by Grace Kostrzebski
March 27, 2025
African Americans fought and died for their country during both world wars – yet, at home they had fewer legal rights than white Americans. In southern states, including Virginia, segregation divided all schools into two systems – one for white students and one for Black students. In theory, the schools had equal resources and opportunities. In policy and practice, however, schools for Black students received notably less funding – leaving these students with fewer resources and opportunities than white students could access.
This discrepancy in funding also extended to the teachers’ pay. In Virginia, Black teachers received just two-thirds of the average white teachers’ salaries. This discrepancy was no secret; it was a common problem African American educators faced across the country. Aline Elizabeth Black, an African American science teacher in Norfolk, Virginia, saw this problem and endeavored to fix it. Aline Black attended Booker T. Washington High School, a segregated school, graduated from Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute (now Virginia State University), and earned a Master of Science degree from University of Pennsylvania. Aline Black began teaching in Norfolk while attending college, and became a full time teacher after completing her master’s degree.
In 1938, Aline Black petitioned the Norfolk School Board to base their pay-scale for teachers upon years of experience and their qualifications rather than race. The school board rejected this petition. In 1939, Aline Black filed a lawsuit against the school board with the help of the NAACP. Aline Black was the first educator to file a salary discrimination lawsuit in Virginia. Her case was dismissed, but her lawyers appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. The Norfolk School Board retaliated against Aline Black. Her contract to teach in the city was not renewed the following year, and her case was dismissed by the court as she no longer worked under the school board. The African American press strongly supported her efforts, as indicated by the headline in the Norfolk Journal and Guide following her dismissal (July 22, 1939).
While Aline Black’s case did not establish legal equality for Black and white Americans, her case paved the way for future cases that attempted to remedy the issue of unequal pay across races. Integration did not come all at once. Rather, seemingly small, unknown cases like that of Aline Black’s set precedents for what was to come with the Civil Rights movement that began in the 1940s and continued in the decades that followed. Stories of the fight for civil rights exist across Virginia. Aline Black attended Booker T. Washington High School, where a historical marker confirms the school’s significance as a place of secondary education for an underserved population. Two historical markers about segregation and desegregation along Route 76 are connected to podcast episodes. In Fluvanna county, a historical marker for the S. C. Abrams High School recognizes the county’s only secondary school for Black students from the 1930s through the 1960s. The Fluvanna podcast episode (11) examines the history of segregated schools and the resistance integration faced in Virginia, using Abrams High School as an intimate example of how larger themes were reflected in local communities. In Montgomery county, just one block from Route 76, a historical marker for the Christiansburg Industrial Institute celebrates the establishment of this school after the Civil War and its transition into a training school that followed the Tuskegee model. The Christiansburg podcast episode (21) explores how Black communities supported themselves with the creation of schools meant to “uplift” their students into better economic positions under harsh segregation laws that guaranteed Black Americans less academic opportunities. Aline Black’s story, and these episodes, confirm that meaningful change takes an organized effort of people willing to challenge and then transform the status quo.
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