VIRGINIA: Ignorance for All

One of the four lawsuits that led to the historic 1954 Supreme Court decision (Brown v. Board of Education) on school integration began in Southside Virginia's tobacco-raising Prince Edward County. Last week, to all intents and purposes, public education ended there. Finally facing a federal court's no-way-out order for token integration at September's school opening, the county board of supervisors refused to appropriate funds (budget: $780,000) to open the 21 schools and run them this year. Unless Negro plaintiffs can find a legal lever to force open school doors, Prince Edward's 1,304 white children will henceforth be educated in makeshift classes at the safely segregated churches, its 1,646 Negroes mostly in the tobacco rows.