0062268678 _N_ by Kristen Green

Author:Kristen Green [Green, Kristen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Prince Edward County’s black residents believed they had a friend in President Kennedy.

When the schools closed, Virginia legislators and congressmen turned their backs on the black residents of Prince Edward County. And President Eisenhower had seemed to pay little attention to the shuttering of schools and its effect on black students. Although the president acknowledged in correspondence with a Charlottesville parent deep regret that the schools were closed and said the impact on children could be “disastrous,” he never offered to intervene in Prince Edward.

Black county residents had all but given up on their local representatives, but they hoped the next president would step in. During the 1960 presidential campaign, Griffin wrote letters to both candidates, Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon, asking them how they planned to address the situation in Prince Edward. “This little Virginia community has defied the courts and violated every principle of democracy. Strong federal intervention is needed to save us from ourselves and guarantee our children a fair chance in an ever-changing world,” Griffin wrote.

“If you are elected as president of this great nation of ours, will you advocate measures to prevent this from happening to other children of the nation?” Griffin wanted to know. “Will you use the powers of this great office to correct this evil that is negatively affecting the lives of approximately 1,400 white and 1,700 Negro children, and by tomorrow could affect the lives of untold numbers of the South?”

More than 70 percent of blacks around the country voted for Kennedy, helping him to win the election.

Soon after Kennedy took office in January 1961, he expressed public support for Brown and denounced the school closings. His administration wanted to help the children of Prince Edward, but without clear authority for the federal government to enforce the Brown decision, the Department of Justice needed to be invited by a federal judge to join a school desegregation case as a friend of the court, not a party to the action.

Months after taking office, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy found a way around the friend of the court requirement. In April 1961, the Department of Justice filed a motion in federal district court to intervene in the Prince Edward suit as a party plaintiff, in an attempt to expand the NAACP’s complaint. In its first school desegregation case, the department asked the federal court to add the Commonwealth of Virginia, the comptroller of Virginia, and the Prince Edward School Foundation as defendants. It also asked the court to order Virginia to withhold state money for all schools—and for tuition grants—until the Prince Edward schools were reopened.

Segregationists quickly denounced the Department of Justice’s request to join the lawsuits. The Prince Edward Defenders held a rally attended by 250 people and adopted a resolution calling the department’s move “totalitarianism.” Congressman Watkins M. Abbitt of Appomattox, a member of Byrd’s close circle of advisers who had once referred to the Brown decision as the “naked and arrogant declaration of nine men,” said the department had usurped its powers.

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