1954

November 1953

• Blessed Sacrament School (a Norfolk parochial school) is the first all-white school in the region to enroll a black student.

March 1954

• Rear Adm. T. B. Brittain, commanding officer of Norfolk Naval Base, requests that the Norfolk School Board integrate an elementary school on federal property. Other Navy facilities were already integrated.

May 17, 1954

• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas -- overturns Plessy v. Ferguson ("separate but equal" ruling of 1896) and declares state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.

  • Watch WTAR footage of the Virginia General Assembly's reaction, which is not receptive to the court's decision.  

• Virginia Governor Thomas B. Stanley called for ''cool heads, calm, steady and sound judgment.'' (Library of Virginia, Radio in Virginia)

• Norfolk School Superintendent J.J. Brewbaker proposed ''an intellectual rather than an emotional'' response.

June 26, 1954

• U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr., who essentially controlled Virginia politics, vows to stop integration plans in Virginia schools.

August 30, 1954

• Governor Stanley appoints a 32-member, all-white Commission on Public Education to examine the effects of Brown v. Board on Virginia and plan a course of action. It is chaired by Senator Garland Gray of Sussex County.  

October 26, 1954

• The State Corporation Commission certifies the "Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties," an organization of segregationists and white supremacists formed primarily to preserve segregation in Virginia.