57 years after N.Va. integration, one-time middle-schoolers look back
It was in the late spring of 1961 when 12-year-old Lance Newman participated in ninth-grade graduation ceremonies at Arlington’s Stratford Junior High School. And on Feb. 2 of this year, for the first time in nearly 55 years, he was back in the auditorium where that ceremony took place.
Newman – along with Ronald Deskins, Michael Jones and Gloria Thompson – on Feb. 2, 1959, became the first black students to cross the color barrier and enroll in an all-white Northern Virginia public school. Along with similar integration under court order that occurred that day in Hampton Roads, the event marked the beginning of the end of the Virginia state government’s decades-long policy of separating the races in public schools, known to history as “massive resistance.”
Though often referred to as “the day nothing happened” because of the muted outcry that accompanied integration in Arlington, for the students at the center of it all, there was trepidation aplenty.
With dozens of riot-helmeted police and state troopers on hand to maintain order outside, “a lot of tension, a quietness,” is how Newman remembered things as he entered math class to start his first day.
“There were people who were curious; there were some stares – it was nervous but it wasn’t overwhelming,” Newman said as he joined Deskins and Jones as part of a panel discussion, sponsored by the county school system, held at what in 1959 was Stratford and currently is home to H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program.
“It was tense, especially that first day. I was pretty nervous,” said Deskins. “There was no public display of either affection or animus.”
As the year went on, there was a core group – perhaps a handful – of white students who “made it their business to try and make our lives miserable,” Deskins said.
“They didn’t succeed,” he said.
Newman remembered that, as the winter of 1959 moved into springtime, things settled into a routine.
“As the semester progressed, we got more and more comfortable,” he said. “All in all, I must say, things went pretty well, considering.”
(One of the students chuckled that the arrival of a larger group of what then were called Negro students in the fall of 1959 – some of them willing to defend themselves with fists rather than turn the other cheek to racial slights – largely brought an end to taunting.)
Perhaps the biggest disappointment for Deskins was his inability to participate in school sports; courts may have ordered integrated schools, but Virginia law in 1959 still prohibited integrated school athletic teams.
“I really wanted to play,” he recalled at the forum, which drew several hundred people. (School social activities, such as dances, were cancelled countywide for several years, as well.)
Jones said the first four black students at Stratford came prepared academically, and had been taught to handle the pressure of standing out, something no middle-schooler anywhere relishes.
In elementary school, “we had good teachers, we could compete,” he said.
When the time came to move to the new school, “I basically just did my work and went home,” he said. “It ended up being a good year.”
The Feb. 2 event was the first major commemoration of the integration since 2009, when then-Gov. Tim Kaine (D) attended a 50th-anniversary celebration at Woodlawn.
Kaine, now in the U.S. Senate, sent a video presentation to be played at the Feb. 2 forum.
“Virginia is stronger” because of integration efforts, Kaine said. “When we open the doors of opportunity and equality for all children, we build a stronger future.”
Among those on hand at the forum was Martha Ann Miller, now 104 years old and then a teacher at Stratford.
Except for the 2009 50th-anniversary event, public commemorations of the integration anniversary have been largely non-existent in recent years; several recently arrived School Board members have acknowledged they barely knew about the events of 1959 and their importance.
Outcry the lack of respect given to the integration effort surfaced over the past year, when county school leaders pushed for renovation of the current H-B Woodlawn back into its former use as a community middle school. (The Woodlawn program will decamp to a new home in Rosslyn in 2019.)
After weathering criticism from the Historical Affairs and Landmark Review Board and the Arlington branch of the NAACP for their seeming lack of interest in the historical importance of the school, Arlington leaders agreed to emphasize the integration battle beyond the walls of the Stratford building.
The Feb. 2 community conversation was part of a broader commemorative effort, which included a forum with students at H-B Woodlawn earlier in the day. Countywide, there was special curriculum devoted to the impact of integration.
“All of us are united together” to remember the “tireless effort of those who came before us,” School Board Chairman Emma Violand-Sánchez said.
Virginia officials had been battling against the prospect of school integration since the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling of 1954. By the end of 1958, rulings by both state and federal judges were making it an inevitability, although one school system – Prince Edward County, downstate – opted to close for five years rather than acquiesce.
Throughout the 1954-59 period, members of the Arlington School Board attempted to thread a delicate needle – gearing up for integration but waiting for court rulings before proceeding.
Despite that go-slow approach, the county was not forgiven by the state government in Richmond for its lack of strident opposition to integration. Legislators stripped Arlington’s ability to elect its School Board members, and Virginia localities did not get that authority back until the 1990s.
Despite the stress of his first days at Stratford, Deskins said he looks back on his role making history as one that helped mold him.
“It was an excellent experience,” he said. “It has benefited me tremendously.”
