Negro citizens of Pittsylvania county last week rejected school officials’ voluntary school segregation plan at a mass meeting attended by more than 300 people. Instead the group recommended that representatives meet with the school board to discuss integration and a possible date for beginning integrated classes.
What interested me the most when reading this article was the concept of “voluntary segregation” in schools—the separation of black and white students by choice. However, there existed no such voluntary segregation since it only catered to the desires of the county’s white population who either wanted to avoid integration completely or shut down schools forced to integrate in response. In the article, Carter mentions how the black population of Pittsylvania county rejected school officials’ strong resistance to school racial integration. As mandated by the Supreme Court’s ruling in