This week marks the 70th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision – Brown vs. Board of Education. The 1954 case changed public education in America, declaring that separate was not equal and mandating desegregation.
In Leesburg, Virginia, once a stronghold of segregation, the fight for equality in schools began long before the high court handed down that decision.
From 1941 until 1968, Douglass High School served as the only high school for black students in Loudoun County, Virginia. Eighty-eight-year-old Jim Roberts, a Douglass High alumnus, remembers eating lunch in the gym, running down the court in many basketball games, and dancing at the Douglass High School prom.
“Oh, yes. Yeah. I mean, you didn’t want to miss school because you got to see friends and you made friends,” Roberts said.
And Roberts said he never missed a prom. “Nope. Never missed a prom. I went to prom all the years. I got to go to sophomore, junior, and senior years,” he said.
As a student in the 1950s, Jim didn’t see segregation as much of an issue.
“How can you miss something if you’ve never experienced it? That’s my take on it. It’s just the way it was. But the
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