Study of Operation of Segregated Schools in Loudoun complete

A two-year study of the operations of segregated schools in Loudoun County has been published by the county. The Study of the Operation of Segregated Schools in Loudoun County, Virginia (PDF) chronicles the history of school operations from the 1880s through the early 1970s. The project was approved by the majority of the Board of Supervisors in December 2022 and conducted independently by Virginia scholars.

“I mentioned separate but equal, right? Does that look like it’s equal?” said Leesburg native James Roberts during a walking tour he conducted for the research team. As Roberts introduced the team to the former Douglass Elementary School on Union Street in Leesburg, built as the Loudoun County Training School in 1884, he described the struggle, hope and triumph of Black students and families throughout Loudoun’s history.

“This study is a historical document that details impactful people and important moments that has led Loudoun to become the welcoming, diverse beloved community we now enjoy,” said Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis J. Randall. “We should celebrate and honor the brave Loudoun trailblazers who came before us with vision and purpose to desegregate our community.”

Archival research, oral histories and informal conversations with community scholars and students who attended schools in Loudoun County led to several key findings.

As was the case with many Southern localities, students in Loudoun County’s segregated schools typically received fewer or inferior resources compared to white schools in the Jim Crow period in the early to mid-1900s.

It took more than 10 years—and a court order—for Loudoun County schools to fully desegregate following the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled that segregation in schools is inherently illegal and violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

From the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors and its then-appointed Board of Education played a significant role in the operation of historically segregated schools. Loudoun County joined other Virginia localities in “Massive Resistance” following the Brown decision, focusing on providing “separate but equal” facilities instead of integrating schools.

In 1956, the Loudoun Board of Supervisors joined other jurisdictions in further stalling desegregation by unanimously adopting a resolution “proclaiming that the ‘the imposition of integration’ would be ‘extremely detrimental to the interested of the people of the county and disastrous to the people of the public school system therein.’” A 1963 lawsuit filed by Black students and families in Loudoun ultimately led to a 1967 court order to fully integrate Loudoun schools.

Despite the challenges of segregated schooling, students in Loudoun’s Black schools valued the culture of excellence, communal bonds and ethnic caring that existed in the all-Black schools. Rosa Carter, who attended Banneker Elementary and later Douglass High School, explained that teachers were caring and poured knowledge into her and her friends. “They took pride in teaching us and wanted us to learn all we could because of the segregation situation,” said Carter. “We even go around talking about we are a card-carrying member of the Class of 1968,” said Charles Avery. “Very proud to be the last class at Douglass High School, the one that shut it down.”

Black residents of Loudoun County acknowledge the accomplishments they have made in the past few decades but point out that more remains to be done to improve African American representation in schools and government. James Roberts, who remains active in the community, noted, “Blacks have contributed to Loudoun County and the nation.”

The four-chapter study concludes that “the traits that helped many Black communities and schools persevere and provide excellent education for Black students in Loudoun County and throughout the South were Black schools’ culture of ‘communal bonds’ and an ‘ethic of caring.’”

In the coming months, the Board of Supervisors will consider any next steps it may take following the completion of this study, such as establishing a work group to examine the ongoing process of community healing through a restorative approach to reconcile divisions from a shared troubled past.