Bi-Racial Commission
- Created by city manager Bob Morrison in the early sixties to enhance racial harmony
- Composed of leaders from Lynchburg’s White and Black communities
- "I don't believe in agitation, I believe in arbitration," one African-American member of the Bi-Racial Commission is reputed to have said.
- Dr. R. Walter Johnson, Sr. (known as “Whirlwind” when a college football star), a member of the Bi-Racial Commission, was a prominent Lynchburg physician and Arthur Ashe’s and Althea Gibson’s tennis teacher.
Owen Cardwell, who, with Lynda Woodruff, desegregated E.C. Glass High School in 1962, tells this story of the Bi-Racial Commission:
"I never will forget, when we strategized in the basement of Diamond Hill [Baptist Church] to integrate S & W Cafeteria. White students were brought in from Philadelphia to act as look-outs for us. They went into S & W Cafeteria, we parked down the hill—S & W was out in Pittman Plaza [an early Lynchburg mall]—we parked down the hill, White kids came to the public telephone booth right out front of the S & W, called us, we ran up the hill, went into the cafeteria, and were seated before they could call the police or anything. And we sat at the table with the White kids that were plants, and Brenda [Hughes] even did something that was very symbolic. She ate watermelon off the plate with a kid. While we were sitting there, they had the police to come in. They made an announcement that they were closing the cafeteria.
“The next morning, Whirlwind Johnson who was on the Bi-Racial Commission at that time—the Bi-Racial Commission had been called in—and the next day, they made an announcement that they were integrating S & W Cafeteria. But we didn’t get any credit for what we had done the day before.” 1
Notes
1. Interview, January 15, 2002
