The NAACP's litigation strategy against school segregation went through a drastic change during the summer of 1950. Instead of working within the confines of Plessy v. Ferguson, which declared the constitutionality of the "separate but equal doctrine", the NAACP decided that the time had come to force the courts to reconsider segregation. Prior to 1950, the NAACP only tried cases where they could prove obvious inequality in segregated public education. This philosophy changed dramatically at the Boston convention in the summer of 1950, when the NAACP made a resolution to only take new cases that challenged the institution of segregation itself. The NAACP's deliberate change in legal maneuvering had alienating effects in both white and black communities, but it was ultimately successful with Brown decision. When looking at the relationship of history and the law, it is important to ask how and why such a pronounced change occurred in the legal thinking of the NAACP's lawyers. The Prince Edward County case provides helpful insight into understanding this legal change because it was filed in 1951 just as the NAACP was in the process of transitioning their legal strategy.

While the NAACP lawyers were busy going through huge organizational changes, the African American students at Moton High School in Prince Edward County were equally busy unifying themselves to go on strike. Under the student-initiated leadership of Barbara Johns, the students at Moton High were tired of their overcrowded and dilapidated school, and the students sought legal redress from the school board . The students at Moton High called upon the Richmond branch of the NAACP to help with its legal campaign. However, the student leaders at Moton high were completely unaware of the NAACP's change in legal strategy. Instead of integration, students like Barbara were merely hoping to improve their segregated educational facilities. The leading attorneys Oliver Hill and Spottswood Robinson had a completely different agenda. In a speech to the African American students and parents in Prince Edward County, Robinson implored the necessity for challenging segregation as an institution stating "The NAACP has undertaken its non-segregation policy after realizing that previous experiences had proven that there can exist no equality in a segregated school system". The previous experiences that Robinson mentions come directly from previous court rulings where ridiculous restrictions and exceptions were made by segregationists to maintain white supremacy.

Prior to 1950 most NAACP lawyers and organizers believed that public school officials would eventually realize that operating dual public school systems with equal facilities was economically infeasible. However, as the NAACP tried cases with graduate students, it became apparent that segregationists were not rational. Instead of working within the free market system, segregationists would spare little expense to keep white and black students apart. The NAACP grew exceedingly disillusioned with the idea that segregation would eventually come to an end for economic reasons. Furthermore, equal facility suits were time consuming and expensive to prove and the outcomes of such suits only applied to the district where the case was brought. While previous cases challenged the inequality of segregated facilities, the NAACP lawyers took an extremely different approach in the Prince Edward County case. In the Prince Edward County case much of the evidence was based on sociological and psychological research that focused on the negative effects that segregation had on African American children. Reputable doctors and psychologists demonstrated how the segregated facilities led black students to have lower conceptions of themselves and their race. The acceptance of this evidence as credible is crucial to understanding how the system of segregation was undermined in the Brown vs. Board of Education case.

In a 1936 letter to Dr. James H. Dillard, the Charlottesville philanthropist affiliated with the efforts to fund and improve black education in America, Dr. Carter G. Woodson wrote of a recent loss of staff on the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History due to the efforts of Anson Phelps Stokes, Thomas Jesse Jones and others. Considered by Woodson as the "promoters of the Negro Encyclopedia," Stokes and Jones, among others played the role of conspirators against the Association's production of the "Encyclopedia Africana" in Woodson's depiction. Dr. Woodson claimed that these men, "devoted to Negro control," were responsible for stealing his former employee and recruiting him to destroy the efforts of the Association. Woodson wrote, "they hope to divide the Negroes in their attitude toward what we are doing." With this letter, he hoped to gauge Dillard's stance on the issue and push him to choose a group to support.

The first battle in this outright publishing war actually occurred a few years earlier, when the April 27, 1931 Phelps Stokes Fund meeting spawned the "Encyclopedia of the Negro" project. The announcement of this Stokes-Jones supported encyclopedia hit Woodson hard, who had been working on his own encyclopedia of the same subject matter for a decade by that time. It also spurred Woodson to engage in public battles with these two men and their associates in interviews and through correspondence, like the letter he sent to Dr. Dillard. After having already announced the work of the Association to compile and publish an "Encyclopedia Africana" in 1921, Woodson believed that Stokes and Jones aimed to publish a story of the Negro "as the white man wants and is willing to pay for." For Woodson, the duplication of a work that his organization had already compiled extensive data for proved that the "promoters of the Negro Encyclopedia" acted as enemies of blacks in America and not friends. He addressed this idea in earlier correspondence with the council overseeing the "Encyclopedia of the Negro." In a 1932 letter, he asked the promoters of the encyclopedia either to furnish his association with a small sum of money to finish their own work or to use their funds to fix other problems facing the black American. Woodson also suggested the appointment of an officer from the Stokes-Jones council to review the efforts of both sides and assess the inventory and progress of each project. The Stokes-Jones camp declined to adapt either suggestion to the activities of their fund and the battle waged on throughout the years.

Carter G. Woodson believed that the education of blacks needed changes to reverse the effects of a black inferiority complex. Woodson wanted an organic education for blacks that came out of their history and experiences, and not from outside influences. This desire for truth and authority in retelling the story of the black American to the world guided Woodson's scholarly endeavors. This same desire pushed him to question the motives of Stokes and Jones, as well as their associates. Believing education steeped in the black experience and the "true" history of the race to be crucial to the development of the black American, Woodson could not reconcile the white leadership of the Stokes-Jones project with their supposed aims of providing blacks with a document for their race. According to Woodson, "Negroes must be led to solve their own problems and thus carve out their own future," and if the promoters of the Encyclopedia of the Negro declined to aid this plan, then they proved themselves as negative influences on the movement to improve black education. Carter G. Woodson wanted to help blacks help themselves by providing them with their own history and achievements to share with the world. The "Encyclopedia Africana" represented an outlet to provide that scientific and historical information for people, and to Woodson, other efforts towards creating a similar work that ignored his aims lacked authority and validity.

Citatio

On the night of Thursday, May 16, 1918 assailants killed white farmer, Hampton Smith in his home and wounded his wife in Brooks County, Georgia. The next night a white mob lynched two black men in conjunction with Smith's murder. By Sunday a mob lynched two tenants of Smith, husband and wife, Hayes and Mary Turner, while another black man went missing, also believed to be involved in Smith's death. An earlier argument between Hayes Turner and Smith apparently led to the attack by Turner and several other black men (1).

Two weeks later certain Georgia women were compelled to write to President Woodrow Wilson regarding the slaying of Mary Turner in particular. Women on behalf of the Savannah Chapter of the American Red Cross and the Colored Federated Clubs of Augusta began their letter, "Mr. President: Whereas, the Negro Womanhood of Ga. has been shocked by the lynching of Mary Tuner at Valdosta Sunday May 19, 1918, for an alleged unwise remark in reference to the lynching of her husband" and characterized themselves, "discouraged and crushed by a spirit of humiliation and dread." They asked that Wilson utilize his power and influence to prevent similar tragedies in the future and to reprimand the members of the mob (2). Although their letters received no direct response, Wilson published a statement in the Official Bulletin two months later condemning mob violence.

Racial violence was not uncommon in the early 20th century and many calls for help to put an end to lynching or to punish white aggressors went unanswered. The women who wrote to the President during this time were living in an especially racially tense environment: the first half of the 1900s was the height of Jim Crow segregation, black disenfranchisement, and mob rule. The country was also occupied with the war in Europe and did not take much notice to the problems at home. According to historian Sherrilyn A. Ifill, "in communities where lynchings occurred, fear kept blacks mostly silent and compliant" (3). There were blacks, however, who rejected silence by contacting the President of their country. These letter-writers used a variety of logic to convince the President to help them-they reasoned that they were loyal citizens living in fear and expected a respectable leader like Wilson to act on their behalf (2). Some received responses from the U.S. Attorney General claiming that there was nothing the President could do because mob violence was a state issue. Still, many black citizens felt the urge to convince Wilson to end the reign of terror occurring around them by showing him their loyalty to the US, the incessant fear in which they lived, and the futility of taking their concerns to their local governments.

In 1970 Bayard Rustin gathered many civil rights leaders and black public officials in support of an appeal to Washington. This appeal pushed for the U.S. government to supply Israel with fighter jets for protective purposes. Their appeal, in the form of a full-page ad in the New York Times, was sponsored by the A. Philip Randolph Institute of which Rustin was the executive director. This action signaled a significant change in Bayard Rustin's ideology as Rustin advocated nonviolence throughout the civil rights movement, and the shift furthermore upset many of his former colleagues from the War Resister's League. The correspondence resulting from Rustin's action display not only his legendary status, but also many of the complex issues wrapped up in the conflict.

Andrew McReynolds, who was the co-editor of the WRL magazine along with Rustin, wrote a letter expressing his deep disappointment. In his letter he calls Rustin, "the hero image of [his] life," and speaks of the path (of pacifism) that Rustin set before him and has now diverged from.[1] To McReynolds, Bayard's transition from protest to politics seemed to diverge from the fundamental ideas that forged the civil rights movement. In a more vitriolic letter, another WRL member, James Peck expresses similar sentiments. Calling Rustin the, "housenigger of the Democratic Party", he reproaches Rustin for his ad in the New York Times, as well as reproaching him for entering into politics rather than filling the vacuum of leadership the War Resister's League was facing (as the executive director, A.J. Muste, recently passed away). Regardless of the criticism, both these letters speak for the tremendous leader Rustin was and the loss that the peace movement was feeling at the time. Rustin's terse response to his critics reveals little into his thoughts as he refuses a discussion. He refused discussion deeming it unfruitful as long as his critics continued to use such derogatory language. McReynolds wrote another letter to Rustin essentially reiterating his thoughts, except imploring his belief that Rustin still was, "personally and existentially a pacifist."[2] In this letter the question of Rustin's pacifism is much more prevalent, and displays the thin line that Rustin walked as a result of his struggle against injustice conflicting with a pacifist agenda.

Bayard Rustin's dramatic change in ideology occurred less abruptly than this dialogue would suggest, with Rustin beginning to move towards politics in 1965 as summed up in his article, "From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement". Nevertheless, his support of defense for Israel in 1970 not only represents a change in his ideology, but is indicative of the larger changes which conclude the classical conception of the civil rights movement.

[1] Bayard Rustin. The Bayard Rustin Papers. (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1988), Reel 14.

[2] Ibid.

"We will oppose…with every facility at our command, and with every ounce of our energy, the attempt being made to mix the white and Negro races in our classrooms. Let there be no misunderstanding, no weasel words, on this point: we dedicate our every capacity to preserve segregation in the schools."

- Virginia Governor James Lindsay Almond, Jr.

Dr. Neil V. Sullivan arrived in Prince Edward County, Virginia with the intention to open a free school system for all students regardless of race. However, his efforts were not made easy by any means because of the strong opposition to integration of the white people in the county and the state of Virginia in general. Almost all of the county's 1700 black students missed five years of their education between 1959 and 1964 as the school board shut down the public school system. On his first night in town in August, 1963, he opened his mailbox to find letters telling him to "pack his Yankee bag and start traveling", and that the "Prince Edward Negroes were 'their' Negroes and that he should leave them alone". Dr. Neil V. Sullivan continued his efforts to start a school to ensure that all students would be guaranteed an education. Even amongst receiving threatening phone calls every day and people shooting at his car, Dr. Sullivan made sure his schools were open for the students every day.

The effort to create a free school system for both white and black citizens in Prince Edward County began in 1959 with the efforts of the NAACP, but it was not until President Kennedy created an initiative to open schools in 1963 that such a school system exsisted. After receiving a petition signed by 695 citizens of the county demanding public education for all students, he created the initiative to start the Prince Edward Free Schools Association. This one year project would be headed by Superintendent Dr. Sullivan. 1600 black students and a handful of whites enrolled in the free schools. There was minimal community backlash against these schools; in fact, The Farmville Herald, known for its segregationalist viewpoints and conservative manner, ran an ad for the Free Schools in the weeks prior to its opening. On May 25th, 1964, only nine months after the Free Schools project had begun, the Supreme Court decided that the Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors had violated the Fourteenth Amendment by denying students of color the right to a free and public education. Public schools were officially integrated and reopened in the fall of 1964.

Opposition towards integration after the Brown v Board decision of 1954 in Prince Edward County, Virginia remained strong even ten years later. The "Prince Edward Crisis" as it came to be known nationally, was the only case of its kind, as every other school district in the United States eventually conformed to the new policies of public schools becoming integrated. The white opposition was represented in Prince Edward by the leadership of The Farmville Herald, the local newspaper. This twice weekly newspaper and its editor, J. Barrye Wall, Sr. led efforts to remain segregated. However, the county allowed the Prince Edward Free Schools project to fully operate without intervening. The following year, the public schools reopened without any problems.

"The object of the convention is to sustain the President and reunite the country on his policy of Reconstruction." With this statement, the Wednesday, July 11, 1866 edition of the Montgomery Daily Advertiser outlined the purpose of the upcoming National Union Convention that was to take place on August 14, 1866. With the end of the war, the issue of reuniting the country was topic of both local and national interest. The prospect of joining the nation under a common ideology and purpose was one that was imperative to piecing together the broken nation. However, the fact that the country has just emerged from a long and arduous civil war entrenched in the ideas of varying ideologies made this repair a daunting task. Although Montgomery was located deep within the former Confederacy, the Advertiser's outlook of the upcoming convention was positive. The paper described an idyllic prospect, claiming a "spectacle of men from the North and South mingling together in harmonious counsel will go a long way towards sustaining him [Andrew Johnson] and breaking down the power of those who are alike, enemies to him and to constitutional liberty."

Upon the end of the Civil War, many people, both of northern and southern origins and loyalties, had become weary of the war. Families longed to be reunited and there was a hope for a return to a normal and stable way of life. As the Advertiser described, there was the hope that both Northerners and Southerners would be able to find common ground through support of Andrew Johnson, but, Johnson's blatant opposition to proposed legislation such as the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act made it unclear exactly how dedicated Johnson himself was to fully reuniting the nation.

Although there was a feeling among Americans that the country was in need of repair, there were many Southerners and delegates to the National Convention from Alabama and other former Confederate states who, "though willing to concede defeat at the hands of the Union army...would not, as the unionists demanded, admit wrong doing in 1861." This failure to accept war guilt also extended into other facets of life as well. Many southern states refused to acknowledge the rights of blacks following the end of the war. Governments across the South instituted Black Codes to restrict the rights and lifestyles of African Americans, or simply tried their best to return freedmen to a status as close to slavery as possible. Highlighting this Southern attitude, it became obvious that the issue of rebuilding the nation and the policy of Reconstruction that soon ensued was not enough to the cause the South to forget the war and ideology that fueled it in the first place.

The Civil War was over, and it was time for those who led the South to be punished. The Norfolk Virginian reported on Monday, December 25, 1865, that the Union arrested "Raphael Semmes, late Admiral in the Confederate navy, and commander of the celebrated cruiser Alabama," with "a profound feeling of shame." The people of the South lamented the "unexpected arrest and immediate transfer to a Northern jail" of this "true born American," and considered Admiral Semmes a war hero. His most celebrated and "most unequal fight" was against the French vessel, the Kearsage, in which he "gallantly sunk, rather than give up his ship." The government charged the venerated Admiral with "violating the usage of war" for the aforementioned battle, which took place in June 1865, over a month after the command to "cease all acts of war" on April 26, 1865. Though Admiral Semmes protested the arrest and was previously paroled on other charges, his trial proceeded, and he was released from prison on April 7, 1866.

Like Admiral Semmes, some officers in the Confederate Army were charged with treason after the Civil War. Though the 1866 Civil Rights Act vindicated those in the Confederacy in an attempt to help the reconstruction and reunification process, it did not protect the leaders of the Confederate Army. Many men in various ranks were charged with treason, and the South despised each arrest and often publicly disapproved of the arrests of their recently celebrated heroes. The Union did not arrest many officers, however. Though a great many in the North, including President Andrew Johnson, believed that treason was "odious" and should be punished by death, the law dictated that the Union had no jurisdiction to prosecute the rebels. In addition, many government officials in the Union believed that if the officers of the Confederate Army were executed, they would die martyrs and only make Reconstruction harder to accomplish.

The people of Norfolk were worried. According to the Norfolk Virginian, the Board of Health expected Asiatic cholera to spread to North America soon. The United States had seen cholera before. In 1832, it spread through New York and parts of Canada. It killed over ten thousand in New York, New Orleans, and St. Louis in 1849. Several thousands more were lost in Chicago in the 1850s. Each of these surges in the spread of this disease followed major outbreaks in Europe.

The fear that this Asiatic cholera would again become a pandemic in the United States caused the government to order new sanitary measures. Previously, people did not know the cause of cholera, but by the 1860s, public health officials suspected dirty water to be the source of the disease spreading and the new public sanitary measures reflected this. The Board of Health ordered that certain lots, some privately owned, be filled with dirt to prevent standing water from accumulating. Also, the Board expected all householders to clean their property every day and their gutters at least twice a week. Furthermore, all docks were to be cleaned and all accumulating shells, mud, filth and decaying wood were to be cleared every day so that no area had less than two feet of water at any time. The military did not play a large role in the implementation of these measures, but the city employed extra assistant health inspectors to check that the orders were being carried out and put them into action where they were not being followed.

Unfortunately, the measures were unsuccessful and cholera broke out in America once again. This time, the epidemic killed as many people as before, and caused even more tension in the nation, which was already suffering due to Reconstruction. Unfortunately outbreaks of bacterial infections such as this were a devastating reality long after 1860, and though they are less frequent now and can be treated, they still plague parts of the world.

The message was clear; those fighting for the Confederate Army were "destroy[ing] the government of [their] fathers." In an advertisement in 1862 in Winchester, Virginia, the government established by the "the patriot statesmen and warriors of the revolution" asked that the confederate soldiers "throw down [their] arms" and come rejoin the Union. The ad insisted that the "bad men" of the confederacy stood in the way of "one flag, one land, one heart, one hand, One nation evermore." Most importantly, the public notice asked the soldiers, "what are you fighting for?"

Desertion was already a problem for the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Tens of thousands deserted the Confederate Army between the years of 1862 and 1865. Some believe desertion to be a main factor in the South's defeat. Union propaganda only worsened this problem. With emotional words and a call to desert the army, many more confederate soldiers, who were already unhappy due to low morale often caused by defeat, left the army. Despite this, the desertion rate for the Confederate Army was lower than that of the Union Army. Many agree that a majority of the Confederate Army volunteers continued their service to the army until the end of the war, and that the high desertion numbers in the Confederate Army were only partially due to soldiers deserting their camps. Many soldiers who either died in battle but were never found, or who left their camp and served in another unit are counted in the number of deserters. In April, 1865 thousands did desert the Confederate Army and days later General Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union Army in Appotomax, Virginia.

On March 3 1859, Francis Kemble noted in her diary the death of one of her neighbors and subsequent partition of his estate. One of the largest human chattel holding in North America-- 436 men, women, and infants according to Mrs. Kembles journal-were divided among the heirs. The slaves were brought to Savannah in small convenient groups. "Half a Negro stock on major butlers plantation, fell to one of the 2 heirs of that estate" Kembles noted. Also, the slaves were given a full body examination in preparation for the auctioning held on their seventh day in captivity. Slaves had experienced their mouths being pulled; and limbs pinched, to test their muscle structure.

. Joseph Bryan was a slave broker who managed the sale of the slaves on the auction block. It was Bryan's job to keep the slaves fed, housed, and healthy up until the day of the auctioning. Slaves were placed in cages before they were sold. The floors that the slaves slept and ate on were bare and cold. The clothing they received during this transition phase was minimal and uncouth. The children were more carefully dressed and cared for than adults. The examinations slaves went through were to test their abilities and give their future masters insight into their productivity levels. As historian Walter Johnson has demonstrated, these rituals were common in the larger more prominent slave pens of late antebellum New Orleans. Whether sold locally or over long distances, black men, women, and children faced similarly dehumanizing experiences in the domestic slave trade.