University of Virginia Library

Integrating The Colleges

Late last spring, a small group of students
and faculty members met to plot a legal
campaign. Its goal was to bring court action
against the state of Virginia for maintaining a
racially dual system of higher education. It
was common knowledge that Virginia was
going to maintain that system, a holdover
from Jim Crow days, until it was forced to
disband it. That campaign died stillborn for
various reasons, but the idea remained alive.

Now a group with a little muscle, the nasty
old federal government, has taken up the
cause, and it looks as if muscle is going to
produce results. Nothing that the supposedly
integrated Virginia colleges were still 99 per
cent racially homogeneous, the Department of
Health, Education and Welfare has ordered
the state to produce, within 90 days, a plan to
terminate the existing de facto segregation.

Undoubtedly there will be those who will
scream "government coercion", maintain that
HEW is trying to force something that isn't
natural, and claim that 90 days is hardly
enough time. In short, the usual segregationist
garbage. They will overlook the fact that
black people have already suffered under the
yoke of white Virginians for 350 years; they
will ignore the fact that Virginia has had 15
long years to get such a plan ready - the time
that has passed since the Supreme Court put
an end to legal segregation.

Any comprehensive effort to integrate the
state college system will entail problems. The
mere fact that people are involved insures
that. But these problems are not inherently
insoluble. Many can be avoided if an effective
effort is made to prepare for the changes that
will occur with the integration.

Thus, the next 90 days will be important
ones for the State of Virginia and the future
of higher education here. If those responsible
for planning the transition rise above recalcitrance
and accept the inevitability of an
integrated college system, they can make
plans that will be invaluable in assisting the
students and faculty members who will be
involved to overcome the difficulties they will
encounter.

If, on the other hand, the planners
approach their task with a negative attitude,
seeking to delay as much as possible, seeking
to tokenize the integration as best they can,
trouble will undoubtedly ensue. It's obvious
that time is running out for the old racial
order in Virginia; the state can either
recognize that fact or reap the consequences
of continued intransigence.