Edwin Washington Project

Documents in this section show the progression of efforts to gain a new, fully-accredited and safe high school for the African American community, as well as to improve the conditions of one and two room school houses, gain equal transportation and measures of equality.  We also recommend well written histories on segregation by Loudoun-based geographer Eugene Scheel. (Scheel, Eugene Scheel Blog 2000)

The documents also show a direct involvement by the NAACP and civil rights attorney Charles Houston in many of the equal education issues faced by the African American community in Loudoun[1].   This was especially important because known as “the man who killed Jim Crow,” Mr. Houston (September 3, 1895 – April 22, 1950) was Dean of the Law School at Howard university and was a national leader in the destruction of Jim Crow laws.  He also trained Thurgood Marshall. "The Man Who Killed Jim Crow.”   Civil Rights was of course not only about equality between the races.  It was also about equality of the sexes.  There was also a debate about States’ rights in general which salted all arguments, and the debate about the role of religion in public schools.   

As for access to High School education, while we now have come to understand that a handful of African-American children received secondary education in the late 19^th Century, only unaccredited formal programs were available to African-Americans in very limited programs at the Union Street training center from 1930 to 1941.  Then, under great pressure from the African-American community, Douglass High School was built, the only accredited high school for that race.  It is therefore an irony to read an article in 1939 by L.A. Womeldorph, Principal of Lovettsville High Schools (Womeldorph 1939), who complained that too many pupils were not completing secondary schooling.  He additionally remarked that “due to the easy accessibility of high schools to all sections, no child in Loudoun should be denied the privilege and opportunity of securing a high school education.  This is his birthright and a great injustice is being done when he is deprived of that right.”  Of course, the Principal was referring to white students.  This broad access was never available to African Americans until 1968, when segregation came to an end.

The question of religious training took two fronts.  In the same periodical Womeldorph wrote in, Artley O. Hutton, Principal of Lincoln High School said that “Christian character is the pivot around which education swings to usefulness.” (A. O. Hutton 1939).  But what about citizens who were not Christians?  Did Hutton believe non-Christians were people of lower character?  That’s uncertain.  Could religion be instructed at all?  Eventually, this form of education was banned by the Supreme Court in public schools; but we know that work-arounds were attempted.  Ministers were also known to complain about the morality of games in schools.