Fairfax County Public Schools - History

History

The public school system in Fairfax County was created after the Civil War with the adoption by Virginia of a Reconstruction-era state constitution in 1870, which for the first time in Virginia guaranteed free public education. However, during the Jim Crow era, a racially-separate system was mandated by Virginia funding laws.

Fairfax County refused to let black students attend and bused them out of the county to Manassas. Despite the 1954 Supreme court ruling to end racial segregation Fairfax County Schools did not allow any black students into designated white schools until 1960.

The county school system was previously headquartered at 10700 Page Avenue in an unincorporated area of the county completely surrounded by the City of Fairfax.

Read more about this topic:  Fairfax County Public Schools

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)