thunder during the storm--school desegregation in Norfolk, Virginia, 1957-1959: A local history, The

Journal of Negro Education, The, Spring 1998 by Bly, Antonio T

Blacks successes in debunking the city's massive resistance machine through legal means led a number of Whites to resort to nonlegal efforts to prevent school desegregation. As the possibility of real and significant desegregation loomed over the city in the fall of 1958, Norfolk's municipal leaders closed the public schools as a last-ditch effort to prevent Blacks from enrolling in White schools. By early 1959, fearful that the schools would remain closed indefinitely, several members of the White local community began to side with Black efforts to desegregate by openly denouncing the city's massive resistance stance and urging city officials to reopen the public schools even if they were to be desegregated. As White opposition to the school-closing remedy continued to spread, the Norfolk school board and city leaders were eventually forced to comply with demands to reopen the schools. Norfolk's massive resistance thus came to an end on February 2, 1959, when the city's six all-White junior and senior high schools reopened and admitted 17 Black students (Pratt, 1994).

In many ways, Norfolk's experience with school desegregation epitomizes the massive resistance position of the South. Like the thunder that echoes throughout a fierce and violent storm, the massive resistance movement manifested itself in this tidewater southern city as a thunderous roar, albeit one that was rationally abated. Despite the storm's relatively peaceful demise, the clamor created by Norfolk's city officials and school board between 1957 and 1959 was a microcosm of the social tensions flaring throughout the South as a result of the Brown decision.

CRISIS IN NORFOLK

The Beginning of School Desegregation

After the Supreme Court specified enforcement of its earlier ruling in the Brown case with its ruling in Brown 11 (1955), racial tensions between Blacks and Whites in the Deep South become increasingly intense as more and more Blacks began to file desegregation suits in southern courts (White, 1994). In Virginia, a number of such cases erupted in Arlington, Charlottesville, Prince Edward County, Richmond, and other areas where Blacks constituted a large portion of the population. Remarkably, while most of the large cities in Virginia were embroiled in a bitter fight against desegregation, the city of Norfolk's initial reaction to the Brown decision was relatively calm and seemingly quiet (White,1992).

Believing that the races would remain forever segregated due to established housing, neighborhood, and residential patterns that physically separated Blacks and Whites, many of Norfolk's White citizens did not see the Brown decision as a threat to their way of life. Relying heavily on urban renewal initiatives and promises of better and equal public facilities and services as devices to appease the Black community, most White Norfolkians believed that Brown would have little to no impact on them (Rufus Bly, personal communication, November 25, 1995; Dabney, 1971).' Needless to say, their initial sentiments were short-lived and mistaken.