Separate but Not Equal:
Race, Education, and
Prince Edward County, Virginia
Making Heroes of Those of Lesser Sin
Making Heroes of Those of Lesser Sin
by
Edward H. Peeples
Note to the contemporary reader:
This manuscript was written and sent to the Editor of the Editorial Page at the Richmond Times-Dispatch a week or so after excerpts from Guy Friddell's book on Colgate Darden appeared in that newspaper. I proposed it to the editor as a letter or Op Ed piece. A copy was also sent to State News Desk at the same time. I don't recall the precise details, but after calling the editor's office to ask what they intended to do with the piece, I was told that it could not be published because it was "too controversial". I received no response at all from the State Desk. I also have found among my notes accompanying the original draft, a list of people to which I sent the piece. Among them was L. Francis Griffin, who at the time wrote a column for the Richmond Afro-American weekly. I see in my notes that he called me on April 4, 1979 to ask if it could be published, presumably in the Afro. Of course, I was delighted to give him my permission to do so, but subsequently never saw it in the Afro.
The recent Times Dispatch (March 18, 1979) account of the Prince Edward County School closing, excerpted from Guy Friddell's book on Colgate Darden, illustrates so vividly the self-serving, selective memory of so many old watchdogs and apologists for privilege in Virginia. These days, politicians like Darden, journalists such as Friddell, Virginius Dabney and James J. Kilpatrick, and all of the Byrd brains of Massive Resistance, seem to recall past events only in a manner which disassociates them from the old white supremacist orthodoxy which the record shows they once supported. Perhaps, in the light of present-day standards, they are embarrassed about their past views on race and now wish for us to believe that they had nothing whatsoever to do with the irrational persistence of segregation. To hear Friddell tell it today, Darden and Governor Albertis Harrison never had any connections with the white supremacist Byrd establishment.
During the school closing period, I did extensive research on Prince Edward County and the school issue, which among other things, involved interviews with a number of the segregationist leaders of the time. Some of my materials have been published, but much of it, including photographs, a study of decision-makers in the county, and notes from my interviews and the meetings I attended, have not been disclosed. All of it, however, forms the basis for suggesting that Friddell's report of Darden's perception of things neglects a good bit of the truth.
While Darden certainly contributed in a fashion to the opening of the short-lived, privately-supported "Free School", he did nothing of courage or risk about the greater evils in the Prince Edward situation, hardly qualifying him for the heroic designation Friddell and some apologetic historians would bestow.
In the early 60s, Virginia was disgraced before the nation and across the globe as the only state in the developed world which closed its public schools as a deliberate act of bigotry. So the Byrd forces, nudged by other segregationists who had given up on Massive Resistance as their sole strategy for resistance, were desperate to halt the public relations hemorrhaging wrought by the school closing and so they agreed to enter talks with the Kennedy Administration. But Kennedy aides, much more sincere and personally committed to justice for blacks than the President himself, apparently were under great pressure not to ruffle the feathers of Harry Byrd Sr., Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and the other southern powers in the Congress. So compromises were made, concessions were given, and the Free School was rushed into place for the 1963-1964 school year. In the deal, the Byrd flock was to be assured that they could save face, so they got one of their own put into the top spot.
Colgate Darden was the perfect choice for a highly visible title at the Free School because of his reputation as one of the more independent Byrd organization devotees. He was just the right medicine for deflecting the humiliation Virginia was receiving for their racial antics. The prattle heard around the Commonwealth in those days was that "Virginia looked too much like Mississippi, and God knows we can't abide that."
As for the role of the Governor Harrison, and now Virginia Supreme Court Judge, he was little more than a member of the herd of Virginia sheep who were distinguished only by the extent of their collaboration with what was then left of defacto Massive Resistance. Contrary to popular opinion, the sentiment of defiance did not disappear upon the demise of Massive Resistance in 1959. The tactics just became more diverse, complex, clandestine and cunning. Closing public schools was just one such contrivance.
Public school re-opening in Prince Edward County came about, not by any effort of Darden or other errand boys dispatched by the Byrd Machine or the other segregationists, but in spite of the chicanery and recalcitrance of both the county and the state white supremacist establishment. The crack in segregation and school openings occurred only because of long time pressure from civil rights advocates, exposure by the press, and because it was ordered by the courts - after more than a dozen years in which Prince Edward County and Virginia had continuously sidestepped what was the lawful and right thing to do.
Even though Darden may not have been among the most shrill of the Massive Resisters, he was far from a hero in Virginia race relations. It is very informative to look closely at his record as governor and at the University of Virginia to see that while he may have gone his own way on a few occasions, there is little evidence that he was ever really unfaithful to the Byrd white supremacist policies. And no where is Darden's true frame of reference more clearly exposed than where he recalls Reverend L. Francis Griffin as "William Griffin". The fact is, Darden's basic loyalties and way of thinking was so entrenched in the Byrd mentality that he was unable to remember the name of the county's and one of the state's most widely known black leaders. And this was a man he was compelled, by his appointment, to confer with in Prince Edward on many, many occasions. Apparently, Guy Friddell, suffering from the same form of amnesia, overlooked this little Freudian slip.
Even as the old Byrd bunch may now enjoy a carefully laundered reputation, most everyone I spoke with back then knew exactly what was going on in Prince Edward County and in Richmond in the county's behalf. Everyone close to this issue in those days, including the likes of Darden and Friddell, was acquainted with the Prince Edward County "Oligarchy", a handful of powerful white men who, when lesser methods failed to further their private racial agenda for the county, were not above unleashing their devices of intimidation and reprisal. I had personal experiences with such intrigue.
Most everyone else who followed these events also knew how President John Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, U.S. Commissioner of Education Francis Keppel, and all the other Feds went light on Prince Edward and Virginia because Harry Byrd and the other segregation zealots in Congress vowed to kill the proposed Civil Rights Act, as well as sink the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Everyone in a position such as Darden's, likewise, was familiar with the web of complicity (involving a succession of governors, members of the General Assembly, the Attorney General's office, the state bureaucracy, certain newspapermen, a number of persons prominent in financial and business circles, as well as sundry "outside agitators" from other pro-segregation southern states) which assisted Prince Edward to become and remain for so long a rampart of disobedience to the courts and the law of the land.
Darden, like everyone else high up among Virginia decision-makers, knew that, for their part, the Free School was not created out of idealistic concern for four years of neglect of black and poor white children, but rather as a means for deflecting the heat of world-wide adverse publicity away from white Virginia leadership.
Similarly, Darden must have been informed about such events as the conspiracy between the white officials of the state, county, and the private segregated Prince Edward Academy which pulled off what came to be called the "midnight raid on the county treasury". I am sure that if you jostle Mr. Darden's memory a little, he could recall how, on August 4, 1964, a white posse calling themselves "Vigilantes" clandestinely rode door-to--door from midnight to 3 A.M. to summon hundreds of whites to sneak into Farmville and into the county Armory to collect their government handouts for paying school tuition fees. By nine o'clock the next morning, close to one-third of a million state tax dollars had, in defiance of court orders, been given away to whites only and would ultimately find its way into the coffers of the Prince Edward Academy. None of the Byrd flock, including Darden, to my knowledge lifted a public finger or voice of objection to this, or any of the other Prince Edward County madness of the time.
The systematic neglect of these, and other events like them, suggests to me that Friddell's book may be just another authorized whitewash and slippery apology for the inexcusable behavior of race-baiting obstructionists and political opportunists in Prince Edward County and around the state who, in fact, created the school closing flimflam. As if wrenching the pith of the truth from these events wasn't enough - the fabrication of a hero out of the lesser sins of a Colgate Darden by Friddell is a colossal insult to the true heroes and heroines who paid so dearly for ridding the Commonwealth of legalized segregation, that is, blacks and other opponents of segregation.
The aging Byrd barons now pray that the rest of us have long forgotten the way they were. They and their sons furthermore trust that the fictionalization of our past will disarm us for thinking critically about our future and that their neo-racist lullaby of conservatism and the virtue of selfishness will lure us into lethargy.
The fact is many of us have not forgotten the insanity of Massive Resistance and its sequella and no amount of sanitized propaganda will erase the misdeeds of white supremacists from the record. What's more, we will continue to scrutinize the present with the same care we recorded the past. Just as we now insist that the custodians of big privilege be held accountable for their acts of yesterday, their progeny will tomorrow have to answer for what they do today.
[All photographs and manuscripts are the copyright property of Edward H. Peeples. All rights reserved. You may view the images via a Web browser, and you may print or electronically save one copy for your non-commercial, personal viewing, but you may not otherwise copy or display these photographs.]
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