in Virginia; in the belief that the burden of proving any variation of that policy does not rest upon the State, or its agencies, as an affirmative obligation, but rests upon those seeking to vary the State's traditional policy, the members of the Board sincerely believe that Virginia should stand firm and should continue to resist on a State level and on every legal and honorable ground the unwise attempts to force the mixing of the races" (Records of the Virginia Pupil Placement Board, 1957-1966. Accession 26517, State records collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Va.). 

The first requests by African Americans to attend all white high schools in Shenandoah County occurred in 1962 for the 1962-63 school year at Central High School and Strasburg High School; with a lawsuit issued against the Shenandoah County Public Schools superintendent, Shenandoah County School Board, and Pupil Placement Board and its members individually, at the start of the 1962-63 school year for "refusing to permit" an African American "to attend Central High School at Woodstock, in Shenandoah County, Virginia" (Records of the Virginia Pupil Placement Board, 1957-1966. Accession 26517, State records collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Va.). The case proceeded from a form that was intentionally turned in after the mandated July 1st deadline, mentioned above. And although the case was withdrawn, it shook up the Pupil Placement Board - adding Shenandoah County to the list of integrated districts by the 1963-64 school year. But, before we look at this part of our county's educational history, we have to discuss another important detail that is at the very heart of these 52 weeks: the consolidation of secondary schools into three all-white high schools and the names they came to bear.