Maybe it’s not so surprising that Black students in Wise County schools out-perform their racial counterparts in Loudoun County (see previous post) when you consider that far Southwest Virginia was the first region of the Old Dominion to integrate — years before Civil Rights legislation was enacted. Frank Kilgore, a long-time coalfields booster, sent two photos as evidence. The first, above, shows the first integrated Little League team in the South — Norton, Va., 1951.
This 1939 photo shows the first documented integrated high school football team in the country, in Dante, Russell County.
— JAB1
