A Mission for Civil Rights

IN Farmville, Virginia, last fall, Negro students returned to school after being denied the right to public education for four years. In order to avoid integration, Prince Edward County in 1959 closed down its twenty public schools and advised white students to attend private segregated schools - a maneuver now being contested in the courts.

The end of the Negro lockout came with the establishment of the Prince Edward Free School Association by concerned citizens from the South and North. One of them was Thomas L. Maynard '29 of Portland, Maine, who gave up his business, sold his house, and is now Assistant Principal of the Robert R. Moton High School which the Free School Association opened as one of four integrated schools in buildings leased from the county. Serving as superintendent of the free schools is Dr. Neil V. Sullivan, who is on a year's leave of absence as school superintendent in Hempstead, N.Y.

For Maynard his present work is a return to education. Before going into the investment business in 1951 he was for twenty years a teacher, coach, and principal in schools in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine. Some of the faculty members with whom he is associated at Moton High School have come from all over the country, as have gifts of money, books, and audio-visual equipment. About one-fourth of the school's faculty are white, including some Virginians who believe that Prince Edward County's action of four years ago was wrong. Other Virginia support comes from the Association trustees, headed by former Governor Colgate W. Darden Jr.

One of the highlights of the school year at Moton High was the April 2 appearance there of the Dartmouth Glee Club, which made a detour and sacrificed a lunch hour to arrive in Farmville in time for an informal concert. Maynard, a former Glee Club member, wrote to TheDartmouth to describe what the visit meant: "The boys accomplished their purpose, were enthusiastically received, and will be long remembered here with affection for their kindness, and with appreciation for their artistry. ... But more than this, there was something human and GOOD that passed between the young men and their youthful audience. I cannot explain it very well, but I am sure that if more of this same quality pervaded our country, the solution of all our racial problems might be very near."

Because of the four-year gap in the education of the students enrolled, the Prince Edward Free School Association has had enormous problems in this first year, but the teachers have been inspired and the program has moved steadily ahead. "And the children," said Maynard, "respond like blossoming flowers in the spring sunshine."

The Moton High School is run on a non-graded basis, which involves constant regrouping of students so those who learn quickly can move ahead whenever their teachers feel an advancement is called for. "Such a course is hard on the faculty," says Maynard, "but we learn to roll with the punches and move along to meet such challenges."

In an address at an educational conference in Richmond in February, Maynard said: "The children are glad to be back in school. Many are, of course, frustrated and are slow in getting any reading or writing skills. Others progress faster. These students are the best-acting, most courteous children I have ever taught. They are very neat, very kind, and thoughtful."

So far only a handful of white students are enrolled in the Prince Edward free schools, and it may be difficult to get other white families to buck the strong tide of local feeling, despite the cost of sending children to private, segregated school; but Negro boys and girls are back in school and the principle of integrated education is being carried out in dedicated fashion, by the group of which Maynard is a member. Most important, deeds are matching beliefs.

"The people of this land," said Maynard in his Richmond address, "young and old alike, not only the 'great' ones in Washington, but also the little fellows in Boston, in New Orleans, and in the small towns like Farmville must soon find an answer to this most agonizing of problems, or our great nation may one day find its vitals destroyed by the acid of race hatred. Robert E. Lee's advice to 'forget local animosities; teach your sons to be Americans'; and Abraham Lincoln's 'with malice toward none, with charity for all' are great words. All Americans today must provide matching great deeds."

Thomas L. Maynard '29 (r), who hasgone from Maine to Virginia to help withan integrated school, poses with Dr.Neil Sullivan, two Moton High pupils,and a product of his former home state.