I was looking for Robert’s Rules of Order the other day, and ran across the site of the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania. That reminded me of the Union-Philanthropic Literary Society of Hampden-Sydney College.
And then, oddly enough, NPR ran a piece on the school closures in Prince Edward County. (I say “oddly enough” because Hampden-Sydney is in Prince Edward County, and a study on those school closures was written by a student of the University of Pennsylvania.) Instead of integrating, Prince Edward County closed all public schools.
But this was just one episode in a wide campaign to avoid integration, part of which was the repeal of the State’s “compulsory school attendance law, making the operating of public schools a matter of local choice.” Since Brown v. Board of Education did not apply to private institutions, those schools remained segregated, or not, in accordance with the wishes of their patrons. Meanwhile, Virginia law provided that students could attend the public school of their choice — at least until Green v. School Board of New Kent County (1968).
In 1973, my mother and one of her friends, Pat Hula, opened the first integrated nursery school in New Kent County: Sunshine Nursery School at Providence Forge Presbyterian Church. For, as the song goes,
Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Red and yellow, black and white
They are precious in His sight
All the little children of the world.