Second chance

The Virginia Legislature is offering scholarships to students whose schools closed during the Civil Rights Movement, after the Brown v. Board of Education case required schools to integrate. Yet some scholarship recipients are upset because the education funds are not only going to black students but also to white students who were affected by the closing schools, the Washington Post reported.

"This was the state's chance to apologize for wrongdoing, not to award people who have never known racism," Phyllis Archer, a black scholarship recipient who is now 57, told the Post.

"Both black and white students lost an opportunity because of the state's decision, and both deserve this aid," Brenda Edwards, the scholarship administrator, told the Post. "White people hear Brown v. Board, and they think they're not eligible. We're trying to change that perception.... We want more people to get the education they missed out on years ago."

The Brown v. Board scholarship program began under the direction of the Virginia Legislative Services in 2004. The first scholarship recipients graduated in 2007. Scholarship funds, which range from $300 to $10,000, can apply to tuition required to obtain a high school diploma, GED, vocational training certificate, undergraduate degree or post-graduate degree from a public institution of higher education in Virginia.

"We may observe with much sadness and irony that, outside of Africa, south of the Sahara, where education is still a difficult challenge, the only places on earth known not to provide free public education are Communist China, North Viet Nam, Sarawak, Singapore, British Honduras - and Prince Edward County, Virginia," President John F. Kennedy said in 1963. "Something must be done about Prince Edward County."

Students who lived in Arlington, Charlottesville, Norfolk, Prince Edward County and Warren County during the 50s and 60s are eligible for the scholarships. In Arlington, state public education funds were rescinded; in Charlottesville, Norfolk, Prince Edward County and Warren County, the schools closed completely rather than accept the federal mandate to desegregate after the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The closings fueled the "Massive Resistance," widespread Southern opposition to school desegregation.

"Of more than two thousand children affected by the public schools closing, it is estimated that less than five per cent received schooling for all five years and most received no education at all," stated the website of They Closed Our Schools, a documentary film that chronicles students who were unable to complete their high school diplomas or go on to college because their schools were shut down.

Some children moved away to continue their education, and others were educated by churches and families. Still others didn't receive education at all.

In 1959, the General Assembly gave the power to operate and fund public schools to local governments. Most of the schools reopened because citizens "preferred integrated schools to none at all," the Virginia Historical Society documents.

However, Prince Edward County put up the strongest resistance to desegregation. In 1959, the county Board of Supervisors decided not to fund the schools. The county was the only location in the nation to close public schools for five years. Instead, the city used tax credits to fund all-white private schools and refused to provide an education option for black children. Because tuition was not fully covered in many cases, some poor white children didn't get an education either.

After a long series of court battles, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed Prince Edward County's tuition grants to private education and forced the public schools to reopen and integrate in 1964.

Virginia is the only state to offer a scholarship to the students who were affected by school closures during the Civil Rights Movement.

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