VIRGINIA: Rumble of Protest

Still padlocked and empty last week were the nine Virginia public schools that Governor J. Lindsay Almond Jr., invoking the state's "massive resistance" laws, shut down to keep 51 Negro children out of white classrooms. Still doomed to attend makeshift classes in churches and lodge halls—or none at all—were 13,000 white children. Floundering along with no plan for tidying up the mess. Governor Almond heard a growing rumble of protest from parents and teachers. Items:

Norfolk (six high schools shut down). In two similar lawsuits naming Almond and various state officials as defendants, 15 white parents asked a federal district court to 1) declare Virginia's school-closing law unconstitutional, and 2) enjoin Almond & Co. from meddling with Norfolk schools. The school closings, argued the suits, violate the children's constitutional rights, do them "irreparable injury." and impose unfair financial burdens on the parents. Norfolk's Committee for Public Schools sent Almond a 6,000-signature petition asking him to get the schools reopened fast.

Alexandria (no schools closed yet, but five involved in a pending integration suit). A 900-member, all-white Parent-Teacher Association voted a resolution calling upon the city council to break with massive resistance and push for local option on integration.

Richmond. At the yearly convention of the allwhite, 25,000-member Virginia Education Association, made up of teachers, principals and education officials, 1,113 delegates overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling upon Almond to summon the state legislature into special session "at an early date for the purpose of enacting such legislation as will assure the continued operation of the Virginia public schools as a state-supported function."