Fuqua School

After the United States Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that public education must be racially integrated, the Prince Edward County school board closed all of its schools, appropriating no funds whatsoever for public schooling in Prince Edward County for the fall of 1959.[3] Fuqua School was initially founded in 1959 as Prince Edward Academy in response to pending integration, part of a strategy known as massive resistance.[4] Classes began at Prince Edward Academy on September 14, 1959. Over the next few years essentially all of the white children in the district were attending the Academy.[3]

According to Lino Graglia, the rural nature of Prince Edward County meant that, unlike in Washington DC, white parents seeking segregated education were forced to build a private school instead of moving to the suburbs.[5]

The public school system in Prince Edward County remained closed between 1959 and 1964. The United States Supreme Court decision Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County with a vote of 9–0 outlawed the allocation of public funds through tuition grants to fund race-discriminating institutions. When public schools were reopened in 1964 and integrated, Prince Edward Academy stood as an option for families who did not want to participate in integration, thus continuing racial tension among citizens. Because Prince Edward Academy did not accept non-white students, it lost its tax-exempt status in 1978 and began to suffer financially.

In a 1982 interview with the Los Angeles Times, headmaster Robert Woods said that the school had an open admissions policy, but that no blacks had been admitted since they were less intelligent than whites. Woods added that the school did not "teach segregation or integration" because that was "for the parents to do".[6]

It was not until the late 1980s that it ended its policy of discrimination and admitted students of other races.[7] Its association with "old money" and discrimination in the past still causes some tension in the Farmville community, especially among non-whites and students of the local public schools.[7]

By the early 1990s, with aging technology, a very small alumni contribution base, and an increasing debt, Prince Edward Academy was nearing financial collapse. In 1992, former local resident and businessman J.B. Fuqua donated about $10 million to pay off debts and install necessary improvements to the school, such as air conditioning and computers. The school was transformed at that point with a new administration, a new mascot and school colors, in addition to the school's changed name.[2] J.B. Fuqua's support for and interest in the private school did not end with his initial contribution; until his death in 2006, Fuqua donated thousands of dollars to the school each year and regularly visited the school and its students.

In 2008, in order to improve its reputation in Farmville, Fuqua offered African-American high school football player Charles Williams a full scholarship to the school if he would agree to promote it in the town's black community.[8]

As of the 2015–16 school year, 15 of Fuqua's 344 students were black. Fuqua's administration and students have also been actively involved with recent community efforts to commemorate the 1951 R.R. Moton High School student walkout, a major event in the struggle to end public and private segregation in the U.S.[9]

The school is fully accredited by the Virginia Association of Independent Schools,[10] and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools,[11]

• Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (1952)

• Jill L. Ogline (2007). A Mission to a Mad County: Black Determination, White Resistance and Educational Crisis in Prince Edward County, Virginia. ProQuest. ISBN 978-0-549-17053-2. Retrieved September 16, 2012.
• Pace, Robert F. (1998). Two Hundred Years in the Heart of Virginia: Perspectives on Farmville’s History, 1998-1998

• Fuqua School