The information contained in this timeline is based on Dr. Robert A. Pratt's The Color of Their Skin: Education and Race in Richmond, Virginia 1954-1989 (1992), unless otherwise noted. This timeline includes national events and court cases that influenced the decisions regarding integration in Richmond as well as placing Richmond's reaction to those decisions in a national context.

1896
Supreme Court upholds Plessy v. Ferguson. This case establishes the precedent of "separate but equal."

May 3, 1948
Supreme Court rules in Shelley v. Kraemer that blacks can live in all white neighborhoods.

1950
Supreme Court decides in Sweat v. Painter the University of Texas has to admit blacks into its law school; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) decides to sue for desegregation rather than equalization.

April 23- May 7, 1951
Prince Edward County, Virginia. Moton High School student Barbara Johns organizes a strike against poor school conditions. Four hundred and fifty African-American students participate in the two-week strike.

May 21, 1951
Richmond lawyers Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill file a lawsuit (Davis v. The County School Board of Prince Edward County) on behalf of one hundred seventeen students from Prince Edward County. This case is one of the five cases included in Brown v. Board of Education (see May 17, 1954).

1953
Virginia's State Board of Education presents the highest budget proposal to date ($40,807,500) to equalize black and white school facilities by the 1954-1955 school year to prevent integration.

May 17, 1954
Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision overturns Plessy v. Ferguson's "separate but equal" precedent by stating that separate facilities for blacks and whites are inherently unequal.

June 26, 1954
Virginia Senator Harry Byrd announces that he will use all legal means to continue segregated schools.

May 31, 1955
Supreme Court issues Brown v. Board of Education, II. The Court places responsibility of implementing integration plans on district courts.

November 11, 1955
Virginia General Assembly introduces The Gray Plan.

February 24, 1956
The term massive resistance is coined by Virginia Senator Harry Byrd.

1956
Virginia General Assembly adopts interposition regarding desegregation issues; The Virginia General Assembly passes a set of laws to avoid integrating Virginia's public schools. This is an example of massive resistance.

March 5, 1956
Constitutional Convention of 40 Virginia delegates meet in Richmond to amend Virginia's constitution to legalize tuition grants which will delay the integration of Virginia's public schools.

March 12, 1956
101 members of Congress sign the Southern Manifesto promising to resist integration.

Summer 1956
NAACP files desegregation lawsuits against school boards in Arlington, Norfolk, Newport News and Charlottesville, Virginia.

August 27, 1956
The Stanley Plan is introduced by the Virginia legislature.

December 26, 1956
Governor Stanley appoints Hugh V. White (Nanesmond County Superintendent of Schools), Beverly H. Randolph, Jr. (Richmond attorney) and Andrew A. Farley (Vice-president and General Manager of the Register Publishing Company of Danville) to the newly created Pupil Placement Board.

December 29, 1956
Virginia's Pupil Placement Board is officially established. No desegregation occurred before this date.

September 17, 1957
Richmond attorney Oliver Hill gets Judge Sterling Hutcheson to grant an order to temporarily stop the use of the pupil placement plan in Richmond.

1957
Little Rock, Arkansas. Governor Orval Faubus defies a federal court order to admit nine black students to the all-white Central High School. President Dwight Eisenhower sends federal troops to make certain that the black students are allowed to attend the school. The students become known as the Little Rock Nine.

July 1958
Six black children apply to the Pupil Placement Board for admission to the all-white Nathaniel Bacon and Westhampton elementary schools in Richmond, Virginia.

August 29, 1958
All six applications are denied (See July 1958).

September 2, 1958
Parents of the six children (See July 1958 and August 29, 1958) file a lawsuit (Warden v. Richmond School Board) in US District Court.

September 12, 1958
Warren County High School, an all-white school in Front Royal, Virginia, is the first school in Virginia to close under massive resistance.

September 19, 1958
Charlottesville, Virginia's Lane High School and Venable Elementary School, both all-white schools, close.

January 19, 1959
Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals declares in Harrison v. Day that the school closings violate section 129 of Virginia's State Constitution, which requires the state to "maintain an efficient system of public free schools throughout the State."

January 19, 1959
Norfolk federal court rules in James v. Almond that Virginia's school-closing statute violates the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution and is therefore illegal.

February 2, 1959
In Norfolk and Arlington, Virginia, twenty-one black students enter previously all-white schools without any problems. Virginia's era of massive resistance ends.

February 24, 1959
Charlottesville, Virginia's Venable and Lane schools reopen (see September 19, 1958).

September 1959
Prince Edward County schools in Virginia close to avoid integration.

February 24, 1960
All three members of Virginia's Pupil Placement Board announce their resignation, leaving the Board effective June 1.

March 1, 1960
Virginia's new local option pupil assignment plan goes into effect; Governor Almond appoints three new members of the Pupil Placement Board.

August 15, 1960
New Pupil Placement Board approves the transfer of 2 black students to all-white Chandler Junior High School beginning September 6, 1960.

September 1960
Fewer than 170 black students out of the 204,000 black students in Virginia are enrolled in white schools.

1961
Eleven black parents bring a class action suit (Bradley v. Richmond School Board) against the Richmond School Board to desegregate the public schools because students are assigned to schools based on dual attendance zones.

July 5, 1961
Warden v. Richmond School Board settled (see September 2, 1958.)

July 26, 1962
In Bradley v. Richmond School Board, the District Court orders the eleven students to be admitted to the all-white schools they had chosen.

1963
Out of 26,000 blacks in Richmond schools, only 312 are enrolled in 12 white schools.

March 1963
Lawyers win a court order requiring the school board
to get rid of the system of dual attendance zones. The Freedom of Choice plan is established.

1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 passes.

May 25, 1964
US Supreme Court demands that a law is made that would guarantee public education for black children in Prince Edward County, Virginia.

June 23, 1964
Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors votes to comply with federal courts and reopen as an integrated public school system.

November 15, 1965
Supreme Court rules against Richmond's Freedom of Choice plan because teachers are still segregated.

March/April 1966
District Court approves revised freedom of choice plan that includes integration of faculty assignments. Children can get to school by walking, parents taking them to school or by paying to ride the Virginia Transit Company buses. This plan remains in effect for almost five years.

1968
Fair Housing Act passes legally preventing businesses from denying African-Americans the choice to rent or own hoses in mostly white neighborhoods; US Supreme Court rules in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County that the Freedom of Choice concept is illegal because students are choosing to attend racially segregated schools. This ruling places the responsibility of desegregation on local school boards instead of forcing black parents to demand change.

June 30, 1966
Virginia General Assembly allows the Pupil Placement Board to end.

January 1, 1970
Richmond City adds 23 miles of neighboring Chesterfield County (a predominantly white county) to help integrate Richmond City schools.

March 1970
Richmond School Board adopts grade pairing desegregation plan created by HEW. In Lamar, South Carolina, two school buses transporting students to a newly integrated school are overturned.*

June 26, 1970
District Court Judge Robert R. Merhige, Jr. rejects
Plan I (pairing plan) because of residential segregation.

August 1970
Both black and white Richmond City school teachers participate in federally funded integration training program.***

August 7, 1970
District Court approves only as an temporary solution. The court requires a third, new plan to be submitted within 90 days.

August 31, 1970
On the first day of school in Richmond City, approximately 5,000 white students are missing; 13,000 out of 50,000 students in the city are bused;
Virginia Governor Linwood Holton personally escorts his daughter Tayloe to predominantly black John F. Kennedy High School - the school she was assigned to under Judge Merhige's busing plan.

December 5, 1970
Judge Merhige rules that the counties of Henrico and Chesterfield, as well as the Virginia State Board of Education, have the legal duty of helping Richmond desegregate its public schools.

January 1971
Judge Merhige rules that the desegregation level in Richmond public schools is poor; Richmond Public School students bully Virginia Transit Company bus drivers to obtain free rides.**

April 5, 1971
To speed up the desegregation process, Judge Merhige orders mass busing in addition to student and faculty reassignments.

April 12, 1971
The US Supreme Court in Swann v. Charlotte - Mecklenburg Board of Education approves the use of extensive busing to promote school desegregation which upholds Judge Merhige's order of mass busing in Richmond.

September 1971
In Chattanooga,Tennessee, schools resume opening after explosion damages a high school. In Lubbock, Texas, a 16-year-old Black student was shot and killed in the hallway of an integrated high school by a 15-year-old white student. In Jacksonville, Florida, a bus driver finds a bag containing 14 sticks of dynamite planted under her school bus. A high school in Ayden, North Carolina is bombed.*

Black families demand that Richmond City's school system be combined with those of Henrico and Chesterfield counties to prevent white-flight to those counties and effectively resegregating city schools.

January 10, 1972
Judge Merhige approves the county-city school merger.

February 1972
To protest the county-city school merger decision, county residents drive 108 miles from Richmond to Capitol Hill in Washington DC in a 3,261 car motorcade.

June 5, 1972
Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals overturns Judge Merhige's school merger order.

May 21, 1973
The US Supreme Court upholds Circuit Court's decision to overturn school merger.

1977
Supreme Court rules in Milliken v. Bradley that school desegregation through school system mergers is illegal.

1978
Plan G consolidates seven high schools into three - Marshall-Walker, Armstrong-Kennedy, and Jefferson-Hugeunot-Wythe.

April 1986
Judge Merhige approves a neighborhood school plan that ends mass busing

* From the Richmond Afro-American, September 18, 1971.
** From the Richmond Afro-American, January 6, 1971.
*** From the Richmond News-Leader, August 21, 1970.