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Arlington, Virginia
In the years following the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, Arlington County, Virginia emerged as an early test case in the Commonwealth’s battle over desegregation. Initially, Arlington’s elected school board moved toward complying with the ruling, submitting a plan for gradual integration. However, in 1956, the Virginia General Assembly dissolved the county’s democratically elected school board—replacing it with a state-appointed one to stall desegregation efforts. This political interference delayed meaningful progress and brought Arlington under the full weight of Massive Resistance policies. While Arlington never saw a wholesale closure of all public schools like other cities, the threat loomed large over the community. In particular, Stratford Junior High School was at the center of the controversy, as a federal court ordered it to integrate by the 1958–1959 school year.
In response to the court’s order, state officials delayed the opening of Stratford Junior High, effectively keeping the school closed to all students for a period of several weeks while Governor J. Lindsay Almond and state lawmakers considered broader school closure tactics to avoid integration. Despite this obstruction, a federal court reaffirmed the integration mandate. On February 2, 1959, Stratford Junior High reopened and became the first public secondary school in Virginia to be integrated. Four African American students—Ronald Deskins, Michael Jones, Lance Newman, and Gloria Thompson—entered the school under heavy police presence and community scrutiny. Their admission marked a landmark moment, as Stratford’s peaceful integration undermined the argument that desegregation would provoke violence and disorder.
While Stratford was the only school temporarily closed in Arlington due to desegregation orders, the county’s experience had outsized symbolic impact. The local effort to resist school closings and promote public education through groups like the Committee to Preserve Public Schools helped distinguish Arlington from other Virginia localities that embraced more extreme resistance. The successful, nonviolent integration of Stratford Junior High became a blueprint for further desegregation efforts across the state, signaling that the strategy of closing schools to maintain segregation was both legally and socially untenable. Arlington’s story became a key turning point in the unraveling of Massive Resistance throughout Virginia.