GOV HOLTON AND DAUGHTER
Gov. A. Linwood Holton escorts his daughter Tayloe Holton to the first day of class at John F. Kennedy High School in September 1970. (Photo by Librado Romero/The New York Times/Redux)
On Aug. 31, 1970, 5,000 white Richmond Public Schools students went missing. That number included a dozen white students registered for classes at Fairmount Elementary.
None of them arrived.
Some 800 black students didn’t answer attendance at their assigned schools, either.
They were not victims of a mass kidnapping but instead were kept from classes by their parents, who preferred to avoid sending their children across town on buses to schools where they’d be seen as unwelcome minorities.
Black parent and Richmond News Leader reporter Al Johnson stated, “We want neighborhood schools the same as white folk.”
Virginia Gov. Linwood Holton escorted his daughter Tayloe, 13, to the majority-Black John F. Kennedy High School.
These events came after the Aug. 18 ruling by United States District Judge Robert R. Merhige Jr. ordering Richmond to revamp plans for desegregation, requiring the busing of about 13,000 mostly secondary-level students.
This decision resulted from years of legal wrangling, vigorous debates, violence both threatened and real, and a relentless press by civil rights leaders and attorneys.
The course to integration began with the May 17, 1954, Brown v. Board of Education decision by the United States Supreme Court, which ruled that state segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th Amendment and thus unconstitutional. Brown was not one case, but five, including Davis v. Prince Edward County, that had been bundled together to challenge segregationist laws. On May 31, 1955, the high court issued its “Brown II” decision, ruling that lower courts should oversee desegregation “with all deliberate speed.”
Robert A. Pratt notes in his book “The Color of Their Skin” that “ever since Brown II in 1955, Richmond’s school board, like other school districts throughout the South, had interpreted ‘all deliberate speed’ to mean ‘every conceivable delay.’ ”
An August 1956 special session of the Virginia General Assembly codified robust anti-Brown measures. U.S. Sen. Harry F. Byrd, a former governor, championed combating what he and others viewed as federal overreach. Byrd’s “massive resistance” was promoted by Richmond News Leader editor James J. Kilpatrick, who argued that local governments could “interpose” themselves between federal law.
In its May 27, 1968, decision in the case of Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, the Supreme Court ruled that “freedom of choice” plans, which theoretically aimed to integrate schools by allowing students to choose a school independent of their race, were a violation of Brown. In practice, similar to Richmond, choices made by the majority of whites and blacks in New Kent County wound up maintaining school segregation.
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Children are escorted to a school bus in Richmond on Sept. 21, 1970. (Photo courtesy Richmond Times-Dispatch Collection, The Valentine)
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Anti-busing demonstrators march along Franklin Street near Virginia Commonwealth University on Sept. 16, 1970. (Photo courtesy Richmond Times-Dispatch Collection, The Valentine)
The Green decision sent local school boards scrambling to create plans that would satisfy the courts. When Richmond annexed 23 square miles of Chesterfield County on Jan. 1, 1970, suddenly more than 10,000 suburban white students were supposed to attend Richmond Public Schools. Not coincidentally, the annexation also reduced the 52% Black population of Richmond to 42%.
On March 12, 1970, Merhige ordered Richmond to develop a new desegregation plan. In “Color of Their Skin,” Pratt explains how the school board, using federal guidelines, “devised a system of ‘grade pairing,’ allowing for Black and white schools in the same attendance zones to be ‘paired,’ with each school containing different grade levels.” Merhige advised the school board on June 26 that “Richmond’s history of residential segregation rendered the proposed ‘pairing plan’ unacceptable.” Pratt notes that a revised version presented on July 23 also proved unworkable, primarily because it continued to place almost 9,000 Black students in 13 elementary schools that were more than 90% Black.
On Aug. 18, Merhige ruled against the revised plan — and busing began.
The experience of teachers and students varied by school and situation. Few enjoyed a smooth transition.
By November 1970, the Richmond school board argued that despite its best efforts, desegregation couldn’t work without the cooperation of nearby Henrico and Chesterfield counties.
In January 1971, Merhige ruled that the achievements of the present plan were “less than remarkable.” On April 5, 1971, he ordered pupil and faculty reassignments and free citywide transportation. The most profound aspect was the extension of busing to all pupils straight down to kindergartners.
“I did what I did not only because it was the law, but also because I believed it was right. And for that I have no regrets.” —Judge Robert R. Merhige Jr.
Two weeks later, the ruling came down on the first busing case to reach the Supreme Court, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education. The court approved extensive busing to promote desegregation.
On Jan. 10, 1972, Merhige, now with the Swann decision backing him, issued a 325-page opinion: Full desegregation of the schools necessitated the implementation of a single regional system combining the city of Richmond with Henrico and Chesterfield counties, to include busing across city and county lines.
Opposition arrived swiftly, and it was loud and vigorous. Picketers, including members of the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazis, came to the bottom of the driveway of Merhige’s house every Sunday. The family dog was tied up and shot (though it survived), and a guesthouse where Merhige’s 75-year-old mother-in-law lived burned to the ground.
Mark Merhige, then 11, attended the private Collegiate School, which caused charges of hypocrisy. The judge explained that his son had started there in kindergarten, and he saw no reason to change.
Judge Merhige remained steadfast and acknowledged in a 1987 interview, “At times it got awfully depressing. But I did what I did not only because it was the law, but also because I believed it was right. And for that I have no regrets.”
The landmark ruling was overturned when the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Merhige had exceeded his authority.
Judge Robert R. Merhige Jr. (Photo courtesy University of Richmond)
On May 21, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court, which had provided Merhige with precedents for his decisions, upheld the Fourth Circuit in a split decision with Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. recusing himself by citing a conflict due to his 1952-61 chairmanship of the Richmond School Board.
The court then invalidated most busing across city-county boundaries. City schools again became majority Black.
Merhige and the era of busing are detailed in a recently completed documentary titled “The Judge: Character, Cases and Courage,” produced locally by director Robert Griffith and artist Al Calderaro. In the film, constitutional scholar Rodney Smolla, dean of Widener University Delaware School of Law, observes, “I think had he not been overruled, we might be a different country today. I think racial progress and harmony, and the quality of our public school systems across the country, would’ve been much stronger if that pragmatic solution had been allowed to stand.”
