Oral Histories
The interviews below are excerpts from the film, "Massive Resistance"; the 2000 Emmy Nominee of the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which was shown nationally on PBS in February 2002 for Black History Month. The interview transcripts are part of the "Civil Rights in U.S. and Virginia History" website. This course examines the civil rights movement in U.S. and Virginia history from the origins of segregation to the 1970s.
isaac Edwilda Allen Isaac was a student leader in the student strike of 1951 in Prince Edward County, an event that led to Dorothy Davis v. Prince Edward County School Board, one of the five cases decided in the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.
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isaac Vera Jones Allen worked for the Prince Edward County school system at the time of the 1951 student strike. She is the mother of Edwilda Allen Isaac, who was a student leader in the student strike of 1951 in Prince Edward County, an event that led to Dorothy Davis v. Prince Edward County School Board, one of the five cases decided in the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.
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isaac Calvin Nunnally was a student in Prince Edward County at the time of the school closings.
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isaac Oliver Hill was the N.A.A.C.P. lead attorney for Virginia and tried the Davis v. Prince Edward case, as well as numerous other key civil rights cases in Virginia.
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isaac The Honorable J. Harry Michael served as a member of the school board in Charlottesville, Virginia in the 1960s and is a lawyer and professor on the faculty at the University of Virginia.
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isaac A. E. Dick Howard served from 1962 to 1964 as a clerk for U. S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, during the period when the case of Griffin v. Prince Edward County came before the court. He has served on the faculty of the University of Virginia Law School, and served as the executive director of the Virginia Commission on Constitutional Revision in 1968-69 when the constitution was amended to prevent school closings.
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isaac The Honorable D. B. Marshall was a founding member of the Charlottesville Education Foundation in 1958, an organization to promote private segregated academies as an alternative to integrated public schools.
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isaac Hovey S. Dabney was a founding member of the Charlottesville Education Foundation in 1958, an organization to promote private segregated academies as an alternative to integrated public schools.
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isaac George Tremontain served as the Charlottesville Superintendent of Schools in the mid-1960s.
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isaac Raymond Bell served as the president of the Charlottesville Chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. and worked actively on local efforts at desegregation and civil rights in Charlottesville.
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isaac Ruth Eggleston lived in Prince Edward County during the school closing crisis. Her son Carl Eggleston was a student in middle school at the beginning of the crisis.
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isaac Carl Eggleston was a middle school student when schools were closed in Prince Edward County in 1959.
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isaac David F. Cooke served as the basketball head coach at Lane High School in Charlottesville, Virginia, one of the schools that was closed in 1958 and was integrated in 1959. Cooke coached the first integrated teams at Lane High School.
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isaac Nancy Manson served as one of the organizing parents in Charlottesville of the Parent's Committee for Emergency Schooling to provide students at Venable Elementary and Lane High School with temporary education during the school closing crisis in 1958-59.
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