The African American Schools of Louisa County
The story of African American schools in Louisa County is a story filled with hope. Hope drove the efforts of the first teachers who conducted schools for former slaves in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Hope for a better future created schools in barns and log houses during the late 1800s and raised funds through community leagues to build the new schools of the early 20th century. Hope in the promise that all citizens would one day be equal gave courage as federal and state authorities battled over the desegregation of Virginia's public schools in the 1950s and 60s.
Those hopes witnessed the passing of a milestone when Louisa County finally ended all segregation in its public school system in 1970.



The History of Black Education
The story of African American educations begins even before Louisa County was created in 1742. At that time, it was legal to educate both free blacks and slaves. Fears of slave uprisings led Virginia to pass Black Laws in 1831 making it illegal to teach African Americans. However, many free blacks and a few courageous slaves continued their learning in small hidden groups. At the end of the Civil War in 1865, all people held as slaves were granted both release from bondage and the challenge of learning to live as free men and women.
The post-war Virginia Constitution of 1869 mandated the creation of free public education for all. However, the act which created the public school system also directed that "white and colored persons shall not be taught in the same school but in separate schools under the same general regulations as to management, usefulness, and efficiency."
Economic conditions in Louisa County were extremely difficult in the aftermath of the war. Combined tax revenues in 1870 were one-fourth of what they had been in 1863, when property tax on slaves alone earned the county $58,389. Louisa County's public school system began to operate with meager funding in 1871.
In the decades immediately following the Civil War, efforts to create a public school system moved slowly. The first schools created for African Americans in Louisa County were due to the efforts of African American churches, and northern missionaries and philanthropists.
By the 1890s, larger political movements began throughout the South that soon reversed the progress toward equal citizenship for blacks achieved during Reconstruction. In 1902, Virginia joined other southern states in ratifying a new state constitution which restored political power to white citizens. The new constitution required voters to pay a poll tax and pass a literacy test, effectively disenfranchising most African American voters. It also safeguarded racial segregation in Virginia's public schools.
"All that was during Jim Crow."
By the early 20th century, white politicians had created powerful racial segregation laws which came to be known as the Jim Crow Laws. These laws would affect all areas of life for Virginia's African Americans for decades to come.
African Americans outside the South responded. They created organizations to defend the civil rights of those in southern states. White northern philanthropists gave funds to pay for buildings and supervisors in southern black schools, including Louisa County. However, economic limitations hindered progress toward better schools for Louisa students through the 1930s.
When Louisa County consolidated its white schools in 1940, many of the white school buildings were no longer needed and were converted to black schools: Rising Sun, Shannon Hill, and Shelfar are among these. The Supervisors of Negro Education in the 1940s and 1950s worked to consolidate Louisa County's African American schools by closing the worst ones and improving educational resources at the others.

Faculty at Mt. Garland School. L to R: Thelma Jones, Spurgeon Moss, Hazeline Thurston, and Alice Fountain.


"Then came Civil Rights and times began to change."
The Brown v. Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court ruling found segregation of public schools unconstitutional in May of 1954. The decision threatened the downfall of laws which segregated all areas of public life and set off a firestorm throughout the South. Federal and state laws stood at odds with one another.
Virginia's senator Harry S. Byrd coined the phrase "Massive Resistance" as his recommendation for how the state should respond to the court's ruling. Louisa County citizens saw state and federal court battles rage in the following years over the closing of public schools in Charlottesville, Norfolk, and Prince Edward County.
The Louisa County School Board had opened a new black high school, A.G. Richardson, in 1953. It built several new elementary schools for black children over the next decade in an attempt to make schools for African Americans more equal to those provided for white children.
Segregation in Louisa County remained deeply entrenched. In the towns of Louisa and Mineral, African American citizens were still unable to sit down to eat in white restaurants, use "white only" restrooms or drinking fountains, or sit anywhere other than in the "colored" section at the movie theater. They shopped at black groceries, not white ones, and rode separate buses to school.
The Integration of Louisa's Schools
A decade after the 1954 Supreme Court decision on segregated schools, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964. The Act outlawed segregation in businesses such as theaters, restaurants, and hotels. It banned discriminatory practices in employment and ended segregation in public places such as swimming pools, libraries, and public schools. In April of 1965, President Johnson also signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which tied federal funding for schools to compliance with federally mandated desegregation.
In the fall of 1965, Louisa County adopted a Freedom of Choice plan. Similar plans had been used in other Virginia counties since 1960 and, in theory, allowed parents and students free choice among public schools within their district. Freedom of Choice did not achieve desegregation in the eyes of federal officials, however. In 1968, the federal government threatened to cut off all federal school funding if full integration was not accomplished. Louisa County then began that process and all segregation in the county's schools finally ended in September of 1970.
