Hampton Roads: Remembering Our Schools

By Cassandra Newby-Alexander, Jeffrey Littlejohn, Charles H. Ford and 2 more

With this striking collection of historical images, experience a
front-row view of the origination of the public school system within Hampton Roads and the epic struggle for racial equality. From the seventeenth century until the present, this area of the Old Dominion has been at the forefront of challenges, including Reconstruction, Jim Crow law, racial disharmony and public resistance to tax-based public schools. The fiftieth anniversary of the reopening of Norfolk s desegregated schools marks an especially appropriate occasion on which to look back at the evolution of public education in the Hampton Roads region.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Feb 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781625842862

Cassandra Newby-Alexander

Cassandra Newby-Alexander is an Associate Professor of History at Norfolk State University. She co-wrote A Slave Ship Speaks: The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie. She is currently working on the history of African Americans in Norfolk, commissioned by the city of Norfolk, and in 2005 was recognized by American Legacy magazine as one of the nation�s top teachers in African-American history at an Historically Black College. Jeffrey Littlejohn is an Assistant Professor of History at Sam Houston State University and previously taught at Norfolk State. Charles Ford is a Professor and Chair of the History department at Norfolk State University. Sonia Yaco is the Director, Special Collections Librarian, and University Archivist at Old Dominion University.

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INTRODUCTION

In his 2002 seminal work Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia, J. Douglas Smith described a state that used rule of law, economics, limited political access and white paternalism as guardians of the status quo. The expert selection of community leaders was therefore crucial to managing Virginia’s large, diverse population. As expected, educational access was controlled, allowing only a few to obtain this important prize. Bent on following the English landed-gentry model, Virginia’s leaders carefully limited education to a select few for much of its existence. Perhaps because access to quality education guaranteed a better life, even for marginalized groups in America, Virginia’s legislature refused to advocate for a publicly funded system until after Reconstruction; and even then, it did so begrudgingly.

During the colonial period, education was a private endeavor for families with the money to hire a private tutor or to send their children to a private or parochial school. One of Virginia’s leaders, Thomas Jefferson, saw that the state could not prosper with such a haphazard educational system. In 1779, Jefferson unsuccessfully introduced to the General Assembly the Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, which proposed that white males should receive at least three years of primary education. Even though it did not pass, the idea of the importance of an educated voting electorate was etched in the democratic history of America. Of course, nonwhites and women of all races were excluded from Jefferson’s edict for various reasons that reflected the prejudices of the day. White women were viewed as an inferior group whose primary purpose was reproduction and home care. Native Americans were regarded as savages, and African Americans were valued only for their backbreaking labor, which could be achieved even if they remained ignorant. Nevertheless, Jefferson’s proposal was rebuffed, with the opposition arguing that neither the people nor their representatives would consent to the property taxes necessary to support a statewide system of common schools.

The Civil War and Reconstruction represented a dramatic shift throughout the commonwealth, especially with respect to public education. In Hampton Roads, one of the earliest sites for public schools in Virginia, past prejudices continued to shape education, while other trends pulled the area’s citizens toward broader educational access. During Reconstruction, state legislative leaders worked out a system to establish a publicly funded educational system. Some African American leaders sought to transform the commonwealth into an integrated society through public education, although their efforts were thwarted. Nevertheless, a dual system was organized, albeit unequally.

That early fight for integrated education was initiated by Norfolk native Thomas Bayne, who unsuccessfully made the case during the 1868 Virginia Constitutional Convention. Since that time, efforts by some to create a more equitable educational system continued. Within two decades after the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Charles Houston, the chief counsel of the Legal Defense Fund, devised a strategy to eliminate segregation and race-based inequities by tackling the obvious violations of the law in the adopted educational systems throughout the South and Midwest. Beginning in 1930, Houston’s primary objective was to expand educational opportunities for African Americans. His successes were evident in the cases against the University of Maryland Law School in 1935; the 1938 teachers’ pay case in Montgomery County, Maryland; and the Lloyd Gaines v. University of Missouri case in 1938 that addressed discrimination in state-supported graduate and professional schools. Following the death of Charles Houston, his assistant, Thurgood Marshall, assumed the mantle of NAACP chief counsel in 1938. Using the strategy devised by Houston, Marshall won a number of important cases, including one in Norfolk guaranteeing equal pay for teachers. This effort continued for many years until the 1950s, when the NAACP successfully fought segregation, overturning the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) case that had established America’s separate but equal system based on race.

This book will focus on the history of public education in Hampton Roads from its beginnings to the present day in one of the state’s most heavily populated regions. The successful establishment of the cities and counties in the region, as well as the prosperity associated with port activities, resulted in a diverse population whose actions often brought Hampton Roads into the national consciousness. In particular, this book will trace the historic role that Norfolk played in the region and the struggles of African Americans who sought to achieve educational equality. In many ways, Norfolk’s school system became the model for the other cities and counties within the region. We begin with a brief historical overview of public education in the region before the official start of the dual Jim Crow system, which was established by the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1868. We then trace the development of Hampton Roads’ separate but equal schools during the early twentieth century, juxtaposing white and black schools, students and faculty. The managed system created by Virginia’s elite guaranteed support for the status quo in public schools, especially because of resistance to tax-based public education. This system led to controversial court cases that sought to equalize faculty salaries, facilities, curricula and schools. Eventually, this fight coalesced into a struggle over integration, busing and the return to largely segregated, neighborhood schools. Thus, this book seeks to deconstruct visually the myth of racial [and class] harmony and goodwill in the Old Dominion.

This 1956 photograph shows NAACP chief counsel Thurgood Marshall (right) talking with Norfolk teacher Clyde H. Jones (left). Marshall was a frequent visitor to Hampton Roads because of his work on the teacher pay parity cases of 1938–41 with local attorneys, including Norfolk attorney J. Eugene Diggs and daughter Ione Diggs. Photo by H.D. Vollmer. Courtesy Virginian-Pilot.

CHAPTER 1

THE ORIGINS OF SCHOOLING IN HAMPTON ROADS, 1634–1870

The road to public schooling in Hampton Roads stood in stark contrast to that of the state. Virginia adopted an anti–public school stance in the pre–Civil War years, similar to the one adopted throughout the South. As early as 1634, the estate of Benjamin Syms endowed a school to be used to educate the poor white children in Hampton, Elizabeth City County and Poquoson. Another benefactor, Dr. Thomas Eaton, gifted an additional five hundred acres of land for a school twenty-five years later. In 1803, a petition was sent to the General Assembly, requesting that the Syms and Eaton Charity Schools be consolidated and a new building constructed on Cary Street. Once the Syms-Eaton Academy was formed, its trustees were reluctant to endorse the formation of additional schools, fearing that the monies would be diverted away from their institution, prompting private groups, such as one created in 1837 by Hampton-area residents in the Fox Hill section, to launch their own privately funded academy.

Similarly, in 1681 John Ferebee was assigned the task of surveying Lower Norfolk County and the town of Norfolk. His vision was to design an area that would include a courthouse, warehouses, public stocks, homes and a public school. Not until 1728 would that