Miles to Go: A Report on School Segregation in Virginia, 1989-2010

• In Event: School Segregation Along the Eastern Seaboard: Illuminating Historical Circumstances, Exploring New Challenges, Updating Tested Policies

Abstract

In 1951, black high school students in Prince Edward County, Virginia led a ten day strike demanding facilities equal to those afforded to white students. Civil rights lawyers filed a suit on behalf of the students, eventually becoming one of the five cases consolidated into the landmark Brown v. Board of Education litigation.

Three years later, in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision outlawing racial segregation in public schools. In Virginia, state officials greeted the Supreme Court's verdict in Brown with fierce opposition and quickly helped mastermind a regional revolt, known as Massive Resistance, to the ruling. In what was perhaps the most pronounced display of defiance to Brown, four school systems in Virginia closed down their schools rather than integrate (Pratt, 1991).

Alongside these key developments, school districts in the Richmond metropolitan area were the first to come under federal court order to consolidate for the purpose of desegregation (Bradley v. Richmond School Board, 1972). While the Detroit-area Milliken case is much better known, the Richmond lawsuit actually preceded it. Both cases eventually resulted in failed mergers, however, and helped strengthen the invisible barriers between city and suburban schools (Ryan, 2010).

Each of these historical milestones were linked to progress and regress on patterns of racial segregation across Virginia. More than fifty years after Brown, significant and rising portions of the state’s black students enroll in segregated schools that are very isolated by both race and socioeconomic status. Fully 16% of black students in the state enrolled in intensely segregated (90-100%) minority schools in 2010, rising from about 12% in 1989. Low-income students make up about 75% of the student population in the state's intensely segregated minority schools, indicating that concentrations of poverty are heavily layered onto racial isolation. Urban districts in general remained extremely segregated: white students accounted for less than 10% of the enrollment in Richmond, Petersburg and Norfolk schools between 1989 and 2010.

Findings also indicated that the state and its major metros and districts have become rapidly more diverse, particularly in the past decade. With rising levels of racial diversity come many opportunities for integration, but a key challenge will be to ensure that metros and districts that become diverse remain diverse and do not resegregate. Importantly, even as levels of segregation between school districts in some of Virginia’s major metros decline, we find evidence of swift racial transition and segregation within districts.

For Virginia—and the South—to have a healthy multiracial future, it is absolutely urgent that its citizens understand both the values of diversity and the real risks of resegregation. A number of possible policy options exist that bear no relationship to the mandatory plans of the early 1970s. Many instead involve conscious efforts to use school choice and housing opportunity strategies in innovative and appropriate ways. The analysis closes with state and region-specific recommendations for moving forward in a way that builds upon the growing diversity.

Author

• Genevieve Parker Siegel-Hawley, Virginia Commonwealth University