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One for the History Books

There is one historical footnote to yesterday's elections that I think is deeply moving. As a Virginian, I was very proud to see my state go blue last night for the first time since 1964. But as an American, I was even more proud of the results in one particular part of Virginia.

Prince Edward County, Virginia is a small, largely rural, community located 60 miles southwest of Richmond. It has about 20,000 residents, one-third of whom are African-American. It is the home to Longwood University, a former teacher's college.

Any student of the civil rights movement will remember Prince Edward County for several reasons. One reason is because the NAACP initiated litigation against the segregated school system in the case Davis et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County. The case was combined with similar suits in other jurisdictions and taken to the Supreme Court and became the case we know as Brown v. Board of Education.

When the courts forced Prince Edward County to desegregate, the county became the poster child for the massive resistance movement. Rather than open the school doors equally to all of their children, the county (literally) closed the school doors to all their children. They shut down the public school system and gave their citizens tax credits to attend private schools - except none of the private schools would accept black students. African-American students in that county had no educational options for five years until the plan was ruled unconstitutional in 1964.

Many African-American students who were denied an education still live in Prince Edward County. The state legislature attempted to rectify this situation on the 50th anniversary of Brown by creating a scholarship fund that would help those who had been affected by the closing of Prince Edwards' schools.

If you go back even further into history, Prince Edward County holds even greater civil rights importance. From Prince Edward County it is but a few short miles to the small hamlet known as Appomattox Courthouse, where on Palm Sunday, 1865 General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant to end the Civil War.

When President-elect Obama is sworn in next year, Virginia will mark the 50th anniversary of the closing of the schools in Prince Edward County. Obama won the Commonwealth of Virginia, and even more importantly, Obama won the vote of Prince Edward County by 10 percent. Oh my, how far we have come...

On May 21, 1961, civil rights leaders Oliver Hill, Roy Wilkins, and Reverend Francis L. Griffin attended a gathering to discuss the closing of Prince Edward County's schools.

Full post as published by Supreme Dicta on November 05, 2008 (boomark / email).