Program Information

Series: Ground Beneath Our Feet
Program: Virginia's History Since the Civil War: Massive Resistance
Segment Number: 1 (Watch entire program)
Duration: 00:03:10
Year Produced: 2000
Description:

Virginians, in the early 1950's, lived in a racially segregated society. Both custom and law maintained rigid barriers.

Massive Resistance became Virginia's policy to prevent school desegregation in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954. Many of Virginia's white leaders resisted integration with all of their considerable political and legal means. The story of massive resistance and of black Virginians' protests against segregation began in the early 1950s and continues today. The film traces the history of massive resistance in Virginia and considers some of its legacies.

For more information visit: http://www.vahistory.org/massive.resistance/index.html

Transcript

Virginians, in the early 1950s, lived in a racially segregated society. Both custom and law maintained rigid barriers. Edwilda Allen-Issacs was 12 years old in 1951.

Edwilda Allen:
I think first of all you have to grow up with segregation. When you grow up with it you know where you can go and where you can’t go. If I wanted to get a hamburger, I had to go to a window and they would hand it out to me. I could never go inside a place and ask for it. If I wanted to ride on the train, I knew that there were two doors. One side where black people went. They went to the same ticket agent to buy a ticket but there were two places where you waited to board the train. There was segregated cars throughout them. You never rode in the same car with white people.My father and mother told me about segregation. There were things that I could not do, places I could not go. So I pretty much accepted what I could do and what I could not do. I knew that the white school was right across the street from us. I knew I could never go there. I knew where my school was.

Narrator:
Then, in1958 and 1959, the Virginia state government chose to close schools in several localities rather than permit white and black children to attend school together. Calvin Nunnally remembers what that felt like.

Calvin Nunnally:
It’s hard to describe to someone what you’re feeling when you’re twelve or thirteen years old and you know that someone hates you so bad that they will actually lock the school doors, chain them up, to keep you out.

Narrator:
Virginia closed individual schools in three places at the height of the crisis over court-ordered desegregation--Charlottesville, Warren County, and Norfolk. Those schools remained closed for several months. Prince Edward County closed its school system for five years, using county taxes to finance segregated private academies for white students.

I’m George Gilliam.

This segment of The Ground Beneath Our Feet: Virginia’s History Since the Civil War, examines how black Virginians challenged the segregation of public schools and how other Virginians reacted to that challenge. It is a story that begins with determined protest and high hopes for change, experiences uncertainty and enjoys only mixed success--and is not really over yet.

Virginia Standards

4th Grade SOLs » History-Social Science » VS.9
6th Grade SOLs » History-Social Science » USII.9