Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 22, 1995                   TAG: 9510210008
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: G-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ADRIANNE BEE/STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FLOYD - JAN. 25, 1960.                                LENGTH: Long

`IT WAS A QUIET DAY IN FLOYD. . . . AND IT WAS THE END OF SOMETHING'

And if you're a black teen-ager in Floyd County, today you can walk through the doors of two formerly all-white high schools.

Yesterday, you woke up before daylight and rode the bus 45 miles to GChristiansburg Institute, the only high school for blacks in Southwest Virginia. There were no other options.

On that chilly 16-degree morning in January, 14 black students approached the doors opened to them for the first time. Some stepped off a blacks-only school bus at Floyd High School. Others climbed out of private cars at Check High School, where a separate bus had not been provided.

Daisy Penn, Raymond Taylor, Charles Akers, Danny Ray Ingram, Pandora Turner, the Helm brothers (Clark and Ed), James Walker, June McDaniel, Fred Pugh, Paul Taylor, Richard Claytor, Helen and Bonnie Marie Stuart and their parents had all fought in a courtroom since the fall of 1959 to go to school in their own communities.

In 1960 Virginia was in its fourth year of massive resistance, an attempt to block school integration by closing public schools if necessary. Sen. Harry F. Byrd, head of the state's formidable political machine, led the opposition.

As the black families slowly fought through the courts, J.H. Combs, superintendent of schools in Floyd in 1960, said, "It might be necessary to close the schools until some decisions could be made." The schools, however, remained open.

Across the state, Prince Edward County became the first community to abandon public education rather than allow blacks and whites to attend classes together.

In the mountainous rural county of Floyd, where only 4.6 percent of the 10,786 residents were black, school desegregation occurred with no reports of violence, according to newspaper headlines.

Looking back 35 years later, June Robertson, who helped integrate Check High School, sums up that difficult and tense time: "For the most part it went pretty smoothly."

Daisy Penn, who entered Floyd High that January, remembers that "everyone was watching us like we had committed a crime when we were just doing something that should have been done years ago."

A 1960 editorial in The Roanoke Times read: "This is not to say that the white people of Floyd favor integration in their schools. Rather, the manner in which they have accepted it reflects their preference of integration to closing their schools and denying education to their young people."

"I'd pick up a gun and fight to protect it," said one man stopped on a Floyd street by a reporter. "I know some boys who'll kill the Negroes up there."

Then there were people like the man who told his children who attended Floyd High, "If you don't act right" toward the Negroes, "I'll whale the lights out of you."

"Dear Editor" begins a letter to The Floyd Press that same January. "I was gratified to hear on TV that the citizens had accepted the inevitable 'without incident.' ... Negroes are subjected to the same taxes we are, the same military obligations and the same God created all of us."

Another letter: "Dear Sirs, It gives me great pain to read of mixing of the races in Floyd. ... My four great uncles who died wearing the Gray ... fought for state's rights, not slavery. ... No doubt they have turned over in their graves."

A former teacher at Floyd High interviewed this August was still reluctant to discuss those days. "There are things I'm not going to tell you because I don't want to stir up racial tension in this town."

She then said, "It went well. We never had any problems."

New rules accompanied integration. School authorities stopped sponsoring dances. Blacks were barred from athletics.

"We didn't have a prom or any extra-curricular activities" said Linda Thomson, a white alumna of Check High School's class of 1961.

Virginia Altizer, 82, a math teacher at Floyd High School that same year, remembers the senior overnight trip to Washington, D.C., was canceled because of "fear of the unexpected."

Penn admits "sometimes when I think back, to be honest with you, I get a little angry. I say to myself 'Why in the world did people feel and think this way?'"

Thirty-five years have passed since the day photographers snapped pictures, freezing the moment as the black students appeared quickly, walked with eyes fixed straight ahead and disappeared into the two Floyd County high schools.

"It was a quiet day in Floyd and it was the end of something" read one newspaper account.

Another:

"Once inside the doors were locked behind them. There was no way of telling what went on in the classrooms."

Thirty-five years later, here is the story of what happened behind those doors.