Semester

Fall

Date of Graduation

2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

History

Committee Chair

Elizabeth Fones-Wolf

Committee Member

Ken Fones-Wolf

Committee Member

Sam Stack

Committee Member

William Hal Gorby

Committee Member

James Siekmeier

Abstract

The African-American educational experience in West Virginia particularly emphasizes how the state’s history of flexible customs impacted education policy on the local and state level. Although state leadership adhered to the confines of segregation when they provided public education for Black students, they continued to offer significant opportunities to Black students and teachers within those boundaries. When the Brown v. Board of Education decision was rendered in 1954, state leadership ordered the desegregation of schools and never encouraged resistance under any governor, Democrat or Republican. State leadership responded swiftly with compliance because they followed the law and they consistently practiced flexibility. The NAACP was forced to file lawsuits against local boards of education in seven counties: six in the southern part of the state (Cabell, Greenbrier, Logan, McDowell, Mercer, and Raleigh Counties) and Harrison County in central West Virginia. Amenable judges ruled in favor of the NAACP in each, ordering desegregation to begin immediately. Only in Harrison County did a judge order immediate integration for the entire county. By 1958, every county in West Virginia had started the desegregation process. While much of this research focuses on the development of Black schools in the 19th and 20th century and the subsequent desegregation of schools after the Brown decision, the remaining scholarship addresses the experiences of the families who integrated schools in Hampshire County, Marion County, and Randolph County.

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