Pupil Placement Board

The creation of Virginia's Pupil Placement Board was approved by an act of the Virginia General Assembly on September 29, 1956. The Pupil Placement Act was one part of a comprehensive package of legislation passed during the 1956 special session to negate and counteract the effects of the opinion expressed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The Brown decision marked the end of legal segregation in public schools by concluding that separate facilities for students of different races are inherently unequal and thus in violation of the fourteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In 1955 the U.S. Supreme Court revisited the Brown decision to provide a timeline for the integration of pubic schools. The court left much room for interpretation by stating that schools should be integrated, "with all deliberate speed."

In response to the Brown cases, U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd (D-Virginia) coined the term for what would become Virginia's overarching integration policy when he stated, "If we can organize the Southern States for massive resistance to this order I think that in time the rest of the country will realize that racial integration is not going to be accepted in the South." Virginia's "Massive Resistance" policy ran counter to the Supreme Court's order for public schools to integrate "with all deliberate speed" by using state law to hopelessly hinder integration and thus thwart the intent of the court.

The Pupil Placement Board, as one arm of the policy of Massive Resistance was charged with assigning, enrolling, or placing students to and in public schools. The Pupil Placement Board consisted of three members appointed by the Governor. Pupil placement was a task formerly under the control of school boards and division superintendents. The board's authorizing legislation required members to take several factors into consideration when placing a pupil in a school. Factors included but were not limited to the health of the pupil, his or her aptitudes, the availability of transportation, and, "such other relevant matters as may be pertinent to the efficient operation of the schools or indicate a clear and present danger to the public peace and tranquility affecting the safety or welfare of the citizens of such school district." Students who were already in school before the board's creation were not obligated to apply for placement. Thus, the board only oversaw the placement of students who sought to move from one school to another or who were applying to attend school for the first time.

In December of 1956, Governor Thomas B. Stanley appointed Hugh V. White, Beverly H. Randolph Jr., and Andrew A. Farley to serve as the Pupil Placement Board. White was employed as Superintendent of Schools for Nansemond County beginning in 1934, he also served as president of the Virginia Principals Association and on the Superintendent Advisory Committee to the State Superintendent of Public Institutions. Randolph, a Richmond City native and former member of the House of Delegates, who at the time of his placement board membership, was an attorney in Charles City County. Farley was the Vice President and General Manager of the Register Publishing Company in Danville, the company was responsible for the "Danville Register" and "Danville Bee," he also served on the State Board of Conservative Development. From the beginning the placement board was frustrated by legal challenges from federal courts and by local school boards that increasingly tended to ignore the board's decisions.

All three board members served from the board's creation until they tendered a collective resignation effective in early 1960. Their resignations followed an Act of the General Assembly approved on April 28, 1959 that returned the responsibility of pupil placement to localities. Speaking before the General Assembly On January 28, 1959, Governor James Lindsay Almond, Jr. spoke on behalf of the Pupil Placement Board and defended it against the charge that it served as an impediment to integration. However, Governor Almond concluded that Virginia must, "repeal...laws that have been finally adjudged to be unconstitutional or have proven ineffective." He added that Virginia must, "prepare for the future by removing from our statutes that which those who oppose our way of life have used as a virus to contaminate the whole." He urged the assembly to reconsider laws governing education, including laws governing the transfer of pupils from school to school.

Following the resignation of the board's membership, the Journal of the Senate enrolled House Joint Resolution 91 on March 10, 1960, acknowledging the board's mass resignation, "as a result of circumstances which would render their task almost impossible of performance." In July of 1960 the original members were replaced by Governor Almond with Earnest J. Oglesby, Edward T. Justis, and Alfred L. Wingo. Oglesby at the time of his appointment he was a professor of Mathematics at the University of Virginia. In Albemarle County he served on the Board of Trustees at the Miller school, as well as, the President of the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties (a segregationist organization begun in Petersburg which proposed to become an advocacy group for whites much as the NAACP had done for African Americans). Justis, a Chesterfield County native worked as a science teacher and director of athletics at Chester High School and principal of Midlothian High School before joining the Department of Education in 1942, where he was eventually named Assistant State Supervisor of Rehabilitation. Wingo, born in Amelia County; worked as a counselor at Farmville State Teaching College before becoming Conductor of Guidance, Testing, Research and Surveys for the Department of Education in 1944. Even with the loss of most of its power and the effective end of the "Massive Resistance" movement in 1959, the Pupil Placement Board remained in existence for another seven years until it was finally abolished by an act of the General Assembly in 1966.

From the guide to the Records of the Virginia Pupil Placement Board, 1957-1966, (The Library of Virginia)