The Charlottesville City Council recently announced plans to vote on a resolution that would apologize for Council's role in the Massive Resistance effort during the nationwide school integration of the 1950s.
The Massive Resistance movement was an attempt by several Virginia school systems, including Charlottesville's, to oppose integration of black and white students, Council member David Brown said.
Mayor Dave Norris said the resolution would be a symbolic statement for Charlottesville and commemorate the anniversary of the movement's end.
"That the city was party to a serious injustice 50 years ago ... I think it's only right that you acknowledge an error," Norris said.
After the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, Virginia implemented its Massive Resistance program to prevent schools from integrating. In 1955, black parents petitioned the Charlottesville school system to let their children attend white schools and were subsequently denied.
In 1956, U.S. District Court Judge John Paul ruled in Allen v. School Board of the City of Charlottesville that city officials had to integrate Venable Elementary School and Lane High School. Two years later, the governor of Virginia at the time ordered that the two schools be shut down. The doors of Lane and Venable remained closed for five months and the Charlottesville school system remained segregated. Finally in 1959, Paul ordered the immediate transfer of 12 black students into the city's school system
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