Lenoir Chambers

“ This is not a policy which Virginia can continue. It is so patently self-defeating that calmer judgment would find ways of getting rid of it even if it was not probable—as governmental leaders acknowledge—that the statutes for closing schools will be declared unconstitutional.
The punishment of innocent children is too severe. The desertion of a doctrine of education on which democracy itself rests runs too much against basic American convictions and beliefs, many of which originated or first found nobility of expression in Virginia. The damage in prestige is too grave. ”

“ The year that has run out has carried Virginia, and especially Norfolk, where the penalty exacted has been the heaviest, far down a defeatist road. We cannot continue this way. The state is bound by every obligation of governmental principle and human dignity and decency, and its own self-interest, to find a better policy than the one we live under. ”

“ Of course law is a hard problem in enforcement and requires the most serious consideration when it runs counter to the deep wishes of majorities of people in a broad region of the country—and of Virginia.
No one with knowledge of Southern life thinks there is anything easy about dealing with the situations that confront us all.
But the mark of Virginia's political shame is that in this confusion it found no better method than abandoning public education entirely rather than follow the courts' directions about admitting a few Negro children into all-white schools. ”