Exploring the Underrepresentation of Teachers of Color in the Williamsburg-James City County School

For the Williamsburg Documentary course in the American Studies department, I performed original research to aid The Village in their efforts to try to get the Williamsburg-James City County School system to hire more teachers of color. For this paper, I interviewed subjects connected to the school system, as well as looked at scholarly articles. (2018):

"With the successes of Marvel’s Black Panther, people are embracing the importance of

having a role model “who looks like [them] in mass media” (Smith 2018). However, I would like to argue that this role model does not have to be a vibranium-clad superhero but can also be a teacher in a classroom. Growing up in a biracial household, I personally often felt like classrooms only represented half of my heritage. My teachers would almost always be on the Caucasian side. Therefore, I had to look for Indian role models in other areas of my life, like in my mother, my grandparents, and Girl Scout troop leaders, but never in the classroom.

In 1954, the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, “outlawed

segregation in schools” (Library of Congress 2010). However, much like other segregated school systems, Williamsburg did not become integrated until around 1966 when the famously African American school, Bruton Heights, started integration in January of that year (Rowe 2000, 51). Although desegregation sparked concern on both sides of this racial issue, many government officials tried to frame it in a positive manner. Especially for African American teachers, integration was supposed to be seen as an opportunity. There was a large concern that African American teachers would lose their jobs when solely African American schools would be shut down. However, they were informed that faculty would be integrated as well, and the changing of times would “encourage school administrators toward maximum use of Negro teachers” (New South 1960). In reality, this ended up being an incredibly slow process with only two African American teachers starting in James Blair High School in 1968: two years after desegregation (The Bee Hive Yearbook 1968). The teaching staff did expand to accommodate these new students in 1966, but the number of teachers of color did not expand. One teacher who arrived at James Blair High School in 1968, Dr. Chestina Fallon, was a science teacher back at Bruton Heights School, but she was simply made the school librarian at Bruton Heights. Therefore, although teachers did eventually integrate, they did not necessarily keep their same exact roles."

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