West Point Parents Given Jail Sentences and Fines

    NAACP i \e DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL IND, INC. 
107 WeS@43rd Street 228 New YorNp N. Y. 

L 

Thurgood Marshall, Director and Counsel 

FOR RELEASE: February 13, 1953 

WEST POINT PARENTS GIVEN 
JAIL SENTENCES AND FINES February 13, 1953 

RICHMOND, Feb. 13.-- A 30-day jail sentence and a $50 fine was 

netted out last week by the Virginia Circuit Court of Appeals to the 

eight parents who refused to send their children 20 miles’ outside of 

the town of West Point to a jim-crow high school. 

The cases came before the Circuit Court as a result of appeals 

filed by the NAACP lawyers in behalf of the parents after the Trial 

Justice Court of West Point found guilty and convicted the parents of 

violating the "compulsory attendance laws" of Virginia. They were 

then fined $200 each. 

The briefs were filed with the Circuit Court of Appeals on January 

9 by the NAACP attorneys on behalf of the eight parents after they had 

been arrested and convicted of keeping their children, all under 16, 

out of school. 

The action on the part of the parents, which was called "the West 

Point strike," came about when the school board closed the Negro high 

school and ordered the parents to send the students to the Hamilton- 

Holmes High School, located some 20 miles away from the town of West 

Point and completely out of the school board's jurisdiction. 

Instead, the parents sent their children to the all-white West 

Point High School for enrollment. They were bluntly refused on the 

grounds that to accept them would be violating the segregation laws of 

the State of Virginia. Rather than send the students the distance to 

the Hamilton-Holmes High School, the parents kept them at home. Be- 

cause of this action, the State claimed the parents violated the 

Virginia compulsory attendance laws. 

In its briefs appealing the convictions, the NAACP stated that 

not only the attendance law was involved but also the state's serre- 

gation law, which was in violation of the 14th Amendment. 

Under cross examination at the hearing of the appeal in the 

Circuit Court, the lone witness for the school board, W.E. Garber, 

superintendent of schools, admitted that the West Point High School 

was superior to the Negro high school and had been for 26 years. The 

school superintendent also admitted that the school board was aware of 

the objection of the Negro parents to send their children 20 miles out 



oPrens eee iy 13 -2- NAACP Legel Defense and 
Educati 1 Fund, Inc. 

of town to another segregated school, The Town of West Point made no 

effort to provide an “equal but separate" school for Negro children, thi 

parents charged. 

NAACP lawyers, Spottswood W. Robinson, III, and Oliver W. Hill, 

stated in their argument that it was the state of Virginia which had 

violated the law, not the parents. 

The court, in handing down its rulings, suspended the fines and 

sentence of two of the parents because they had enrolled their children 

into segregated schools outside of West Point and the King Williams 

County. 

NAACP lawyers indicated that they will appeal the conviction to the 

ginia Supreme Court. 

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