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Recent Acquisition - Photograph Collection
Original September 1959 caption: "Children enjoying the swings and Hula Hoops. In the background is Norview High School, one of the six Norfolk secondary schools closed by Governor J. Lindsay Almond Jr., under the State's massive resistance laws.
On this day in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in American educational facilities was “inherently unequal" and a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution.
While this decision would set a landmark precedent in addressing racial injustice, the court did not specify a means of addressing the violation. When confronted by schools requesting that they not be held accountable to this decision the following year in Brown II, the court only ruled that schools were to desegregate "with all deliberate speed". This vague ruling allowed supporters of segregation to implement various strategies of resistance that delayed justice for decades to come. In 1978, Brown III reopened the case and concluded with the finding that the Topeka school district had continued to discriminate in terms of student and staff assignment. The district did not achieve legally unified status until July 27, 1999.
This photograph, captured by the international news agency United Press International, documents a February 1, 1968 confrontation over school integration in Chicago. After seven black children integrated the historically all-white Mount Greenwood elementary school on January 31st under police escort, supporters and opponents of desegregation descended on the campus for days. Here, a woman segregationist is seen attacking a man participating in a march supporting the seven students. William Leben and Terrence Burke, two of the marchers supporting desegregation, and one of whom is the man being attacked here, were arrested for disorderly conduct soon after. This photograph is part of the Hagley Library’s Chamber of Commerce of the United States photographs and audiovisual materials, Series II. Nation’s Business photographs (Accession 1993.230.II) collection. To view more materials from this collection online, click here to visit its page in our Digital Archive.
Recent Acquisition - Photograph Collection
Original November 1958 caption: " Mr. & Mrs. C. H. Frankenberger leave the polls in Norfolk, Va. after casting their ballots in the referendum which was to determine whether the voters of Norfolk want the city's six closed white schools returned by the state to be operated on a integrated bases."
Recent Acquisition - Photograph Collection
Original December 1955 caption: “State Sen. Garland Gray hands only bill of Virginia Special Legislature to Page Cleveland Watkins at opening session of the Legislature here 11/30. The Bill calls for a referendum setting up a Constitutional change to allow the State to pay for private education of children whose parents object to integration in schools. Gray headed the Virginia Commission on Education which recommended the Bill.”
Recent Acquisition - Photograph Collection
Original September 1958 caption: “Virginia Gov. J. Lindsay Almond closes his eyes to ponder reporter’s question, raises hand to make a point, and answers during new conference. He said Virginians must be willing to sacrifice their public schools in the fight to maintain racial segregation.”
Recent Acquisition - Photograph Collection
Original June 5, 1958 caption: “Charlottesville, VA. The ‘For Sale’ sign suspended in front of Lane High School here expresses the feelings of the students about the ending of school for summer vacation. But it may be prophetic of the situation in Sept. if the school is forced to close down because of integration. Lane is one of 3 local schools ordered to integrate in the Fall.”
Recent Acquisition - Photograph Collection
Original February 2, 1959 caption: “Norfolk, VA. First Day Ends. White students file out of Norview High School at the end of classes today as Alveraze Gonsouland, 16 year old Negro pupil, stops to talk to a newsman. This was at the close of the first day of integrated classes in Norview and five other Norfolk school.”
The other was the so-called Massive Resistance Campaign:
What was Massive Resistance? A Neo-Klan in the form of the White Citizens Councils and Councils of Conservative Citizens. It was Barry Goldwater bleating "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and moderation in the defense of justice is no virtue." It was murders, in cold blood, of people ranging from Medgar Evers to Emmett Till. It was bombs in churches that blew up little girls. It was howling baying mobs of people barely removed from feral animals in practice that tried to deny people their rights to live in peace and all too often succeeded.
This was what it meant to be a part of all the alphabet soup organizations (I call them that because it fits them as well as it does the New Deal organizations). It meant knowing your lives were on the line, that the distant and remote head of the FBI and the local redneck with the Confederate battleflag and the shotgun and the smiling police chief were all likely to turn upon them and murder them with impunity.
The sanitization of the movement leads to neglecting just how bold and heroic someone had to be to merely be a part of it. They faced all of this, bloodied yet unbowed.
The Origins of Massive Resistance At the midpoint of the twentieth century, Virginia maintained a legally sanctioned racial caste system. It
