During a couple of hours I spent researching civil rights in Charlottesville in preparation for our April 3 cover story about the 1963 visit of Martin Luther King Jr., I came across a bunch of random tidbits that didn’t seem to fit in the timeline we ran with the story. But for local historians, I thought I’d toss them out here– and in keeping with the usage of the day, I’ve used the word “Negro” as it was used in news accounts during that time:

�€� December 1958 - Look magazine runs a multi-page feature showing angry (and then all-white) Lane High School students debating each other over the topic of integration.

�€� September 1958 - Robert E. Lee School, a segregationist white elementary institution, opens in a large house on the City’s southwest side. (On September 18, after 12 black students prevailed in their lawsuit to attend Lane and Venable Elementary, Governor Lindsay Almond orders the two schools shut. They wouldn’t reopen until January 1959.)

�€� February 1963 - John Dos Passos is the UVA Writer-in-Residence

�€� April 1963 - UVA law student Teddy Kennedy chairs the fund-raising effort for the St. Thomas Aquinas Center.

�€� May 27, 1963 - Kennedy presides over the ground-breaking for the new Center.

�€� May 1963 - Attorneys for 18 Negro children file a petition to stop construction of a Negro junior high school and to cease city-county use of the separate Negro Burley High School, which was opened in 1951 (which had replaced the Albemarle Training School on Hydraulic Road).

�€� June 1963 - James W. Jones is appointed first Negro in the Charlottesville Police Department.

�€� July 1963 - Rosetta Louise Whitlock is appointed first Negro policewoman in CPD.

�€� July 5, 1963 - By a 4-1 vote, the Albemarle Supervisors fire the school board but then reinstate two members who favored reconsideration of a ban on Albemarle High School athletics.

�€� September 3, 1963 - Albemarle schools integrated without incident

�€� November 1963 - The library of segregationist Rock Hill Academy is gutted in a fire set during a burglary.

�€� November 1963 - In the Scottsville Supervisors race, William H. Brown and Forrest E. Paulett are initially tied at 352 votes. To break the tie, a name is drawn from a hat, making Brown the winner. However, a recount shows that the actual winner is Paulett, by a single vote.

Finally, there was dateless mention of an incident in which a bullet was allegedly fired into the home of NAACP leader George Ferguson.

For further reading on Civil Rights in Charlottesville, I recommend Lisa Provence’s integration story and Civil Rights tour, both published in 2004.

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