Program Will Honor 38 Who Desegregated Beach’s Schools

By Leonard E. Colvin   
Chief Reporter   
New Journal and Guide 

The first African-American students to desegregate two all-white public schools in Virginia Beach in 1962 will be honored for the first time this Saturday, October 28.

An event planned and hosted by the Centerville Historical Society will be held at the Mt. Bethel Baptist Church, 4636 Indian River Road, at 1:30 p.m. In 1963, many of the students lived in that community.

The exposure of their school desegregation story results from the efforts of Virginia Beach Historian Edna Hendrix, whose dedicated research has shed light on other previously ignored Black figures and events in Virginia.

Hendrix said much of the information she unearthed about the timeline leading up to the 38 Black students walking into the two white schools and the aftermath was found in the pages of the Norfolk Journal and Guide.

Also critical were the recollections of many of the 38 students and their family members.

Hendrix said that up to 26 of the 38 students will be on hand at the commemorative event and will receive a certificate for their contributions.

Also, a plaque with the 24 students who were enrolled at one of the schools, Woodstock Elementary School, will be placed at the school. The other school that was the first to be desegregated was Kempsville Junior High (now Kempsville Middle).

In the June 30, 1962, edition of the GUIDE, seven days of news from across the globe were detailed in the National, Peninsula, Portsmouth, and home sections of the GUIDE.

Nationally, on the front page, a group of White  Congressmen called for an investigation into the business affairs of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

King welcomed the probe he said in the article.

The state’s anti-boycott laws were on the verge of taking effect to weaken Black resistance to Jim Crow segregation.  Virginia’s Jim Crow public seating laws were being threatened by the courts.

The short desegregation article was found on the Peninsula section and on the bottom of the Home Edition.

It read: “To Schools Nearest Homes; State Board Approves 38 Princess Anne Transfers.”

Some years before, the Pupil Placement Board was established to screen and evaluate Black students applying to enroll in all-white schools. It approved 38 students to enroll in Woodstock Elementary School and Kempsville Junior High School (now Kemspville Middle School).

Virginia, said Hendrix, was still using its “Massive Resistance” policies to slow its compliance with the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court’s Decision declaring segregated public schools illegal.

Actually, according to Hendrix, there were 56 applicants, but the board denied 18.

An organization called the Princess Anne County Parents and Citizens League submitted the applications in the spring of 1962, according to the GUIDE.

The Princess Anne County Schools 38’s entry into the history books reached this point without the noticeable drama and intrigue leading up to the February 1959 entry of the Norfolk 17 into six previous all-white schools.

There were no drawn-out legal battles between the NAACP and segregationists and or threats of violence to defend Massive Resistance to the court’s 1954 Brown Decision.

Unlike Norfolk, the state did not close the all-white Princess Anne County schools targeted for desegregation by the Black Parents’ applications to enroll their children in Woodstock Elementary and four in Kempsville Junior High School.

On page 17 of the September 29, 1962, Home Edition   of the GUIDE, the images of 32 of the 38 students appeared in three separate photographs under the article “Princess Anne Civic Organizations Find There’s Strength in Unity.”

But while the public atmosphere was relative free of violence and legal resistance by whites before the 38 students enrolled in the two schools, once in the classrooms, the students did experience violence and humiliations, they reported in an interview with WAVY-TV 10 reporter Regina Mobley,

According to Mobley’s story which aired recently, Thornton Russell described in detail how he was attacked by classmates while playing soccer.

“I was trying to fight them off,” Russell said. “I couldn’t fight those big boys and I ran to the sideline and my teacher was standing right there with her arms folded and they ran back laughing…There was physical pain and emotional pain,” Russell said.

Earnestine Hodnett told Mobley, “Each morning, I was faced with dogs being set up after me.”

When Mobley asked her “How were you treated once you were in the building,” Hodnett said, “Just as bad on the bus.”

Hendrix said getting all of the names of the first students and other information was not to be found in any of the Virginia Beach City Public Schools records.

Hendrix said she scoured the pages of white newspapers and that virtually nothing about the identification of the 38 students was found.

“I had to travel all the way to Richmond to the Library of Virginia to find all of the names of the students,” Hendrix told the GUIDE recently.

“All of the records were in Box 49 related to Princess Anne County.  All of the names were in the records of the Virginia Pupil Placement Board from 1957 to 1966.”

News of how the Black families convinced the State Board to agree to the initial 38 was based on various GUIDE articles written by staff reporters at that time.

As the other convincing arguments, the Black community used the premise that segregated school facilities used by Black and White students were indeed “separate but not equal.”

According to Hendrix, parents in the New Light and Centerville sections of the county were angered over the inadequate service and condition of the busses transporting their children to the “colored” Bettye F. Williams Elementary and Union Kempsville High schools.

Hendrix said the old buses would not start on cold mornings or shut down along the route or in front of the school buildings.

According to the June 30, 1962 article in the GUIDE, Junius L. Gillis, President of the Parents-Citizens League of Princess Anne County, launched its desegregation effort when the organization did not receive an adequate response from the all-White School Board or the administration on the issue.

The GUIDE reported how the Citizens-Parents League expressed relief that there were no violence or biter court battles similar to one witnessed in Norfolk leading up to the February 1959 entry of the Norfolk 17 into the six previous all-white schools.

Gillis said that the Placement Board decision was “indeed gratifying,” and there was no discussion on protesting the denial of the 18 applicants from the various other groups involved in the effort.

Thirty-four of the students would be allowed to attend Woodstock Elementary and four to Kempsville Junior High School.

According to the organizers of the upcoming event, this will be the first public recognition of “Princess Anne Count 38’s” entry into the chapter of the state’s history book on locales complying with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown Decision declaring segregated schools illegal.

Norfolk had a series of events observing the contributions of the Norfolk 17 sixty years after they made history.  The city has erected a monument highlighting their entry into the state’s history books.

“I am not surprised that this story has never been fully told or the students recognized,” said Hendrix.   “This is why we must tell our story. This is indeed one of the great ones.  It will no longer go untold.”