Old Town Crier Written by ©2019 Sarah Becker Copyright ©2019 Sarah Becker 1957 Textbook-Fake News In 1950 the 81st Congress convened; government scientists worked on a hydrogen bomb and Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy condemned Communism. Soviet-armed North Korean troops invaded South Korea; the U.S. Supreme Court upheld black Americans right to attend a state law school, and segregated Virginia ranked thirty-fourth in its financial support of education. In Virginia education was mostly “neglected,” except for a 7th grade state-listed history book written to appeal to a “conservative rural audience.” “What is most distressing about the product of the 1950 Virginia Textbook Commission—and the Virginia General Assembly that created it—is not the over-glorifying of Virginia’s heritage, but a lack of confidence in it or her people,” The Virginian-Pilot wrote in 1965. “The concept of an arm of the government supervising the writing of history is precisely the sort of statism to which Virginia politicians object so vehemently in their own Federal Government.” President Donald J. Trump (R-NY) defines fake news as not true. “False stories created to be shared or distributed for the purpose of…promoting or discrediting a public figure or political movement.” Commission Chairman, former Virginia Delegate and a top-ranking member of the Byrd Organization Cecil W. Taylor, of Lynchburg, admitted the 7th grade textbook—Virginia: History, Government, Geography by Francis Butler Simkins—was “written with bias, glorification, and political cant.” In fact, the 7th grade history text was “‘purified’ by state censors” in an effort “to appeal to conservative Virginia’s point of view.” “Dixie [the South] is…
©2017 Sarah Becker The Sounds of Silence In 1966 Simon & Garfunkel had a number one song, President Lyndon B. Johnson created the U.S. Department of Transportation, and U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. (D-VA) died at his Berryville home. The Byrd machine passed politically from father to son, Johnson appointed the first black U.S. Cabinet member, and U.S. Senator Willis Robertson (D-VA) lost Presidential favor. Virginia’s failure to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown decision, Byrd Sr.’s co-authorship of the Southern Manifesto left many Civil Rights issues unresolved. “We regard the decision of the Supreme Court in the [bundled] school cases as a clear abuse of judicial power,” the Manifesto said. “It climaxes a trend in the Federal Judiciary undertaking to legislate…to encroach upon the reserved rights of the States and the people.” Virginia massively resisted Brown. In Alexandria, in 1966, the subject was integration of the all-white Thomas Jefferson Middle School. If integrated, the re-fashioned school, located at Cameron and N. West Streets, “would draw from nearby census tracts designated as ‘poverty stricken.’” The Rosemont neighborhood protested and the building was torn down. “Alexandria quietly is making plans for a model community-centered facility to replace its least integrated elementary school, Charles Houston,” The Washington Post reported in January 1968. “But present indications are that the new Jefferson-Houston Elementary School [K-5] will be as segregated as the old one.” “The new building is now on the drawing boards and expected to open in 1969,” The Post continued. It could provide an opportunity for the city to redraw attendance boundaries and promote integration, if it chooses…[but]…Alexandria school authorities have no plans to cross the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad tracts that have been the traditional boundary between the city’s Negro district and white, middle-class neighborhoods [like…