Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School
The Economics of the Civil Rights Movement
Important African-American Institutions
Lynchburg Civil Rights Organizations
Lynchburg's Newspapers in the Sixties
Martin Luther King, Jr.: Connections to Lynchburg
Prince Edward County: Connections to Lynchburg
Pupil Placement Board in Lynchburg
Edward Christian Glass, brother of Carter Glass, was Lynchburg’s second superintendent of schools (1879) and the author of a widely used 1899 spelling book. E.C. Glass often said: “A word misspelled is another word or no word and is unacceptable.”
What was Glass’s favorite word to determine students’ spelling ability? “Separate”! 1
Particularly galling to many in Lynchburg’s African-American community was the creation of E.C. Glass High School. Although the Lynchburg School Board had equalized the salaries of its White and Black teachers in 1946, conditions at Dunbar High School were appalling. Yet in 1949, when Dunbar High School lacked the most basic of facilities, Lynchburg's School Board voted to build a brand-new, multi-million-dollar high school for its White high school students; the sprawling, yellow-brick high school was completed in 1953. Named for the former superintendent of schools and separate stickler, for many in the African-American Community, the sleek and modern E.C. Glass High School was yet another slap in the face.
H.A.M. Johns, president of Dunbar’s PTA, in a 1949 letter to Thomas Kirkpatrick, chairman of the Lynchburg School Board, spoke to his community's feelings towards the creation of this new, expensive, White-students-only high school:
". . . [T]he Negro citizens of Lynchburg want equal treatment in our public schools. We have tried to cooperate in every way with the local School Board and in many instances have paid out of our pockets for needed facilities and improvements, which our children did not have because the board would not furnish them.
. . . Why did the board pass over such important needs as a cafeteria, science laboratories, libraries, classrooms, gymnasiums, and so forth and put all the improvements in the Industrial Department of [Dunbar]? You did it because you wanted to keep Blacks strapped to vocational professions instead of allowing them the freedom to try to pursue academic careers. You did this to children who have been using a stall in the school yard for a cafeteria for twenty-six years. [Emphasis added.]
. . . The landscaping of the grounds at the new White high school is estimated to cost three million dollars which is more than the combined value of all the Colored schools in Lynchburg put together." [Emphasis added.] 2