Warren County closes its only high school
Closed 15 September 1958; reopened February 1959Warren County and its public high school at Front Royal, Warren County, VA
Eight days after a federal judge ordered Black students admitted, the governor locked the doors of Warren County High School. It was the first school closed under Massive Resistance, and roughly a thousand students had nowhere to go.
James W. Kilby farmed in Warren County and led its NAACP branch. His daughter Patricia had to travel out of the county to reach a Black high school, because Warren County did not run one. In 1958 Kilby sued the county school board, and federal district judge John Paul ordered Black students admitted to Warren County High School in Front Royal - the only public high school in the county.
Virginia had prepared for this. Under the Stanley Plan, passed in 1956 as the legislative core of Massive Resistance, the governor was required to close any school placed under a desegregation order. Eight days after Judge Paul ruled, on 15 September 1958, Governor J. Lindsay Almond Jr. closed Warren County High School. It was the first school in Virginia to be shut under the policy, and roughly a thousand white students were locked out along with the Black students who had won the right to enter.
White families organised almost immediately, holding classes in churches and private houses under the Warren County Educational Foundation and then in a private school, the John S. Mosby Academy, paid for partly by state tuition grants. The county's Black students had no comparable arrangement; some travelled to schools in other counties, some did without.
On 19 January 1959 the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals held that closing schools violated the state constitution's requirement of free public schools, and a federal district court struck the closure laws down on the same day. Warren County High School reopened in February and the Black students who had sued walked in. Almost no white students came back that year, and Mosby Academy ran until 1969, when state tuition grants ended. There is no graduating class of 1959.
Roughly a thousand students were shut out of the county's only high school for half a school year. The shape is Warren County, drawn indicatively; the authoritative boundary is the Census TIGER/Line county file.
Sources
- Massive ResistanceEncyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanitiesencyclopediavirginia.orgBacks Judge John Paul's order, the 15 September 1958 closure, the Stanley Plan's closure requirement and the 19 January 1959 rulings.
- James Lindsay Almond Jr. (1898-1986)Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanitiesencyclopediavirginia.orgThe governor who issued the closure orders, and his abandonment of Massive Resistance in January 1959.
- The Moderates' Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation in VirginiaUniversity Press of Virginia (1998)Edited by Matthew D. Lassiter and Andrew B. Lewis; covers how Warren County's white families organised private classes and the role of state tuition grants.