P: Of his time, of his place.

[Mark Kohut]

It is 1958 in Virginia.

There is state legislation to
privatize all education---at a time when the word 'privatize'
was not even in use--so that Brown vs. Board of Education can be
worked around.

In July, the Governor has declared all public
schools will be closed come September so that the private schools
can take hold, take over. (in 1956 a state law had been passed allowing the
closing
of any public school which was going to admit black students).

But parents, both/all races, resisted more than they accepted.

In Norfolk, where more than 10,000 white youth found themselves shut out of
high school,
became the site of the most avid organizing by parents, students and
teachers..

"Here in Virginia's most cosmopolitan and racially moderate city...owing in
no small part
to the large US Navy presence, public school educators refused to cooperate
with
the privatization campaign. As an alternative, they provided tutoring to
4,000 students,
reaching less than half of the shut-out youth, but sixteen times more than
those who
enrolled in the segregation academy."
                                                   ----Nancy MacLean,
Democracy in Chains, 2017

"The Secret Integration" was published in *The Saturday Evening Post *in
1964.
The only story Thomas P himself still mostly respected by 1984.
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