Elusive Equality: Desegregation and Resegregation in Norfolk's Public Schools

Chapter Four. Protest and Progress: The All-American City and the Age of Tokenism, 1960-1968

chapter four PROTEST AND PROGRESS hen Norfolk’s schools opened on September 5, 1963, students at Booker T. Washington High School were furious at what they found. Conditions at the all-black school were appalling. Classes were overcrowded, with forty students stuffed into many of the rooms. The cafeteria was underfunded, with only one steam table to serve more than 2,400 students. And the physical plant was in dreadful condition. The restrooms were dilapidated; the laboratories were poorly equipped; and paint was peeling off the ceiling and the walls. “When we saw how bad conditions were,” William Bagby, the vice president of the student body, recalled, “we . . . thought about [taking action].”1 Inspired by the historic March on Washington, which had occurred only a few weeks earlier, students at Booker T. Washington coordinated a simple but dramatic demonstration.2 At nine o’clock in the morning on Thursday, September 19, more than 2,200 young people assembled on the athletic field behind the school. Led by members of the student council and the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) youth chapter, the students marched two miles to Norfolk’s school administration building, where they picketed and protested against conditions at their school. A delegation of five students—Kenneth Wilson, Eleanor Southall, Marvin Gay, Kenneth Norman, and Thomas Scott—presented a list of grievances to Edwin Lamberth, the new superintendent of Norfolk’s schools. The students’ petition complained that Booker T. Washington was outmoded and overcrowded. The heating system was ineffective, the gym and shower rooms were inadequate, and the deficiencies in the scientific laboratories were “too numerous to enumerate.”3 As the student delegation presented its petition to Superintendent Lamthe all-american city and the age of tokenism, 1960–1968 W protest and progress | 115 berth, hundreds of young people picketed on the sidewalk outside the administration building. Many carried signs decrying the conditions at their school. “Booker T. is cold, dark, and drafty,” one placard read. “No Seats for Students at Booker T.,” another declared. The protesters went beyond the simple circumstances at their school, however. Some students carried signs questioning Norfolk’s continued resistance to desegregation. “Why Can’t I Go to School of My Choice,” one sign read, while another declared simply, “Stop Token Integration.”4 The Booker T. Washington demonstration represented a crucial part of Norfolk’s school desegregation story. It was not only the city’s largest student-led protest to that time, but it also served as a seminal community event that focused attention on the plight of black schools in a way that few other demonstrations could have. Here were the students themselves—the innocent, impressionable young people whom the city had taken the responsibility to educate—and they were presenting an indictment against their leaders. From the students’ point of view, Norfolk’s establishment had failed them. The students argued that no justice, no equality, and no true opportunity could exist in a city where the vast majority of African Americans were forced to attend a single high school, and that institution was as poorly maintained as Booker T. Washington. The students’ demonstration proved as controversial as it was significant, however, dividing Norfolk’s community along racial lines. On the one hand, the city’s white leadership condemned the protest. Editors at the VirginianPilot complained that the demonstration was “a poor way to promote a good cause,” while Wayne Woodlief, a reporter at the rival Ledger-Star, suggested that conditions at Booker T. Washington were “largely the students’ fault.”5 The superintendent and school board members shared these feelings. In an official report for the district, Superintendent Lamberth downplayed or dismissed most of the students’ charges. He wrote that Booker T. Washington was as well funded and well maintained as the predominantly white high schools in the city and suggested that the students had little to complain about.6 Norfolk’s African American leaders saw things from an entirely different perspective. Activists including P. B. Young Jr., Lyman Beecher Brooks, and Vivian Carter Mason supported the students and petitioned the school board to resolve the problems at Booker T. Washington. At the same time, Young, Brooks, and Mason joined with dozens of other local residents 116 | elusive equality to form the Committee for the Best Booker T. Washington High School. This grassroots organization campaigned for the construction of a new school that would meet the...