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Arlington Public Library

When Arlington Did the Right Thing

"The time is always right to do the right thing."
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

On August 28, the 48th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial will be formally dedicated in Washington D.C. Located in West Potomac Park and flanked by the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, the addition of the King Memorial creates a monumental trifecta of leadership and inspiration.

From left, seventh graders Gloria Thompson, Ronald Deskins, Lance Newman and Michael Jones enter the previously all-white Stratford Junior High on Feb. 2, 1959. Courtesy of Michael Jones.

As a child of nine in August of 1963, I had little knowledge of the man whose eloquence and personal courage undergirded a movement. I had no knowledge of the civil rights movement itself. African-Americans were just not a part of my everyday experience. Just as it is often observed that there are two Virginias, in 1963 there were two Arlingtons: the well-to-do, predominantly white North Arlington and the less prosperous, racially mixed South Arlington. It was a distinction that was more than just directional. There were few students of color in my elementary school, Stewart-Tuckahoe, when I attended from 1960-1966--a fact consistent with the 1960 Census, which reported only 7,063 foreign–born persons or 4.3 percent of the County’s total population.

High View Park in North Arlington and Arlington View and Green Valley (Nauck) in South Arlington were all that remained of the County’s African-American communities. High View Park, known in my day as "Hall's Hill," was a neighborhood not far from where I grew up. It epitomized the less prosperous and segregated Arlington: an enclave of substandard housing and dead-ended, unpaved streets that for much of its history had been literally walled from the white neighborhoods it bordered by a series of 7-foot fences.

The year of King’s speech, the Arlington Planning Commission established a committee to study how best to maintain residential neighborhoods, a study that led to the creation of the Neighborhood Conservation Program. On Feb. 13, 1965, the County Board approved a Neighborhood Conservation Plan for High View Park hailing the tireless efforts of the residents who spoke up for their neighborhood’s civic rights. Abraham Lincoln, whose 156th birthday was celebrated the day before, would have been proud.

As significant as this moment was in Arlington's pursuit of racial parity, it was but the latest example of the County’s black and white residents working together for common cause. A few years earlier, some of the High View Park champions--E. Leslie and Dorothy Hamm and Peggy Deskins – had joined Edmund and Elizabeth Campbell and others to face down Sen. Harry Byrd’s "massive resistance" and integrate the County’s schools.

The Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision to end school segregation "with all deliberate speed" rocked Virginia to its core in May 1954. The "political museum piece" that was Virginia, as characterized by political scientist V.O Key in his classic, "Southern Politics in State and Nation" [1949], was stuck on the horns of a dilemma, caught between the moral imperative to do right by Virginia and remain segregated, or to do the right thing. It was an issue that pitted being a Virginian against being an American. Arlington, having evolved from a bedroom community in the shadow of the nation's capital to a thriving, socially progressive community of residents whose political views were markedly different from those of the rest of the state, found itself at the center of the fight.

By 1956, political passions were running high in Richmond as "massive resistance" to the High Court's mandate was gaining momentum, giving rise to a plan to prevent any integrated schools from receiving state funds and authorizing the governor to order any such school to close. Meanwhile the NAACP was filing lawsuits across the state to force integration, including a suit brought on behalf of 15 African American and white parents and 22 students in Arlington.

The case was named for Clarissa S. Thompson, an African American student who wanted to attend Arlington's all white Washington-Lee High School instead of the all black Hoffman-Boston. After hearing oral arguments, Alexandria Federal District Judge Albert V. Bryan, who only four years before in writing the opinion in the original Prince Edward County school integration case* stated that racial segregation caused no hurt or harm to either race, ordered that the schools in Arlington be desegregated. Suits and countersuits ensued--deliberation without speed.

Finally, on Jan. 19, 1959 (birthday of Virginia native son Robert E. Lee), the state’s Supreme Court of Appeals, by a ruling of 5-2, overturned the Virginia legislature's "massive resistance" laws and its threat of schools closures, declaring them in violation of the Virginia Constitution. The issue of school integration had assailed Virginia’s traditional political culture, a culture that was oligarchic, parsimonious, suspicious of "big" government, discouraging of public participation in the affairs of state, obeisant to the way things were. Throughout the long, slow march to integration in Virginia, rhetoric trumped reason; fear mongering triumphed over fairness; delay prevented "deliberate speed." Traditional Southern values were pitted against unwanted northern influence--ideologues against pragmatists.

The press, too played a powerful role on both sides of the integration issue. For every Richmond News Leader editorial that intrepidly egged on the resisters, editorials in both the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot and The Washington Post and Times Herald, penned by Lenoir Chambers and Robert Muse, respectively, eschewed moral turpitude and urged action and acceptance.

Virginia fought the law, but the law won. On Feb. 2, 1959, Ronald Deskins, Michael Jones, Lance Newman and Gloria Thompson (sister of Clarissa) entered Stratford Junior High School, splitting a phalanx of approximately 100 helmeted Arlington police officers who were Little Rock-ready with gas grenades, masks and batons. Their walk to school irrevocably changed Virginia although at the time, they were unaware of its historical significance.

Years later, reminiscing at a panel discussion with 500 students at Stratford Junior High (now H-B Woodlawn), the four understated their roles on that important day citing their parents and other community leaders – blacks and whites -- as the true heroes of Arlington’s integration story. The integration of Stratford was but the first of many small steps toward integration. It would still be years before black and white children could sit alongside one another at drug store counters and drink Cokes, attend dances together, or compete on the same sports teams.

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* Prince Edward County Public Schools chose to close rather than integrate and remained closed from 1959-1964. It was the only county system in the country to do so.

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The material for this story came from the archives of the Arlington Public Library's Center for Local History. The attached bibliography will help interested readers learn more about these important events in Arlington’s history.

VA Room Oral Histories about Desegregation

  • Series 3, no. 26 Edmund Campbell
  • Series 3, no. 48 Dorothy Hamm
  • Series 3, no. 110 Ray Reid
  • Series 3, no. 112 John Robinson
  • Series 3, no. 061 Theda Henle

DVD:

Segregation/Integration Collections in the Arlington Community Archives

  • RG 7: Arlington County Public Schools
  • RG 7B: Hoffman-Boston High School Records
  • RG 9: Records of Citizen’s Committee for School Improvement
  • RG 18: Personal Papers of Barbara Marx
  • RG 19: Personal Papers of Elizabeth Pfohl Campbell
  • RG 69: Arlington County Public Schools: Desegregation Materials (copies culled from RG 7)

Vertical Files:

  • 5 Folders containing clippings, articles, memos, reports, etc. relating to desegregation

Books:

 

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Diane, I read your blog post, When Arlington Did the Right Thing with much interest. The recollection of history was interesting to read but it angers me tremendously when I read white people who lived near Hall’s Hill characterize our neighborhood as if it was a ghetto. In 1963 you were nine years old and I was 12. While our houses may not have been as large as the houses in the “white” neighborhoods and many of our streets were dead-ended, to a large degree because of the wall white residents of Arlington built to enclose us, our neighborhood was not an enclave of substandard houses and unpaved streets. We didn’t have sidewalks for many years but our streets were paved – just like yours. This is the second blog post that I have read that has incorrectly characterized Hall’s Hill. I doubt that you or anyone in your family ever came into our neighborhood. You had no interest in our lives or our neighborhood, so I wish you would refrain from writing about things you know nothing

    • Thank you for taking the time to share your comment – I am sorry that parts of this blog post upset you.

      It sounds like your memories, and those of your neighbors at the time, are greatly needed in the still-evolving historic record of Arlington.

      As I was indeed a child at the time of desegregation in Arlington, I used material from the Virginia Room to research the details of my story. This included “The Halls Hill – Highview Park Proposed Community Conservation Program,” which was presented to the County by the John M. Langston Citizens Association, in February of 1965.

      At the end of the proposal, Mrs. Alonzo Spriggs, Chairman of the Special Committee of the Citizens Association states:

      “Our days of “mud-trudgin”, inadequate housing, potter-like vacant lots, hole in the wall, streets one way in and out, houses that we were basically ashamed of but could do very little to better conditions of — the rarity of curbs, gutters and sidewalks; our mud-packed or slightly gravelled roads — every child’s play haven — the picture frame entrance of transient laborers adorning our very image of that which is held so dear to us, can be remedied much sooner with your full support and cooperation.” (emphasis mine)

      The conservation program proposal was adopted in full by the County as the Highview Park Neighborhood Plan in December of 1965. More information and links to these documents, as well as the rest of my research materials, can be found at the end of the original post.

      Please consider participating in the Library’s oral history project, and sharing your recollections of growing up in Hall’s Hill.
      You can do so by contacting Judy Knudsen in the Virginia Room, at 703-228-5966.

      Sincerely,
      Diane Kresh, Library Director

      • My recollection is the same as the one “Anonymous” shares above. In 1963, I was 15 and had grown up in – as you describe it – the “less prosperous, racially mixed South Arlington.” My specific neighborhood was Alcova Heights which was mostly white as I recall. But I went to Wakefield HS and became friends with a number of black students who lived in “Green Valley,” “Hall’s Hill,” and another predominantly black neighborhood I don’t remember the name of (it was roughly bordered by Columbia Pike, S. 2nd Street, and Washington Blvd). I frequently visited my friends in their homes in those three neighborhoods and recall their homes being just like mine — nice normal clean homes on paved streets. I have no recollection of houses or neighborhoods being in the poor conditions you describe. And I’m not sure that sidewalks are an indication of anything anyway — if you drive around “prosperous” North Arlington right now in 2012, there are many nice neighborhoods that do not have sidewalks including many of the very expensive ones such as Country Club Hills. I think we all know there are factual history writers – and then there are revisionist history writers. Seems like your history would benefit from input from “Anonymous” and other folks who actually lived in those neighborhoods.

  2. You may be interested in a few earlier recollections. I attended WashingtonLee from 1945 to 1949. My recollection was that there was a Hall’s Hill on South Glebe Road and a Cherry Hill area on North Glebe Road – black neighborhoods. The Cherry Hill area seems like it was where the Cherrydale area is on current maps.

    I also have the recollection of walking by Principal Richmond’s office at W-L and seeing a young black girl and boy waiting on the bench to be admitted to the school. It seems like they were there quite a few days. However, I can’t find any litigation that dates back that far. Is my mind playing tricks on me?

    Evan Ivie

  4. I work in the Lee Senior Center here in Arl Co and will be leading a session on the Civil Rights movement, MLK Jr and Arlington Co on Jan 22. I am so glad I came across your essay. I would like reference it in my discussion. I was also interested in the some of the books but I’m not an Arlington resident. Could I still check them out?

    • Hi Adriana,

      As someone who works in Arlington (and for the County), you qualify for an Arlington Public Library card. Just come in to any of our locations or you can apply online too: http://lib.arlingtonva.us/departments/Libraries/about/WebReg.htm

      You can also get a library card for most of the other library systems in this area too.

      Feel free to use anything you find in the Library for your project along with anything on the Library website. Thanks for getting in touch.

  5. Interesting..I was there on that day as a student. What you’re forgetting is that George Wallace and the Nazi Lincoln Rockwell had been stirring up the parents. The police didn’t get them in the school the kids did. We(I guess the “fonzi” types of the day) met at the “wall” on vacation lane and the “tunnel” under Lee Hwy. and converged at the front of the school and formed a protective v formation around those kids. Come on Joe Young Joe Goslin Sharon Bitting speak up. Lance Newman was a soft spoken intelligent young man that was more worried about his mom than himself that day.

    • David,

      We’ve never heard a report from that day like yours – Please consider sharing your recollections more completely by participating in the Library’s oral history project.

      You can do so by contacting Judy Knudsen in the Virginia Room, at 703-228-5966.



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