The following statement about desegregation was found in the W.T. Woodson papers held in the Virginia Room at the Fairfax County Public Library. It is signed "WTW" in pencil at the bottom. Woodson was Superintendent of Fairfax County Schools from 1929 to 1961.

Transcription:

7-6-59

The order to desegregate schools is highly improper and infringes on human rights. To force integration of schools is to force social mixing, since attendance at public schools is usually compulsory. Next to the home the public school brings people into closest social relationship. Association in hotels, restaurants, buses, trains, airplanes, and churches is less serious since relationship among people in these situations is not so close or intimate and people have a choice with whom they wish to associate, it not being required by law, as pupils in a classroom and in school activities.

To force desegregation in schools is most unfair. It takes advantage of the immaturity of children in that it tends to use it to force upon both parents and children social adjustments to which so many parents strongly object. What part should parents play in choosing their children's associates?

Desegregation, instead of helping Negro children, is proving and will continue, at least for sometime, to prove hurtful to both Negroes and whites because (1) widespread public support of the public school is being lost, (2) political support is becoming much more difficult, (3) financial support of those most able to pay is being lost with their opposition to being taxed for public schools.

Schools are basically social institutions requiring close relationships if the educative process is to function properly. In order to have a learning situation in a primary, elementary, or secondary school or classroom there must be an atmosphere of general acceptability by parents and pupils of other pupils and their parents. Failure to secure and maintain this atmosphere is most damaging to the results or outcomes the school should attain. Integration in the school and classroom will do much to undermine the good work of our schools.

In a school and classroom pupils must associate with one another. To force this association by law is contrary to the principles which our founding fathers sought when they came to America--the pilgrims in order that their children not be brought up under the religious and social conditions prevailing in England and Holland, and others of the founding fathers for other and similar reasons. We have come to think of these things as basic to the American way of life - to be free to choose our associates and those of our children.

It is my impression that people generally do not wish to be in social groups where their presence is not generally acceptable.

[handwritten W.T.W. at bottom.]