A History Lesson in a Name

Integration Fight Echoes in Debate Over School

FRONT ROYAL, Va. -- Fifty years ago, 20 black students walked past a crowd of angry hecklers into Warren County High School and integrated it.

The event followed a bitter political struggle in which county schools closed rather than integrate, and a farmer and janitor named James W. Kilby filed a lawsuit that forced the high school to admit blacks, including his children, who were among the original 20.

Now one of those children, James M. Kilby, is waging his own battle: to get a school named after his father, who died in 2003. This month, when the Warren County School Board votes to name the middle school that will soon take over the old Warren County High School building, Kilby said he hopes his efforts will pay off.

"My father's mark is on that school," Kilby said of the 70-year-old structure. "He broke down the barrier so that all children could get an education."

This is not the first time Kilby has tried to get a school named after his father. He has been trying since 1995, and some residents have criticized him for bringing up a divisive and painful era they would rather forget.

Four years ago, when Kilby pushed to attach his father's name to one of two new high schools, some cautioned him and a reporter to "let sleeping dogs lie." At the time, the School Board had a rule against naming a school after someone who had been dead less than 10 years, disqualifying Kilby's father.

The board has since overturned that rule, and on June 25 it will vote on a new name for the refurbished building.

At a recent board meeting, about 15 people spoke in favor of naming it after Kilby, including Caity Morgan, 21, a graduate of Warren County High School who said she had never heard of her school's place in Virginia's integration history until she learned about it in college.

"I sat in classes where this all happened and I had no idea that the Kilbys even existed," she said, adding that when her professor at Shenandoah University asked her about the events in her home town, she was taken aback: "I was really ashamed that this . . . was swept under the rug in my home town and that this man wasn't honored for what he did."

Morgan said she is working with high school students to support naming the school after Kilby, adding that they are thinking of making T-shirts with his name on it to wear at tonight's School Board meeting.

At the same time, the daughter of the schools superintendent who oversaw integration, Quincy Damon Gasque, has proposed naming the school after him, a motion some Kilby supporters oppose. They say that Gasque also oversaw the closing of the schools under Virginia's "massive resistance" movement. Gasque supporters praise him as a longtime educator and administrator.

School Board member James S. Wells said that he could not tell which way the board was leaning and that many residents have expressed support for naming the building Warren County Middle School rather than after either of the men.

"Most of what I have heard from my constituents in my district is not to name it after anyone, that because of the hard feelings that often come with choosing one name over another name for whatever reason, it just leads to too much bad taste, and they would prefer something that will just go with the flow better," Wells said.

The elder Kilby did receive some recognition recently when the Front Royal Town Council voted unanimously to put his name on a segment of street that the black students walked from to reach the high school that day in 1959.

"I think the town's really come around on this," said council member Tom Sayre, who pushed for the designation. He said the council had also sent a letter to the School Board recommending that it name the school after Kilby, which he said should not be a point of controversy.

"Why is this stirring up trouble?" he asked. "Is there anybody who still believes massive resistance was the right thing to do? Is there anybody who doesn't think this was a courageous stand?"

Kilby said the renaming of the road had made him feel good, but he hoped it wouldn't dilute support for the larger issue of naming the school.

"I'm happy, the family's happy, but I hope that it won't take the School Board off the hook," he said.