“Our Fears Make Cowards of Us All”: Civic Consciousness and the Constraints of Change in Warren County, Virginia, 1958-1960*

When Governor J. Lindsay Almond acted on behalf of the Virginia General Assembly and closed Warren County High School (WCHS) rather than allow it to desegregate, Warren County became ground zero for massive resistance against the implementation of Brown v. the Board of Education (1954) in Virginia. The county became a new cause célèbre of southern, white resistance against desegregation nationally, after Little Rock, Arkansas.[1] Warren County was an unlikely candidate for such a dubious distinction. Compared with other locales in Virginia, it was part of a geographic corridor down the Shenandoah Valley that political scientist Robbins L. Gates described as the “white belt.”[2] With a total population just under fifteen thousand, half of whom lived in the town of Front Royal, only about 8 percent of the population was African American.[3] Nonetheless, because the county had no schools for Black children after the seventh grade, African American students who wished to continue their education either attended Manassas Regional High School, around a forty-five mile trip from Front Royal, or later Johnson-Williams High School in Berryville, still a north-bound, 30-mile drive. Under these circumstances, it was unsurprising, but no less courageous, that local African American parents, under the leadership of James Kilby and Charles Dean, and encouraged by the Rev. Herman Frank, petitioned the school board for their children to attend the segregated WCHS in the fall of 1958. Rebuffed by school administrators, the parents retained NAACP lawyer Oliver Hill to represent their children. Hill wrote to the school board officially requesting a response about whether they would admit the twenty-four pupils petitioning to attend  WCHS.[4]

On August 14, 1958, the school board rejected the transfer requests and published an open letter to Hill in the local newspaper, justifying its actions on series of laws intended to resist Brown. These thirteen laws, passed by a special session of the General Assembly in 1956, were collectively known as “the Stanley Plan.” The school board argued that only the state’s Pupil Placement Committee had the authority to grant the petitions—a dubious claim given that this portion of the “Stanley Plan” had already been declared unconstitutional. Nevertheless, the school board made plain that, had it the authority, it would still have rejected the requests.[5] Hill immediately filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the students, and on September 5, 1958, federal judge John Paul ordered the immediate desegregation of WCHS. The speed of the court ruling took both the Governor’s Office and Warren County’s white citizens by surprise.[6] On the following Friday, the WCHS student body was called to an assembly in the auditorium to learn that effective Monday, September 15, by executive order, Governor Almond would close their high school.[7] In the words of editorialist Benjamin Muse, “the first school-closing under massive resistance fell upon Virginia complacency with a heavy thud.”[8]

Of course, for suddenly displaced high school students, this was no mere “thud.” Later remembrances by WCHS students of that day are instructive, even if they are distanced from the time of the event. Mike Berryman, the 1958-1959 WCHS class president recalled,

We were blindsided by an announcement and a call to assemble in the overcrowded auditorium, where we were told to collect our belongings, and to leave and not to expect to return anytime soon if at all. One classmate recalls instruction “to find our own school if we wanted continuous schooling.” It was like being told to leave home and not return. [9]

Mary Bowman McFarlane recalled, “I remember nothing. I went numb and felt that the school closing was like a death-sentence.”[10] Another student remembered fondly the outpouring of civic duty and service expressed by the community. Sandra Garbers Cook reminisced that she “loved it that the businesses and churches of Front Royal opened their doors to ninety-five senior students without a school to attend and unable, for whatever reasons, to leave their hometown.”[11] Indeed, these student recollections exemplify the range of responses that would come from the parents in Warren County at the time of the school closing.

The white Warren County Parent Teacher Association (PTA) met again on September 25, 1958, at the Front Royal Elementary School. Word had already circulated that the fifteen-person committee appointed to study the crisis, chaired by local attorney (and later Virginia circuit court judge) Duncan Gibb, was seriously considering a proposal to create a private, segregated school system. Baptist minister Paul Stagg offered the invocation, admonishing the crowd, as he appealed to God to “overrule our unruly passions, our will to power, and the folly of our ways that truth, justice, and the peace of God that passes man’s understanding may prevail.”[12] According to the laws under the Stanley Plan, the governor was required by law to close any school system forced to desegregate under a court order; however, the school system could make an appeal to the governor to reopen. So, during the meeting, A.G. McVay, the general manager of the local plant of the American Viscose Corporation (AVC), the largest employer in Front Royal, moved to make just such an appeal to Governor Almond to reopen the public schools.[13] Front Royal Methodist pastor C. T. Boyd seconded the motion. However, fellow clergyman Carlton Blankenship of Rivermont Baptist Church countered that they should just let the Governor handle the problem without benefit of an appeal.[14] McVay’s motion was tabled by a vote of 261 to 106. The vote suggested that two-thirds of the attendees thought it reasonable to give massive resistance a chance. Indeed, McVay was later shunned by former friends and received threatening phone calls and letters for his intervention.[15] The meeting was a portent of the difficulty other moderates would have in the midst of massive resistance. For example, John Fitzgerald, an accountant at AVC, founded the Warren County Committee for Public Schools soon after the meeting. While sixty white people were willing to identify themselves publicly as members, the organization languished with Fitzgerald essentially running it as a one-man show.[16] Further, ardent segregationists in the town targeted his wife’s employer with a boycott.[17] Over time, many others who publicly supported desegregation found their jobs targeted. For example, some residents defamed Margaret Moore, the superintendent at the local hospital, as a communist and tried to get her fired, because she initially supported desegregation of the public schools.[18]

Generally speaking, white parents in the community were surprised and confused. The suddenness of the lawsuit and Judge Paul’s ruling meant that Warren County’s white citizens had little time to prepare or contemplate a comprehensive educational strategy. Unlike its counterparts in Norfolk or Charlottesville, where schools were also closed, the Warren County Educational Foundation (WCEF) was hastily formed from the PTA’s committee of fifteen to solve the immediate need to school about one thousand children. For this reason, the WCEF, at least in its inception, represented those more moderate on the issue of race as well as committed segregationists. It was primarily tasked with finding educational spaces for white students remaining in the county. While some parents sent their children to schools in neighboring districts, with other students going to live with relatives or paying to stay with families much farther away, it became clear that the education of the majority of white high schoolers would have to depend upon preexisting, white social networks and spaces in Front Royal. The WCEF thus moved to create what would colloquially be called the “street school,” a series of spaces available for high school classes on or around the main streets of the town.[19] The WCEF did not offer to school the Black plaintiffs, who were left to find their own alternative educational options with the help of the NAACP.

On a practical level, the architects of Virginia’s massive resistance fully understood that their strategy depended upon private, voluntary, and white associations as platforms for what they hoped might be a successful transition to a post-Brown segregated order. The Virginia educational code had even been amended in 1956 to allow such spaces to be used in anticipation of massive resistance.[20] In Warren County, such networks and spaces necessarily included institutions within close proximity of one another, large enough for teaching students, and controlled by private white citizens. The Episcopal, Methodist, and Baptist churches in downtown Front Royal provided spaces for education, as did Local 371 of the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) at AVC. These decisions sat uneasily with the positive support for desegregation by many southern denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention and the Presbyterian Church in the U.S., and regional organizations like the Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church.[21] Further, ministers in Front Royal’s most established churches, including those that housed the street school, overwhelmingly supported desegregation. Similarly, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), both nationally and at the state level, officially supported the importance of free desegregated education and desegregated shops in the South as part of their “Southern Strategy,” which sought to challenge conservative and wealthy business interests by encouraging working class whites and African Americans to unite in common interest to promote workers’ rights and better wages. Indeed, TWUA Local 371 in Front Royal was an early example of an integrated shop. Nonetheless, the local provided space and money for the street school. Given these circumstances, it is reasonable to ask why these voluntary organizations ultimately supported the segregated street school, even though such support furthered the aims of massive resistance in the county and ran counter to the ideals of the national and state organizations and, in many cases, of local leadership.

One obvious reason that voluntary organizations supported the street school is that white people in Warren County simply chose local, racist customs and culture, abandoning any compliance with the mission and principles of their organizations. In his sweeping interpretation of the civil rights movement, David L. Chappell, argued that “white supremacists in the south failed to get their churches to give their cause active support.”[22] Nonetheless, over and against clergy objections, lay leadership in the churches not only actively supported the street school but argued that it was their duty to help educate white children during massive resistance. And this support, at least temporarily, helped the political ends of those promoting segregation. Similarly, Alan Draper claims that the civil rights movement created a rift between union leadership and the rank-and-file membership in the South.[23] This was certainly true in Front Royal, where TWUA Local 371 allowed the use of its property to support the street school, while the national and state AFL-CIO supported free, desegregated schools. However, it was not just the international that challenged segregationist leadership in the local. Rather, conflict emerged from within the local itself between those members who directly benefitted from supporting white students in Warren County and those who did not, especially African American members and those who lived outside the county in places like Luray. Such divisions constrained leaders who tried to funnel union resources, especially financial resources, to promote both massive resistance and later the founding of a private segregated school. That African American and many white union members leaned upon the power of the international should not blind us to the fact that challenges to extreme segregationist positions came from within and not just from outside of the union’s local.

Other scholars have argued that defenses of segregation were not a rejection of principles but rather an expression of them. In rejoinders to Chappell, Carolyn Renée DuPont and J. Russell Walker have shown that white evangelicals in Mississippi and South Carolina, respectively, employed substantive theological defenses of segregation.[24] Similarly, several denominational studies have charted church members’ defenses for and opposition to segregation after the Brown decision.[25] James Hershman suggests that white union members’ anxiety about competition with African Americans fueled the struggle against desegregation among white people in Local 371.[26] However, while there were certainly individuals who provided such arguments in the churches and the union in Warren County, one searches in vain to find cogent and consistent defenses of segregation among their memberships. Rather, leadership in these churches and the local argued that their actions were compatible with the spirit of broader institutional values and norms. Further, their concrete actions suggest that this was not merely lip service. It is certainly true that by supporting the street school, members of the churches and union rejected broader institutional principles in favor of local customs of segregation, but they also tried to temper their actions in a manner they believed was consistent with their institutional identities, even as they clashed on a practical level with national, regional, and local leadership, such as ministers.

The churches and the union had one thing in common: a sense of civic commitment to the local white community, manifested especially by public service. This civic consciousness was a core feature of these institutions’ local identity, not a compromise or distraction from it. Indeed, the civic consciousness and commitment of these voluntary organizations rested upon a robust localism, which made them particularly responsive to the school crisis yet constrained dissenting voices within the organizations by resisting external and internal pressure to undermine a precarious balance among local segregationist customs, civic needs, and institutional identity.

Of course, this civic consciousness was qualified, insofar as the members of these local organizations primarily defined the community they served as white and for white people. Thomas J. Sugrue rightly challenged historians of the civil rights movement to acknowledge a persistent localism that “reinforced structural patterns of inequality by enshrining local prejudices into practice.”[27] Practically, this meant such appeals to civic consciousness could easily blunt the questions of justice posed by African American activists and some white leaders. In Warren County, local churches were de facto segregated, despite the pleas and complaints of some ministers or official denominational statements; therefore, their service tended to focus on the priorities of their white constituencies. After all, eleven o’clock on Sunday remained, in an oft repeated aphorism of the time, the most segregated hour of the week.[28] The union at AVC, though its membership was about 10 percent African American, also attempted to leverage the local’s resources, both space and money, to increase its community prestige among white citizens by coming to the rescue of their children denied an education.[29] Indeed, local churches and the union had all shown a previous pattern of serving primarily white community needs. When WCHS was closed by Governor Almond in 1958, white members expected the organizations they controlled would stand in the gap and serve the white citizens of Warren County, as they had in the past. For example, ministers offered prayers at official county ceremonies (like graduations) and the union financially supported the creation of the local hospital. Helping during a crisis hardly seemed a stretch beyond previous civic commitments and achievements.

This civic consciousness also functioned in a way that not only pushed these organizations into action but restrained and limited the impact of those within the group who claimed that any public accommodation with massive resistance was unjust and unacceptable or who expected the necessary prioritization of local segregationist customs over institutional identities. There were “prophets,” those publicly decrying the injustice of segregation that existed in Warren County, especially among the community’s Black and white ministers, and there were also white ministers and other community leaders who made theological or ideological defenses of segregation. However, these individuals did not ultimately determine the use of resources for the street school or a later segregationist academy. Prophets failed to stop the use of church and union property for segregationist projects and committed segregationists could not maintain the use of those resources after the collapse of massive resistance. This didn’t mean that such leaders had no impact. Their presence pushed their organizations to defend and limit their actions as a duty to the community. After the collapse of massive resistance, however, the argument of civic duty evaporated as a defense for continuing support of segregated education in the face of anti-segregationist policies and admonitions of regional and national organizations. The churches ceased their active participation in segregated education, and union attempts to subsidize an alternative segregated academy was ultimately stymied by a coalition of white and African American local members which led to an intervention by the international. Any leaders or members who strayed too far from the arguments of civic consciousness used to justify the organizations’ actions during and after the crisis found their leadership compromised.

Other organizations also provided spaces for the street school, including the Confederate Museum of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), the local youth center, Randolph Macon Academy (a local Methodist school), and private businesses and homes. Randolph Macon Academy provided use of its science laboratories, and the UDC provided classroom spaces.[30] That said, focusing on the churches and the union has two distinct advantages: Within these spaces one can see clearly that voluntary organizations defended their actions because of their sense of civic consciousness, and this defense is especially highlighted because of their clashes with broader institutional organizations with which they were connected.

Front Royal Churches

In her study of Americus, Georgia, Ansley L. Quiros makes the case that “in the everyday that becomes history, individuals embodied theological concepts and doctrine.”[31] Indeed,  if one observed the actions of the membership of key downtown churches in Front Royal, they would find that a commitment to civic concerns constituted a key marker of local church identity. Even while many of Front Royal’s ministers often interfaced with the broader church through dioceses, presbyteries, conferences, associations, and national organizations, the majority of white churchgoers in Warren County expected their churches to be attentive to local needs in the white community.[32]

Three days before the governor closed WCHS, several members of the clergy issued a joint statement addressing the impending school crisis. The Front Royal-Warren County Ministerial Association (FRWCMA) met on Wednesday September 10 to compose the statement. Paul Rilling, the new Executive Director of the Virginia Council of Human Relations, a biracial civil rights organization, also joined the ministers to help them write their draft.[33] The following day the association met again and adopted the statement, while noting in their minutes it would be only released under the names of individuals who chose to sign.[34] Finally, after circulating the statement to minsters unable to be present at the meetings, the response was published in the Friday edition of the Northern Virginia Daily, one the two newspapers covering local news.[35] By the time of publication, thirteen ministers had signed the statement. The signatories included: C. T. Boyd (Front Royal Methodist), Charles Cook (Linden Methodist), Homer Cornish (Buckton Presbyterian), Joseph Darden (Brownville and Bentonville Baptist churches), James Fox (Marlow Heights Baptist), Herman Frank (Williams Chapel CME), Harry Lau (Front Royal Church of the Brethren), Paul Messenger (Envoy, Salvation Army), Oren Moore (Front Royal Presbyterian), Harry Renner (Warren Circuit, Methodist), Roger Snyder (Riverton Methodist), Paul Stagg (First Baptist), and Frederick Weber (Calvary Episcopal). All these ministers were white, with the exception of Herman Frank. Active in the NAACP, Frank had provided continued moral and religious support for the African American students and their parents before and after the closing of WCHS.[36] The statement, therefore, was a rare, if limited, example of interracial cooperation in Warren County.

Although the ministers’ statement was written a few days before the closing of the high school, they presciently addressed scenarios their community might face. They argued that the use of church property for a private, segregated school system raised “grave questions in Christian ethics, constitutionality, and practical administration.”[37] While they questioned whether an arrangement to provide a private education with taxpayers’ funds or property would be legal, let alone practical, their first and primary concern was theological:

It has been suggested by some that churches should open their doors under a device which would enable public schools to continue as a private arrangement. Whether churches could be open for such a purpose is something which each church must decide for itself. We call attention to the fact, however, that many denominations have already made official rulings or suggestions against the use of church property to avoid desegregation. As ministers, while we would abide by the decisions of our churches in their official rulings, we strongly emphasize that we could not countenance the use of the Church of Jesus Christ as a means of evading federal law and continuing a pattern of life which opposes the very nature of the church as the body of Christ.[38]

The letter ended with a plea for God’s guidance and hope that their public statement would “unite us and enable us to work together to save our public schools, solve our problems in the bounds of good will, and strengthen the foundations of our democracy.”[39]

After the pastoral letter was published, Benjamin Muse wrote an open letter to “the good people of Warren County” to encourage them to support court-ordered integration.

You will find, as more than 700 other school districts in Southern and border states have found, that it hardly makes any difference. It hardly makes any difference. that is, except in that it squares with the law of the land, and—in the opinion of many of us—with Christian principles. In another year you will wonder what all the fuss was about. On the right and wrong of the question, take counsel with your ministers. Look for guidance in church rather than on the street corner.[40]

Soon after its publication, Muse received an anonymous response to his editorial with a news clipping about a local Front Royal church which voted to allow their facilities to be used for the street school. On the inside of the envelope the sender wrote: “From the good people of Warren County, Va: They are taking your advice and following their ministers.”[41] One might forgive the anonymous letter writer for drawing a different conclusion than Muse about the clergy. In reality, there was a range of responses and compromises which challenged or defended the social order. Indeed, Jason Sokol’s general description of white churches’ responses to the Black freedom struggle is apt for Front Royal: While a few ministers imagined they could lead the transformation of white racial beliefs, “others robed themselves in continued defenses of segregation. Many more remained torn, unsure of what to preach and how to counsel, intent on evading the most pressing issue of the day.”[42]

Even the FRWCMA showed such divisions. One member, Rivermont Baptist’s Carlton Blankenship, theologically supported the idea of segregation. Blankenship was a graduate of Bob Jones University, a separatist, fundamentalist school, whose eponymous founder espoused biblical defenses of segregation. Blankenship insisted that any statement of the FRWCMA include his dissent. His colleagues refused. So, he publicly read his support for segregation to his congregation: “the devil and his cohorts, the communist [sic.], want to destroy the Christian Church, and this is his way of doing it—by intergration [sic.]. Therefore, we believe that non-segregation is Anti-bible, Anti-Christian, and Anti-God.”[43] Blankenship and his congregation voted to volunteer their facilities for the schooling of white children.[44] His dissent may explain why the FRWCMA chose to have ministers sign the statement individually rather than as an official statement.[45] Baptist minister Paul Stagg would later reflect that Blankenship’s position was not only unchristian but “plays, wittingly or unwittingly, into the hands of a secular culture which is always glad to use the gospel to advance its purposes.”[46]

The ministers who signed the statement were fighting an uphill battle against their congregation members, whose children faced an indefinite time without education. Parents expected their churches to be available to educate their children during the emergency, because it was, in their eyes, the duty of these organizations to support community needs. In the face of this civic consciousness, some ministers courageously challenged their flocks, while many others prioritized the prevailing civic consciousness over their convictions.

Calvary Episcopal Church ultimately forged a compromised position between their rector’s conviction that segregation was wrong and the vestry’s civic consciousness that demanded that the church act for the community. Calvary’s rector Frederick Weber had signed the clergy’s statement against the use of facilities for a private school and sent his own daughter to school in a neighboring county, where his wife Elizabeth was a teacher, rather than send her to the street school.[47] In the context of the school closings, Weber preached a sermon reminding his parishioners that Christian ministers must speak out for the Gospel, even in the face of opposition, during the educational crisis in Virginia.

Here in Virginia, shockingly enough, certain people have attempted to still the voice of Jesus Christ by stilling the voice of his ministers. Religiously illiterate, these people of the world have never realized that every area of in life goes hand-in-hand with religion; and being “in name Christian” [they] have pursued their false ideas that Christianity may on Sunday be associated with them perhaps, and most certainly with the pulpit—but that the other six days of the week may very well and comfortably left to other and more practical forces. And so, it is ministers of the Gospel, ordained as such, have in many instances been threatened with silence—that they must stick to religion and never indulge while in the pulpit in politics or social issues.[48]

Weber did not directly need to remind his parishioners that desegregation was the issue on his mind; the issue was on everyone’s mind. Further, he left no doubt his about feelings concerning the intimidation of clergy, comparing such activity to the rise of Nazism in Germany. He further encouraged his parishioners to take a stand as Christians despite clear social and political risk, because “we have dared to be Christians.”[49] Even with Weber’s convictions on public display, on a vote of 10-0 with one abstention, the vestry allowed the use of their church parish hall and educational building for the segregated emergency school. The vestry, however, also took pains to make clear that the use of the church’s facilities was only temporary and should “in no way be construed as a means of circumventing orders of the Federal Courts calling for integration of our local schools.”[50] Despite his clear misgivings, Weber ultimately supported his vestry’s decision to use the church property for local schooling in an “emergency situation” and dismissed reports that he and his vestry were divided, stating that he “was wholeheartedly in favor of permitting the educational facilities for private schooling during the emergency which now exists in Warren County.”[51] During a meeting of the WCEF, Weber made a motion to praise all of the teachers who volunteered to educate the white children, a motion which received thunderous applause.[52] It is also worth noting that Elizabeth Weber remained an outspoken advocate of public education in the town, a fact that was likely tolerated in the church because six of the ten vestrymen ultimately shared her opinion.[53] Nonetheless, Weber’s personal convictions were constrained by his vestry’s sense of civic duty, even as his convictions pushed his vestry to restrain their own actions toward moderation.

Similarly, on October 6, 1958, by a vote of 24-8 via secret ballot, the Quarterly Conference of Front Royal Methodist Church agreed to allow its facilities to be used for high school sophomores, because “it is the feeling of the members of this body that the Front Royal Methodist Church has responsibilities in helping to meet the needs of the children of the community in this emergency.”[54] As in the case of Calvary Episcopal Church, the Quarterly Conference used the language of “emergency” as a justification for the church’s action to support segregated schooling. C. T. Boyd stated to reporters that he would not oppose the use of church property for schooling the white sophomores at the quarterly conference meeting.[55] He also wrote numerous letters of recommendations for parishioners attempting to gain admission for their children to Randolph Macon Academy.[56] Boyd ultimately signed off on the use of property along with the other lay leaders on the condition that the resolution had “a maximum period covering the present school session.”[57] He later wrote to a clergy colleague in Winchester, with some level of satisfaction, that the temporary nature of the arrangements may be a model for other Methodist churches to avoid serious conflict, if the crisis were to spread to other communities.[58] Virginia Hale, a member of Front Royal Methodist Church, who lived through the events, remarked that “though all the years of community division and conflict the Reverend Boyd kept a calm course, and … he steered the ship of church through many stormy waters until the tempest had played itself out.”[59] Boyd’s moderation helped him obviate conflict within the congregation by satisfying their sense of civic duty to the town’s white community. In fact, by the centennial of the Battle of Front Royal in 1962, Boyd was even tapped to give both the invocation and benediction for the rededication of the town’s Confederate monument.[60]

Pastors who would not compromise their position to accommodate their members’ sense of civic duty often found their ministries compromised. For example, James Fox, pastor of Marlow Heights Baptist Church, argued against the idea of using their church facilities for the school. As a student, Fox had been active in the desegregation of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.[61] Fox opined that he could not support the motion to use church property for segregated schools because he believed it an evasion of federal law and contrary to the very nature of church, which as the Body of Christ makes no distinction between ‘Jew and Greek,’ ‘slave or free,’ ‘male or female.’ Further, he considered any church policy that even tacitly supported segregation would weaken world-wide missions, particularly in places like Africa and Asia.[62] Therefore, he declared, “I cannot under God assume any legal or administrative responsibility for the proposal in the event it is approved by the church.”[63] One congregation member, Clarence Gregory, rose to Fox’s challenge stating that he would gladly accept such a civic responsibility given that the majority of the white students from WCHS had no place to attend classes. Many of his congregants saw Fox’s more universal and inclusive vision of the faith as a betrayal of their civic duty as the church. The official vote of the congregation was 54-18 in favor of the motion and against their pastor.[64] Although Marlow Heights Baptist’s facilities were never used, Fox and his family soon suffered abuse from the Front Royal community. He recalled that he no longer knew who his supporters or friends were, not to mention that his wife and preschool-aged children were publicly berated with racial slurs on the street.[65] For mutual support he turned to his Baptist colleague Paul Stagg, meeting with him weekly.[66]

Like Fox, Stagg opposed using his church for the street school and believed that no manner of civic duty was acceptable if it violated Christian ethics. In the weekly newsletter, published before the congregational meeting to vote on using the church property, he penned an open letter to his high school-age daughter who had left Front Royal to continue her education. Stagg balked at the idea that civic conscious demanded support of the street school. As a veteran of the United States Army Air Forces, Stagg asserted that the struggle against civil rights flew in the face of his service to the nation as much as his calling as a minister: “We fought for justice, freedom, and equality for all. We fought for human decency and respect for the image of God in every man. We were sworn—and we are still sworn—to fight against every form of tyranny and every suppression of human rights.”[67]

Stagg was well aware that the key argument for using the church property was a sense civic duty that many in his congregation thought compatible with their Christian faith. At the congregation meeting on October 5, 1958, Stagg read a prepared statement in which he acknowledged that he supported other civic engagements in the town, including the hospital, the teen canteen, the Salvation Army, the Community Chest, and the mental health chapter. He even went so far as to concede that if the school had been burned because of natural disaster, he would support the use of the church property. However, Stagg argued that offering church property for the school to evade desegregation would jeopardize the gospel and “imperil the Church as the revelation of God’s truth to the world.” [68] Further, he claimed that “to consent to the use of church property for this purpose would be to sanction segregation in the name of God and to bless a pattern of life which the Church in its responsible statements regards as contrary to the Bible, the teaching of Christ, and the meaning of the Church.” He reminded his members that “God is no respecter of persons” and that in Christ “there is neither Jew nor Greek—neither slave nor free—neither male nor female.” The nature of the church, he contended, rose “above the accidents of race, class, and nationality.”[69] He further reminded his congregation that the Southern Baptist Convention had voted to disavow segregation and then admonished them to beware of connecting itself too closely with local culture.

If we allow the church to be made into the image of the society it was called to redeem, we will betray the church. If we love the church, let us rise up to defend it and keep its name unsullied and its fellowship unmarred by the rankings, the discriminations, and the caste system of our society.[70]

Stagg’s appeal to his congregation staked his personal integrity and relationships with his congregants. He invoked long held Baptist principles of liberty of conscience in which “we will witness to the world that we are a fellowship, not of coercion or conformity.”[71] He ended his impassioned speech, paraphrasing a quotation attributed to Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms: “Here I stand. I can do no other. So, God help me.”[72]

Appeals to the Baptist principle of soul liberty, of course, cut both ways. The deacons presented the congregation with a motion that asserted clearly that the property should be used for the students as part of the congregation’s “Christian Ministry to the Community.” Like the Episcopal and Methodist churches, the deacons also specifically asserted that the proposal should be understood as neutral on the issue of federal and state government and an affirmation of the importance of free public schools. A vote was taken at the end of the meeting, and, by a margin of 110 to 43, the congregation voted against their pastor and instructed the board of deacons to make the church available for the use of white students.[73] Several members walked out before the vote, because a motion for a standing, rather than secret, vote carried.[74] After the vote, Stagg remained resolute. Driven by his convictions, he not only continued to publicly declare his positions, but he also worked behind the scenes to open the public schools, even meeting with the local NAACP to strategize how to resolve the school crisis in a just manner.[75]

Salvation Army envoy Paul Messenger also suffered for his public proclamations on race. Given that the Salvation Army itself was part church, part service organization, expectations were high that the Army would support white citizens during the crisis. While its facilities were not requested, many of those who participated in the organization made clear that the white community must be a priority. Messenger was questioned by a congregation member in early December 1958, “Are you going to give a Christmas basket to the niggers?” Messenger publicly responded in his sermon the following Sunday that “all men are created equal by God.” As a result, around half of the ninety-member congregation stopped attending. The Salvation Army transferred Messenger a few months later when fundraising fell well below expectations during the holiday season.[76] Messenger’s unwillingness to prioritize white citizens was a breach of the civic consciousness and ultimately jeopardized his leadership.

Front Royal Presbyterian Church was an exception to the pattern, and it ultimately did not offer space for the schools. Although the church’s location was ideal for the private school, the fact that the church was in the process of moving to a new location helped pastor Oren Moore avoid hosting the street school. Moore was supported by session members A. G. McVay and Benjamin Rice Lacy III.  McVay supported public education, and Lacy’s father led the desegregation efforts at Union Seminary in Richmond as its president and, at the time, served as the chaplain of Hampden-Sydney College.[77] Even so, the pressure to support white schools as a signal of civic consciousness was significant. By November 1958, session minutes recorded that the church might need to consider a “parish school” if the public schools continued remain be closed.[78] Even with his session’s support, Moore found that congregational resistance to his views became increasingly disruptive in his church.[79]

If the signatories of the ministerial statement hoped that the crisis would end when massive resistance crumbled under court orders, they were soon disappointed. When WCHS reopened by court order on February 18, 1959, only twenty-two African American students, no white students, showed up for classes.[80] The students arrived before a crowd of sixty or so onlookers and hecklers, television cameras, with a single police officer between them and the crowd.[81] Betty Kilby, the lead plaintiff on the case, said she distinctly remembered a white woman shouting, “We gonna kill you all little niggers.” In response, her classmate, Faye Coleman, said to the group of students, “We shall overcome.” Kilby recited the Twenty-Third Psalm all the way up the hill to the doors of the school. She recalled the relief of getting inside the building. It was only then that the students realized that they had taken on the system and won. In an emotional release, they indulged in a chant of “We bad. We know it. We bad.”[82] The following evening the WCEF held a mass meeting of around one thousand white citizens. A motion to continue supporting the WCEF for the remainder of the year received almost unanimous support and no public rebukes.[83] Parents, some segregationists and others who loathed to further disrupt their children’s education, continued to attend the street school. Many segregationists watched with delight at what appeared to be a unified white boycott of the public school.

Given that no white families had the courage to send their children to the reopened high school, many ministers in the FRWCMA worried that the boycott might portend the abolition of public education in the county. So, the minsters issued another statement to express their own “Christian convictions.”[84] Urging restraint from violence and intimidation, they defended public education as “a witness for democracy” and a “Christian obligation.” They also warned that a segregated, private school in the county would “jeopardize the education of many boys and girls.”[85] Nonetheless, by the time of this second statement, massive resistance had taken its toll on local clergy. Only seven of the original thirteen minsters who signed the first statement signed the second (Boyd, Cook, Cornish, Darden, Moore, Stagg, and Weber). Fox, Snyder, and Messenger left Front Royal before the second statement. Lau, Renner, and Frank did not sign. In fact, Renner reversed his position and signed a local petition to abolish public education if it remained integrated.[86] Boyd, joining segregationist Blankenship, signed a petition that requested that desegregated schools not be reopened in the fall unless the majority of the community wished it.[87] The new signatories of the second statement, including Richard Dick (Cool Spring Church of God), Fred Edge (Evangelical United Brethren, Reliance), and Robert Moore (Rockland Community), represented churches well outside the Front Royal city limits. To put a fine point on this observation is to notice that new signatories had less pressure to conform to local civic consciousness. One exception to this was the Roman Catholic priest, Father Joseph Haye (St. John the Baptist Church). Apparently, he received permission from his bishop to sign a concurring statement.[88] While his statement essentially agreed with the other ministers’ statement, he added the caveat that “we do not feel that private schools, those conducted by the Church, are in any way undemocratic,” which made sense, given the long support of parochial education among Roman Catholics in the United States.[89]

Ministers who maintained a low profile or supported compromise positions were generally left alone or ignored.[90] Outspoken ministers found the personal costs were high. Fox, Snyder, and Messenger had already left the community because of community hostility, and Stagg too began to endure increasing hostility. One townsperson spit in his wife’s face.[91] He received threats of bodily assault that were turned over to the FBI. While his deacon board defended his right of conscience and published a rebuke against the “personal abuse, threats, and character assassinations” that he endured, Stagg began searching for a new call as early as March 1959 as popular sentiments against him grew.[92] One news story quoted a resident casually stating that “Paul is going to Communist meetings with niggers.”[93] An unnamed pastor noted that he could not be as vocal as Stagg had because his church would dismiss him.[94] In the end, Stagg’s ministry was so severely compromised that he finally resigned in the summer of 1959. Oren Moore also left his Presbyterian pulpit two years later under a cloud of residual contempt from his deacon board, those specifically charged to work with the community, because of his stand against segregated education.[95]

The WCEF held its baccalaureate ceremony and commencement at the Union Hall of the TWUA on June 7 and at the Park Theater on June 9, respectively.[96] While most of the pastors who had protested church involvement were no longer in town or chose not to participate, the clergy who were involved in these events is telling. At the baccalaureate service, W. O. Rivenbark, the pastor of Virginia Avenue Church of God, offered the invocation, while Harry Renner offered the benediction. James E. Clark, the pastor who replaced James Fox at Marlow Heights Baptist Church, preached the sermon. Carlton Blankenship, who now served on the Board of the WCEF, gave the opening prayer for the commencement, just before Governor Almond, the very individual who closed WCHS and almost scuttled any graduations, addressed the students, parents and teachers.[97] Almond spoke the mind of many churchgoers when he extolled the courage of the teachers and parents, who “met the shock with a poise and dignity in exemplification of a profound Christian spirit and character in keeping with the highest traditions of decorum and native decency.”[98] This was closest thing to an apology the Governor had to offer. No doubt many in the audience sat with satisfaction at the governor’s words because they had convinced their churches to perform the civic duty they expected and demanded.

A few weeks after WCEF’s graduation, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond arrived in Front Royal as the keynote speaker for the dedication of the Confederate Museum, sponsored by the UDC on June 26, 1959. Thurmond’s segregationist pedigree was nationally known after his run for president on the “Dixiecrat” ticket in 1948. On the day of the dedication, two giant Confederate flags hung above a crowd numbering over a thousand people, including officers of the national UDC and Congressman Burr P. Harrison of Virginia’s Seventh District.[99] On a dais, decorated with Confederate battle flags, Thurmond lauded Front Royal as “the very symbol of the South’s determination to preserve and maintain States’ Rights.”[100] The local UDC chapter gave him the honor of cutting the ribbon to open the museum. In his dedicatory speech, Thurmond connected the museum’s mission about the past to recent events in the town, particularly massive resistance and segregation.

It is, therefore, my hope, that the Confederate Museum which you have struggled to build and have used so appropriately will stand not merely as a material monument to those who sacrificed for the cause of Southern independence. It is my fervent prayer that it shall stand also a reminder that the spirit of the 1860’s is still alive in the South, and that all who see it or hear of it shall be conscious that the fight we wage is for individual liberty, the most precious possession of man. I am confident that the reaction of the overwhelming majority of Southerners will be that tyranny shall not prevail in the land. Liberty, freedom, and constitutional government must and shall be victorious.[101]

 

Given the news coverage, segregationists in Warren County had every reason to believe that their vision of education was in the ascendancy that June; however, they overestimated the commitment of townsfolk and various organizations that had initially offered their resources to support the street school. A civic act was different than commitment to a private, segregated school system. Segregationists made plans to open an all-white academy named after a local Confederate war hero John S. Mosby, but, as summer transitioned into fall, it became increasingly clear that around half of the white high school students would return to desegregated WCHS.  With the public schools reopened, the civic call to educate displaced students dissipated into individual parental preferences. Although the WECF asked them to continue their service, the three churches that hosted the street school rescinded the use of their property. Church resources were no longer perceived as a civic need for a community in crisis. By September 1959, the majority of white churchgoers saw the success of their churches, because they performed appropriately a civic duty to help their own community, defined by race, in a time of trial.  By contrast, Stagg saw this as little more than a capitulation to segregationists who were willing to sacrifice any child rather than integrate schools. He believed the churches could not change Front Royal because they, captive to culture, had never been converted to their “God-appointed mission.”[102] In Stagg’s eyes, and in the eyes of many of Front Royal’s white clergymen, the events of 1958 to 1959 marked a tragic complicity of churches with the cultural forces promoting massive resistance.

TWUA Local 371 at American Viscose Corporation

After the demise of state sponsored massive resistance in February of 1959, the local union, especially under the leadership of its business agent Charles “Chuck” Leadman, union president William Lillard, and foreman Jack Crouse, ultimately played a large role to establish private segregated education in Warren County. Alan Draper argued that southern unions, like TWUA Local 371, thwarted the political strategy of national unions to enfranchise African American workers to “initiate the realignment of southern politics” by driving a wedge between wealthy white conservatives and the white working-class.[103] While it was certainly the case that the leadership of international and the local clashed over segregated education, generally speaking they were not fighting over the inclusion of African American workers in the union. Formed in 1940, Local 371 was a hopeful, if imperfect, example of the AFL-CIO’s southern campaign to unionize Southern factories and plants in the face of strong “right to work” (anti-union) political opposition. Within a decade of its founding, union members had inserted themselves into all facets of civic life throughout Front Royal. In fact, the liberal religious periodical, Christian Century, even wrote a short article in 1956 extolling the success and significant contributions of Local 371 to the Front Royal community. For example, the local hosted the Warren County Garden Club Show, community dances and recitals, church suppers, youth group meetings, and ballet classes at its Union Hall, a venue established and paid for by its members. Lillard served on the board of managers of Warren Memorial Hospital (which union funds helped establish), as well as a Cubmaster of the local Scout troop. The article quoted Paul Stagg, who suggested that the churches and union not only had overlapping membership but affirmed there was “no cleavage between the union and the churches.”[104] Union members also generously provided in-kind donations to help build the UDC’s Confederate Museum.[105]

Race relations at the plant were far from perfect, but the local had made gradual strides to enfranchise Black workers. Unlike other TWUA locals in the south, the union at AVC did not have segregated or separate locals for white and Black workers.[106] For example, under Leadman’s leadership, not only did the local challenge a wage cut to African American workers (which the union saw as threatening to all workers at the plant), it also integrated the union itself, allowing interracial meetings and Black leadership. The local further enacted policies that made Union Hall available to both white and Black organizations, and it integrated its sponsored little league baseball team.[107] While this gradual cooperation provided some limited benefits to African American workers, the local’s races relations under Leadman were also marked by paternalism and systemic inequality. A later investigation by the international confirmed that on average, African Americans made 5 to10 percent less than white workers because they were shut out of lines of work that might have paid them more.[108] The NAACP petitioned the international about the wage differential in early 1958. Leadman deflected that “if he should try to upgrade the men, he would be defeated next year and replaced by a radical segregationist.” The NAACP’s Edith Hussey complained, “such is the attitude of the white workers in Front Royal.”[109]

James Hershman has argued that the specter of desegregation in Warren County drove white union members to support the segregationist cause because they were anxious to maintain the economic advantages over Black workers.[110] While this no doubt had an effect on some white workers, initially the majority of the union members seemed driven by a sense of civic duty to solve the school crisis and an opportunity to increase the status of the union in the community by doing so. Further, once it was clear that public schools would reopen in September 1959, segregationist union leaders consolidated power to support the emerging segregated, private school system with union resources. However, these attempts by the leadership ultimately fractured the political unity of the local and initiated direct confrontation with the international.

When Governor Almond closed WCHS, Leadman immediately contacted Julian Carper, the Executive Vice President of the Virginia State AFL-CIO, and one-time member of Local 371, to arrange a meeting with the NAACP lawyers. He argued that racial tensions were mounting in the plant, and, if the union were able to broker a deal to reopen the school temporarily on a segregated basis, it would make for excellent public relations between the union and the broader community. Carper arranged for a meeting with NAACP lawyers Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, and Martin A. Martin. Leadman held hopes that the two parties could agree to reopen WCHS on a segregated basis until a viable educational solution could be found that would satisfy the federal courts and the Commonwealth of Virginia.[111] Despite this attempt, the conference produced no results. Hill refused to consider Leadman’s proposal, noting that reopening the school would be tantamount to withdrawing the plaintiffs’ suit.[112]

Unable to broker a deal, Leadman decided that the local itself would need to solve the problem without the NAACP. As members of churches argued about the use of their institutions, Leadman argued that the local should support an “emergency” school to educate those locked out of school. While he defended Black union members against an attempted ouster of all NAACP members from its ranks, he also remained convinced that the local had a civic duty to intercede on behalf of white students.[113] At its October 15, 1958 meeting, Leadman proposed charging the local membership one extra dollar per month to finance the street school. There was heated debate. One African American member asked how white union members expected a segregated private school to avoid federal intervention. Leadman retorted:

I rise tonight to support the dollar. … This is the first stand I have taken. If I have to lose my colored friends, I will just have to lose them. … I still hope they will do something. I want to tell the colored members tonight you are putting a penalty on us that we don't deserve. We can have a complete break … and as far as I am concerned anybody that don't like it can get out of here now.[114]

Leadman’s remarks were met with applause by many white union members. He further made clear his increasing disappointment and feelings of betrayal. After recounting what he argued were the good advances by the union to promote positive race relations, Leadman stated plainly:

We haven't asked the Negroes to give up all the gains they’ve made in the past. … We just asked that they withdraw their children from the white schools so our kids could have an education. The colored have been unwilling to give any ground. But we're not willing to see our kids grow up ignorant.[115]

Ironically, Leadman blamed African Americans for the impacts of massive resistance, rather than county officials, who had not provided adequate schooling for its Black citizens, or Governor Almond and the Byrd political machine, neither of which had moral qualms about promoting a political and racial ideology of white supremacy at the expense of the Commonwealth’s children, Black or white.

Leadman’s position, however, was not unanimous. In fact, Julian Carper attended the meeting and warned members present that collecting funds through the local’s auspices for non-union purposes would likely be illegal.[116] Nonetheless, his comments were met by boos from many members present. Leadman’s appeal won the day by a vote of 281 to 83 with 130 abstaining.[117] All African American union members present voted against the resolution. Local member Tom Kerns then proposed that any member who did not wish to support the educational effort would be able to ask for a refund each month if they declared their opposition within ten days. This proposal also passed along with a request that Union Hall be made available for makeshift-classrooms.[118] Over the course of the school year, Local 371 became the single largest source of funding for WCEF, contributing between $1,600 and $1,800 per week.[119]

Deeply concerned with the developments at Local 371, the international sent field agent Bill Davis to investigate. Writing to TWUA Vice President Wesley “Dean” Cook, he expressed his belief that, despite insistence by Leadman to the contrary, the use of the union hall for a makeshift white school violated international union policies.[120] The actions of Local 371 also set into motion a series of events that pitted the TWUA international against the national NAACP. Herbert Hill, the labor director of the NAACP, contacted Irving Kahan, the editor of the national AFL-CIO periodical, and demanded that Kahan publicly denounce Local 371 for its actions.[121] Failure to act, he warned, would lead NAACP Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins to “blast” the TWUA in the media.[122] Of greater concern to the TWUA international, Leadman had received overtures from the pro-segregation United Southern Employees Association (USEA) to appeal to the white workers to reorganize under its auspices.[123] While the local’s leadership never seriously courted the USEA, the threat of reorganization remained a concern for the TWUA.

By the summer of 1959 the WCEF, whose leadership waffled between disbanding or continuing operations, unambiguously came under the control of segregationists.[124] Around the same time, the Warren County Board of Supervisors voted to fund public education for the next school year, at least in part because AVC threatened that it would leave the town if there were no public schools.[125] Further, many groups that had offered their facilities for the WCEF were no longer willing to do so once a public option was available. With the school no longer closed, the Episcopal, Methodist, and Baptist churches in Front Royal were no longer willing to offer their spaces for the foundation.[126] The WCEF, therefore, arranged for the students to attend grades nine through twelve at the Virginia Gentlemen Restaurant and grade eight at the American Legion Post 53. Local 371 continued to offer Union Hall for athletic and extracurricular events.

As school registration commenced in the summer, it became clear that the “united” white “boycott” from February proved illusory and represented only part of the white community in Warren County. About half of the white students who remained in the county enrolled in the segregated John S. Mosby Academy, while the other half opted for the desegregated WCHS.[127] The availability of a public option also revealed the limits of union members’ support after the emergency. With no sense of an immediate and continued civic duty toward displaced children in the community, the local was split evenly between those who wished to use union resources for a segregated private school and those who did not. Furthermore, not only was 10 percent of the membership African American, 40 percent of the full membership lived outside of Warren County, so the use of union resources for a private school placed a burden on members who would neither directly benefit from it nor saw a civic need to participate in it.[128] As in the churches, the majority of union members were willing to assist white students during massive resistance. However, without a clear civic duty, they became increasingly restless about diverting union resources and priorities away from the goal of promoting workers’ rights.

Despite this reality, a small group of segregationists consolidated their power at the local. Leadman led a petition drive to demand the Board of Supervisors to declare the public-school surplus so it could be sold, while Lillard defended private, segregated education at the Virginia AFL-CIO conference.[129] In August of 1959, the leadership managed to swing a vote that allowed its funds to be allocated with only the approval of the executive committee. Segregationist leaders also used their power to stifle dissent. African American workers bore the brunt of indignities. Many Black workers were rotated to unpleasant jobs like the boiler room.[130] In October of 1959, the local voted to press charges against James Kilby for allegedly passing union information to the NAACP.[131] Although the hearing was dropped because the international threatened to intervene, it hardly mattered since the message was clear: if you challenged the power structure you would be harassed.[132] The local’s attorney noted that attendance at weekly meetings declined as white and Black dissenters were either cowed to abstain or simply stopped attending. Regular attendance dropped to a core forty to fifty of the fifteen hundred members.[133]

Dissatisfaction with Leadman’s leadership grew, especially among union members from communities outside of Warren County, like Luray, Sperryville, and Strasbourg. These union members were increasingly resentful of pressure by leadership to use union resources to support the private education of white union members unwilling to send their children to public schools.  Luray resident and electronics repairman Glenn Kauffman challenged Leadman for business agent. Kauffman accused Leadman of depriving workers of seniority, leaving grievances unsettled, and practices favoring management over the union during his sixteen-year tenure as business agent. Leadman denied these accusations, and he later charged Kauffman with trying to curry the African American vote.[134] Dean and Kilby denied rumors that the NAACP met at the plant to make plans to defeat Leadman, but they remained publicly coy about their position on his continued leadership.[135] In December of 1959, Kauffman defeated Leadman by a vote of 822 to 748.

The election left the local’s executive committee divided between factions in the union; therefore, expenditures again had to appeal to members. On January 13, 1960, the membership barely approved to offer a $500 college scholarship to a graduate of Mosby Academy.[136] Kauffman immediately alerted the international about this “discriminatory” decision. The international’s secretary-treasurer John Chupka agreed and told Kauffman that he should warn the local not to proceed.[137] In April the local voted to purchase $8,000 of debenture bonds to finance the new building for Mosby Academy. With only 200 of the 1500 members present, the union recorded no dissenting votes.[138] Kauffman again alerted Chupka, who explicitly warned the local that they should not proceed.[139] The local’s financial secretary A. L. Sorrel, refused to sign the check for the first $2,000 installment. Incensed, segregationists whipped the votes to require that Sorrel either sign or resign.[140]

Alarmed by these developments, Chupka filed charges against the local for violating the TWUA constitution and ignoring his explicit disapproval of using union funds for non-union purposes. William Pollock, the general president of the TWUA, immediately appointed Bill Davis as the local’s administrator, and the international seized its assets.[141] A week later, a hearing officer ruled against the local, and the TWUA Executive Council sustained the charges.[142] Local 371 appealed to the convention of the international union on grounds that it had a right “to invest its funds in any legitimate project that is voted on by a majority vote of the membership, and that the said local feels is for the best interest of the membership and community in which the Local is located.” The appeal and grievances committee of the international again sustained the action of the TWUA Executive Council. [143]

The contemplated action of Local 371 is violative of resolution No. 28 of the Ninth Biennial Convention. This resolution made it clear that the principal of school segregation was repugnant to the TWUA. … It is the conflict with the Constitution and with the Convention Resolution which makes the investment one “for a non-union purpose.”[144]

The local next voted to assert its final route of appeal by agreeing to enter into binding arbitration.

As the summer continued, dysfunction within the local hit a fever pitch. According to Davis, weekly meetings had devolved to “mouth battles.”[145] Worse, union members made complaints to the Department of Labor to investigate opponents. Davis feared that “the local would tear itself apart in internal politics using the federal investigators as father confessors.”[146] Davis next took the drastic step of suspending all officers of the union.[147] Finally, in October, by a vote of 2 to 1, the arbitration panel upheld the decisions of the international.[148] With all legal avenues closed, Local 371 officially disconnected itself from Mosby Academy. The segregationist bloc in the union was ultimately defeated by a coalition of African American and white members aligned with the international.

 

Conclusion

Virginia politicians who promoted state sponsored massive resistance gambled that local communities would demand that their voluntary associations and private citizens pick up the slack to educate their children on a segregated basis. In the short run, their gamble seemed prescient, given the pervasive localism and civic consciousness, laced with a mixture of prejudice, fear, and confusion, in white communities around the Commonwealth. In the words of Paul Stagg, “Our fears make cowards of us all … In Warren County … how easy it has been for persons who talked big in quieter times to turn collaborator with the racist and the private school foundation established as a deliberately evasive device.”[149] John Fitzgerald observed during the summer of 1959 that “there is an unease and tentativeness about the future—personal, civic, charitable, religious—which crops up in the incessant question, ‘What do you think will happen?’ … What will happen to school, the church, the hospital, the country club, on Main Street? What will the Union do? What will the company do? What will teachers do? All talking around the central fear—'What in God’s name will I do if there is no school for my children?’”[150] The white citizens of Warren County never had to tackle this larger fear.

While the civic consciousness of voluntary organizations, like the churches and the union, rose to the occasion of the school crisis, they did little to solve the underlying injustices decried by African American activists in the county. Having opened the new Criser High School for African American students for the fall term of 1959, the county subsequently created districts that sent almost all of the African American Students to Criser and sent white students to a desegregated WCHS. Token integration satisfied the federal courts and the many white parents who wanted public education. Other white parents sent their kids to the segregated Mosby Academy, which opened the doors of its new building in 1960. During the 1958-1959 school year, however, the white citizens of Warren County did have to ask what they expected their voluntary institutions to do in the face of massive resistance. In the cases of many Front Royal churches and the union local, members’ decisions to demand local solutions to white problems, based upon civic commitment, seemed second nature, even if they eventually divided those associations and remain a source of genuine debate and pain to the present time.

*Author's Note: Local history is always the result of many individuals who offer their time and expertise to a project, and this one is no exception. In Front Royal, I am indebted to the Revs. Valerie Hayes, Alan Combs, Carrie Evans, Al Woods, Bruce Queen, Christie McMillan-Goodwin, Jim Bunce, and Ingrid Chenoweth, as well as Suzanne Wood Silek, Jennifer Taylor, Judith James, Janice Miller, Mary Ann & Joe Biggs, Melanie Gregory, and Teresa Roane. I am grateful for the hospitality of Karen Fox and Catherine Compton, who allowed me the time and space to interview the Rev. Jim Fox at their home. I am also thankful to colleagues, whose advice and encouragement was crucial, including the JSR blind peer reviewers, Ron Heinemann, Alison Greene, Doug Thompson, Larissa Smith, and Jim Hershman.

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[1] Benjamin Muse, Virginia’s Massive Resistance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961), 69.

[2] “Number of Inhabitants, Virginia” U.S. Census Bureau, 1960, https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/09768066v1p48ch2.pdf; Robbins L. Gates, The Making of Massive Resistance: Virginia’s Politics of Public School Desegregation, 1954-1956 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964), 8.

[3] Gates, Making of Massive Resistance, 7.

[4] Betty Kilby Fisher, Wit, Wills, and Walls (Euless: Cultural Innovations, 2002), 77-80. See also James M. Kilby, The Forever Fight (Pittsburgh: Dorrance Publishing Co., 1998), 4-5.

[5] “Request Denied to Admit Local Negro School Pupils,” The Warren Sentinel, August 21, 1958.

[6] Margaret Edds, We Face the Dawn: Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, and the Legal Team That Dismantled Jim Crow (Charlottesville: University of Virginia press, 2018), 293-294; Muse, Massive Resistance, 64, 67.

[7] Louis C. Justis, Warren County High School and Massive Resistance (Warren County: Privately Published, 2009), 3.

[8] Muse, Virginia’s Massive Resistance, 71.

[9] The Way We Remember the Effects of Massive Resistance: Reflections of the Members of Warren County High School “Lost Class of 1959” on and after September 12, 1958 (Front Royal: Warren County Heritage Society, 2010), 1.

[10] The Way We Remember, 9.

[11] The Way We Remember, 18.

[12] Paul L. Stagg, Prayer, September 25, 1958, Mss2St136b, Paul Leonard Stagg Papers (Virginia Historical Society, Richmond).

[13] Clyde Walter Matthews, “A Study of the Political and Economic Effects of School Integration on Front Royal and Warren County, Virginia” (M. A. thesis, East Carolina College, 1963), 37, 84.

[14] John P. Oliver, Jr., The Treasure—The Earthen Vessels: A History of First Baptist Church Front Royal, Virginia, 1839-1989 (Stephens City: Commercial Press, 1990), 88.

[15] Robert E. Baker, “Peaceful Town Turned Unhappy,” The Washington Post and Times Herald, March 2, 1959.

[16] “The Warren County Committee for Public Schools,” Warren Sentinel, October 2, 1958; Charles Levy, “School Desegregation in Warren County, Virginia during 1958-1960: A Study in the Mobilization of Restraints,” (M.A. thesis, University of Chicago, 1961), 29.

[17] John H. Fitzgerald, “Front Royal, Virginia,” Box 2, Folder “Warren County Committee,” James Lawrence Blair Buck Papers, 1931 [1958-60], Acc.#7783-a (Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville).

[18] Philip Deane, “For Fear of the Jigaboos,” The Observer, April 12, 1959, Box 431, Folder “Front Royal,” Mss. 396, Textile Workers Union of America Records(Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison); hereinafter cited as TWUA Records.

[19] Lorraine Kephart Dovell and Suzanne Miller Gill, Coming Together: The 1960’s A Decade of Change for Education in Warren County (Front Royal: Warren Heritage Society, 2020), 14.

[20] Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia: Extra Session 1956 (Richmond: Division of Purchase and Printing, 1956), 42.

[21] C. A. Tucker, ed., The Virginia Annual Conference of the Methodist Church Containing the proceedings of the One Hundred-Seventy-Sixth Session of the Conference Held in Richmond, Virginia, June 9-12^h, 1958 Together with Reports, Memoirs and Statistics (Richmond: The Williams Printing Co, 1958), 142-143.

[22] David L. Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 6.

[23] Alan Draper, Conflict of Interests: Organized Labor and the Civil Rights Movement in the South, 1954-1968 (Ithaca: ILR press, 1994), 16.

[24] See Carolyn Renée Dupont, Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Right Movement, 1945-1975 (New York: New York University Press, 2013); J. Russell Hawkins, The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021).

[25] See Gardiner H. Shattuck, Episcopalians and Race: Civil War to Civil Rights (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000); Mark Newman, Getting Right with God: Southern Baptists and Desegregation, 1945-1995 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001); and Joseph T. Reiff, Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi’s Closed Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

[26] James H. Hershman, Jr., “Massive Resistance Meets Its Match” in The Moderates Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation, eds. Matthew D. Lassiter and Andrew B. Lewis (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), 121.

[27] Thomas J. Sugrue, “All Politics is Local: The Persistence of Localism in Twentieth-Century America” in The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History, eds. Meg Jacobs, William J. Novak, and Julian E. Zelizer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 310.

[28] Dr. Helen Kellam, one-time moderator of Congregational-Christian Churches, was the first to coin this term in 1952. Cf. “Worship Hour Found Time of Segregation” New York Times, November 4, 1952.

[29] Alan Draper makes the case that prestige was a motivator for union civic contributions. Conflicts of Interest, 5.

[30] Matthews, “Political and Economic Effects of School Integration,” 39.

[31] Ansley L. Quiros, God with Us: Lived Theology and the Freedom Struggle in Americus, Georgia, 1942-1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 5.

[32] See also Carter Dalton Lyon, Sanctuaries of Segregation: The Story of the Jackson Church Visit Campaign (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017) and Stephen R. Haynes, The Last Segregated Hour: The Memphis Kneel-Ins and the Campaign for Southern Church Desegregation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

[33] Minutes of the Front Royal-Warren County Ministerial Association, September 10, 1958 (Calvary Episcopal Church, Front Royal). Cf. Minutes of the Executive Committee Meeting of the Virginia Council of Human Relations, September 12, 1958, Papers of the Virginia Council on Human Relations, Charlottesville-Albemarle Chapter, Accession # 9606, Box 1 (Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville).

[34] Minutes of the Front Royal-Warren County Ministerial Association, September 11, 1958 (Calvary Episcopal Church, Front Royal). Hermann Frank was not present at either the two meetings but signed later. The only minister present at the two meetings, who did not sign the statement, was Dwight C. Chapin. A resident of Front Royal, Chapin was ordained in the fundamentalist denomination Bible Presbyterian Church and had been a missionary in China, though he does not appear to have had an active ministerial charge at the time of the meeting. Cf. “Chapin Speaker at Riverton Church,” Northern Virginia Daily, July 10, 1958.

[35] “Front Royal-Warren Ministerial Assn. Would Keep Schools Open,” The Northern Virginia Daily, September 12, 1958.

[36] Lilian Sloane, interview with author, May 24, 2017, Front Royal, VA. Cf. Kilby Fisher, Witt, Wills, and Walls, 75.

[37] “Statement of Ministers of Front Royal and Warren County,” September 1958, Paul L. Stagg Papers, Mss. 2St136b (Virginia Museum of History and Culture, Richmond). Cf. “Thirteen Warren County Ministers Express Views on School Closing,” Warren Sentinel, September 18, 1958; “Front Royal-Warren Ministerial Assn. Would Keep Schools Open,” The Northern Virginia Daily, September 12, 1958.

[38] “Statement of Ministers,” Stagg Papers, 2.

[39] “Statement of Ministers,” Stagg Papers, 3.

[40] Benjamin Muse, “A Letter to Warren County Citizens,” The Washington Post and Times Herald, September 21, 1959.

[41] Anonymous Letter, Box 2, Folder: ND Correspondence re: Washington Post Columns, Benjamin Muse Papers, 1934-1966, Acc.#10031 (Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville).

[42] Jason Sokol, There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 102

[43] Levy, “School Desegregation in Warren County,” 23-24. Cf. Paul L. Stagg, “A Minister’s Involvement in the Racial Crisis,” Journal of Religious Thought 16, no. 2 (Summer-Autumn 1959): 81.

[44] “Obituary of Carlton Blankenship,” http://seaverbrown.com/tribute/details/426/Carlton-Blankenship/obituary.html. Cf. “2 Churches Offer Space,” Winchester Evening Star, September 25, 1958.

[45] Levy, “School Desegregation in Warren County,” 23.

[46] Stagg, “A Minister’s Involvement,” 81.

[47] Matthews, “Political and Economic Effects of School Integration,” 40.

[48] Frederick Weber, “Ministers Dare to Speak,” Sermon preached Late Fall 1958 (Calvary Episcopal Church, Front Royal).

[49] Weber, “Ministers Dare to Speak.”

[50] Vestry Minutes, September 25, 1958 (Calvary Episcopal Church, Front Royal). Cf. “Facts of the Matter,” Warren Sentinel, October 2, 1958.

[51] Vestry Minutes, September 25, 1958. Cf. “Correction of Editorial Reprint,” The Northern Virginia Daily, October 8, 1958.

[52] “Private Classes Start Tomorrow in Warren,” The Northern Virginia Daily, October 8, 1958.

[53] Elizabeth Weber to Maurice Bowen, February 25, 1959, Accession 39750, Folder 2, Warren County Board of Supervisors Petitions and Letters for and Against Public School Integration, February-March1959, (Library of Virginia, Richmond). Cf. Levy, “School Desegregation in Warren County,” 139.

[54] Laura Virginia Hale, The History of Front Royal Methodist Church (Stephens City: Commercial Press, 1984), 91-92.

[55] “Front Royal Churches May House Classes,” The Washington Post and Times Herald, October 5, 1958. Cf. Hale, History of Front Royal Methodist, 91.

[56] Numerous letters of this type can be found in Education File 1958, (Front Royal Methodist Church, Front Royal)

[57] “2 More Churches Offer Facilities for Classes,” The Northern Virginia Daily, October 7, 1958; “3 Churches Vote Use of Facilities for School Plan,” Warren Sentinel, October 9, 1958.

[58] C. H. Boyd to J. C. Dugger, October 29, 1958, Education File 1958

[59] Hale, History of Front Royal Methodist, 92.

[60] Warren County Civil War Centennial Commemoration, May 19-20, 1962 (Front Royal: Virginia Hale, 1962).

[61] James H. Fox, interview with author, March 5, 2019, Winchester, VA.

[62] James H. Fox, “Statement of James H. Fox to Marlow Heights Baptist Church,” October 6, 1958, provided to the author by James Fox.

[63] Fox, “Statement of James H. Fox.”

[64] “2 More Churches Offer Facilities for Classes,” The Northern Virginia Daily, October 7, 1958.

[65] Fox, interview with author.

[66] Fox, interview with author.

[67] Paul L. Stagg, “A Letter to Jane,” The Light, October 3, 1958, 2 (First Baptist Church, Front Royal).

[68] Paul L. Stagg, “A Statement Opposing the Granting of Church Facilities for Private School Purposes,” appended to Minutes of Called Meeting, October 5, 1958 (First Baptist Church, Front Royal).

[69] Stagg, “A Statement Opposing the Granting of Church Facilities.”

[70] Stagg, “A Statement Opposing the Granting of Church Facilities.”

[71] Stagg, “A Statement Opposing the Granting of Church Facilities.”

[72] Stagg, “A Statement Opposing the Granting of Church Facilities.”

[73] Minutes of Called Meeting, October 5, 1958 (First Baptist Church, Front Royal).

[74] Minutes of Called Meeting. Cf. Mark Newman, “The Baptist General Association of Virginia and Desegregation, 1931-1980,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 105, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 273.

[75] Gertrude Gorman to Roy Wilkins, February 28, 1959,Virginia School Desegregation Cases, Folder 001516-009-0161, Group III, Series A, General Office Files, Papers of the NAACP, Part 03: The Campaign for Educational Equality, Series D: Central Office Records, 1956-1965 Series: Group III, Series A, General Office Files, Desegregation—Schools Folder 001516-009-0161 Accessed through ProQuest https://congressional.proquest.com/histvault?q=001516-009-0161.

[76] Levy, “School Desegregation in Warren County,” 22.

[77] See William E. Thompson, Her Walls Before Thee Stand: The 235-Year History of the Presbyterian Congregation at Hampden-Sydney, Virginia (Hampden-Sydney: William E. Thompson, 2010), 460-479.

[78] Minutes of the Session, November 3, 1958 (Front Royal Presbyterian Church, Front Royal).

[79] Levy, “School Desegregation in Warren County,” 22.

[80] “22 Enroll at Desegregated Warren County High School,” Warren Sentinel, February 19, 1959.

[81] “22 Enroll at Desegregated Warren County High School,” Warren Sentinel, February 19, 1959.

[82] Betty Kilby Fisher Baldwin, interview with author, August 9, 2022. Cf. Kilby Fisher, Witt, Wills, and Walls, 101.

[83] Photograph caption, Warren Sentinel, February 19, 1959.

[84] “County Clergy Make Appeal for Public Schools,” Warren Sentinel, March 12, 1959.

[85] “County Clergy Make Appeal for Public Schools,” Warren Sentinel, March 12, 1959.

[86] Petition, Folder 9, Warren County Board of Supervisors.

[87] Petition, Folder 11, Warren County Board of Supervisors.

[88] Fox, interview.

[89] “County Clergy Make Appeal for Public Schools,” Warren Sentinel, March 12, 1959, 2.

[90] Levy, “School Desegregation in Warren County,” 22-23.

[91] Oliver, The Treasure, 93.

[92] “Statement of Diaconate and Finance Committee,” Warren Sentinel, March 12, 1959; W. Guy Stracener to Frank Stagg April 7, 1959, Box 3, Folder 10, Papers of Dr. Frank Stagg (Special Collection, Samford University, Birmingham).

[93] Deane, “For Fear of the Jigaboos,” The Observer, April 12, 1959.

[94] Deane, “For Fear of the Jigaboos,” The Observer, April 12, 1959.

[95] Minutes of the Special Meeting of Session, May 12, 1960 and Minutes of the Session, 27 August 27, 1961 (Front Royal Presbyterian Church, Front Royal). Cf. Levy, “School Desegregation in Warren County,” 22.

[96] Dovell and Gill, Coming Together, 8.

[97] Dovell and Gill, Coming Together, 8.

[98] Address of the Governor, J. Lindsay Almond, Jr., Commencement Exercises, June 9, 1959, Warren County Educational Foundation, 1, Box WHS 324A, Folder: Commencement Exercise, Warren County Educational Foundation, June 9, 1959 (Warren Heritage Society, Front Royal).

[99] “Confederate Museum Dedicated in Va.,” The United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine (November 1959), 22.

[100] “The Complete Text of Sen. Thurmond’s Dedication Speech,” Warren Sentinel, July 2, 1959.

[101] “The Complete Text of Sen. Thurmond’s Dedication Speech,” Warren Sentinel, July 2, 1959.

[102] Paul L. Stagg, The Converted Church (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1967), 11-14.

[103] Draper, Conflicts of Interest, 13-14, 45-46.

[104] Wilbur H. Baldinger, “Big Change in Front Royal,” Christian Century 73, no. 33 (August 15, 1956): 946-48.

[105] Baldinger, “Big Change in Front Royal,” 946-48.

[106] See Timothy J. Minchin, What Do We Need a Union For? The TWUA in the South, 1945-1955 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 134-141.

[107] C. E. Leadman to Editor of Philadelphia Inquirer, October 23, 1958, Box 431, Folder “Front Royal,” TWUA Records. See also Helen Fuller, “Southerners and Schools,” New Republic 140 (13 January 1959), 12. A team photograph shows an integrated TWUA team with Sylvester Jackson in the last row: “TWUA Team Still Tops Little League” Warren Sentinel, July 10, 1958.

[108] “Report on Front Royal.” Box 646, Folder “Local 371”, 1959-1961), TWUA Records.

[109] Edith Hussey to Herbert Hill March 15, 1958, Folder 001437-004-0576, Series: Group III, Series A, Administrative File, General Office File, Papers of the NAACP, Part 13: Supplement, NAACP and Labor, 1956-1965.

[110] Hershman, “Massive Resistance Meets its Match,” 121.

[111] Julian Carper, “Resume of Richmond Meeting between the Warren County Citizen Delegation and the Legal Representatives of the NAACP.” Box 431, Folder “Front Royal,” TWUA Records.

[112] Carper, “Resume of Richmond Meeting.”

[113] Mechlin Moore, “Negroes Ask Court to Open Warren County School,” The Washington Post and Times Herald, October 3, 1958. Cf. Levy, “School Desegregation in Warren County,” 142.

[114] Edwin O Neuce, “Viscose Union Will Aid Private Schools,” The Northern Virginia Daily, October 16, 1958.

[115] Susanna McBee, “Front Royal Union Boosts Dues by $1 a Week to Aid Private School Group,” The Washington Post and Times Herald, October 16, 1958, Box 431, Folder “Front Royal,” TWUA Records.

[116] Susanna McBee, “Front Royal Union Boosts Dues by $1 a Week to Aid Private School Group,” The Washington Post and Times Herald, October 16, 1958.

[117] Bill Davis to W.W. Cook October 20, 1958. Box 431, Folder “Front Royal,” TWUA Records.

[118] Edwin O Neuce, “Viscose Union Will Aid Private Schools,” The Northern Virginia Daily, October 16, 1958.

[119] Muse, Virginia’s Massive Resistance, 77. Cf. Robert E. Baker, “Old Foes unite in Front Royal,” The Washington Post and Times Herald, March 1, 1959.

[120] Bill Davis to W.W. Cook October 20, 1958. Box 431, Folder “Front Royal,” in TWUA Records.

[121] Irving Kahan to William Pollock, October 30, 1958. Box 646, Folder “Local 371,” TWUA Records.

[122] Interoffice Memo October 28, 1958, Box 646, Folder “Local 371,” TWUA Records.

[123] Harry Brown to C.E. Leadman December 6, 1959, Box 646, Folder “Local 371,” TWUA Records.

[124] Matthews, “Political and Economic Effects of School Integration,” 86.

[125] Robert E. Baker, “Viscose Enters Front Royal Dispute,” The Washington Post and Times Herald, August 19, 1959. Cf. Levy, “School Desegregation in Warren County,” 118-199.

[126] Levy, “School Desegregation in Warren County,” 31.

[127] Muse, Virginia’s Massive Resistance, 154-155.

[128] Fitzgerald, “Front Royal, Virginia,” Box 2, Folder “Warren County Committee,” Buck Papers.

[129] Robert E. Baker, “Viscose Enters Front Royal Dispute,” The Washington Post and Times Herald, August 19, 1959; Draper, Conflicts of Interest, 47.

[130] Levy, “School Desegregation in Warren County,” 127.

[131] C.E. Leadman to J.W. Kilby, October 15, 1959, Box 646, Folder “Local 371,” TWUA Records.

[132] Interoffice Memo, October 21, 1959, Box 646, Folder “Local 371,” TWUA Records.

[133] Levy, “School Desegregation in Warren County,” 41-42, 55.

[134] “Front Royal Textile Union Aide Upset,” The Washington Post and Times Herald, December 3, 1959; “Union Votes New Auto, Vacation for Leadman,” Winchester Evening Star, December 10, 1959.

[135] “Leadman Opposed in Contest for Union Post,” Warren Sentinel, December 3, 1959; “Deny Meeting Was Held at Viscose Plant,” The Northern Virginia Daily, December 1, 1959.

[136] Handwritten copy of motion from Local 371 Minutes for January 13, 1960. Box 431, Folder “Front Royal,” TWUA Records.

[137] Interoffice Memo, February 4, 1960,Box 646, Folder “Local 371,” TWUA Records.

[138] William Simkin, Chairman’s Report, Box 431, Folder “Front Royal,” TWUA Records.

[139] Glenn Kauffman to John Chupka, April 18, 1960; John Chupka to Glenn Kauffman April 21, 1960, Box 646, Folder “Local 371,” TWUA Records.

[140]Glenn Kauffman to John Chupka, April 18, 1960; John Chupka to Glenn Kauffman April 21, 1960, Box 646, Folder “Local 371,” TWUA Records. Cf. John S. Coe, “Letter to the Editor: Upholds Refusal to Sign Check for the Academy,” The Northern Virginia Daily, May 20, 1960.

[141] William Pollock, “Resolution of General President on Appointment of Administrator of Local Union No. 371 Font Royal Virginia,” Box 646, Folder “Local 371,” TWUA Records.

[142] Victor J. Canzano, “Report and Recommendations of the Hearing Officer on Charges Filed against Local 371 and on Administratorship.” n.d. . Box 646, Folder “Local 371,” TWUA Records.

[143] “Report of the Appeals and Grievances Committee on Appeal of Local 371,” June 2, 1960, Box 646, Folder “Local 371,” TWUA Records.

[144] “Report of the Appeals and Grievances Committee on Appeal of Local 371,” June 2, 1960, Box 646, Folder “Local 371,” TWUA Records.

[145] Bill Davis to William Pollock, August 31, 1960. Box 431, Folder “Front Royal,” TWUA Records.

[146] Pat Eames to William Pollock, August 19, 1960. Box 646, Folder “Local 371,” TWUA Records.

[147] “Bulletin No. 35 from Will Davis to All Members of TWUA Local 371.” August 29, 1960. Box 431, Folder “Front Royal,” in TWUA Records.

[148] “Arbitration Board Decision” October 13, 1960. Box 431, Folder “Front Royal,” TWUA Records.

[149] Stagg, “A Minister’s Involvement in the Racial Crisis,” 80.

[150] Fitzgerald, “Front Royal, Virginia,” Box 2, Folder “Warren County Committee,” Buck Papers.