RICHMOND, Va. - Virginia lawmakers overwhelmingly approved $1 million Wednesday to fund scholarships for people who were denied an education when public schools shut down in the late 1950s to avoid racial integration.
Nearly 100 former students from Prince Edward County, where public schools closed for five years, stood in the gallery and burst into applause after the House approved the funding 94-4.
"I feel like crying. I'm so emotional, so happy," said 57-year-old Rita Moseley, who was sent 150 miles across the state to continue her education when schools in the county closed.
Gov. Mark R. Warner's office estimates that 250-to-350 former students, now middle-aged, could receive several thousand dollars each under the statewide scholarship program. The money could be used toward a high school diploma, a GED certificate, career or technical training, or an undergraduate degree from a Virginia college.
Legislators had initially provided $50,000 for the Brown v. Board of Education Scholarship Fund, but Warner amended the budget to increase the funding to $1 million.
Billionaire philanthropist John Kluge last month pledged $1 million of his own money if the state would match it.
A student protest in 1951 over conditions at Prince Edward County's segregated black high school led to a lawsuit that became one of five comprising the Brown v. Board of Education case. Prince Edward's schools closed longer than any other public school that refused to integrate, from 1959 to 1964. Public money was used to start a private all-white academy in the county, while blacks and some poor whites either left home to continue their education or did not attend school at all.
Some Republicans argued Wednesday that approving state funds for the program could open the door to paying reparations to blacks who suffered abuses under slavery.
But Republican Delegate Robert G. Marshall said there are differences between compensation and reparations.
"Individuals who are alive today were directly affected by an act of the people of Virginia," he said. "I think this is fair to the extent we can make things fair 50 years after the fact."
John Hurt, a 54-year-old truck driver, said he would use the money to learn how to read and write better. "You can't bring back what you took, but you can establish some kind of restitution for what we had to go through," he said.
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