Vivian Carter Mason and Interracial Cooperation During the Massive Resistance Era in Virginia

Abstract

Vivian Carter Mason successfully utilized her social work skills during the Massive Resistance Era in Virginia. Through organizational strategies with black and white women, her leadership was indispensable, as a social worker who focused on human and civil rights. Her skills were not merely a substructure of the civil rights movement, rather her work provided a major dimension of women’s leadership through the creation of the Women’s Council for Interracial Cooperation. It engaged in community mobilization and made public education a priority for all children. This interracial model has implications for work and can be conducted today among women social workers.

Introduction

Women were indispensable in the fight against violence and oppression of segregation (Robnett, 1996). Numerous female social justice advocates strategized and organized against the segregationist system in America, which denied economic, political, and educational rights to African Americans. One such trailblazer was Vivian Carter Mason, a social worker, civil rights activist, and educator. Mason was a “real pioneer in the field of education and in the field of human rights” said Rev. John Foster, who succeeded her as vice chair on the Norfolk, Virginia School Board (Lake, 1982, p. C1). Through coalition building with other women during segregation, Mrs. Mason applied a human rights agenda to unveil the systemic educational and social inequities compromising the life chances and opportunities facing African American children. By forming a unique and singular interracial women’s organization, The Women’s Council for Interracial Cooperation (WCIC), on April 17, 1945, Mason sought to frame issues such as poverty, education, sanitation, and housing as human rights issues, galvanizing influential women, both black and white to join her cause. Mason served as the first president (1945–1947), as the WCIC networked within the Norfolk community to humanize city institutions behind the scenes to help Norfolk survive Massive Resistance. Massive Resistance was a policy adopted in 1957 by Virginia’s state government to block the desegregation of public schools, mandated by the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brown versus Board of Education Topeka, Kansas, that ended federally sanctioned racial segregation in the public schools, by ruling unanimously that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal, overturning the precedent of Plessy versus Ferguson of 1896 … providing the legal foundation of the civil rights movement of the 1960s (Birzer & Ellis, 2006, pp. 793–794). Virginia Senator Henry F. Byrd headed a strategy to thwart desegregation, encouraging economic and social systems to ignore the ruling and maintain segregated schools. As Klarman notes, “ … the Byrd machine had reason to drum up massive resistance to school desegregation, which could distract voters from debates over public services that were gradually weakening its [segregationist] political position” (2003, p. 5).

Massive Resistance prevailed in Virginia from 1956 to January 19, 1959, when “The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals … held that school closings and withholding of state funds to schools were in violation of the Virginia Constitution” (Holton, 1992, p. 19). The Norfolk Federal District Court furthermore ruled that the policy to curb integration: “violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution” (Holton, 1992, p. 19). To combat the statewide system and policy of Massive Resistance, coordinating networks to mobilize community constituencies were vital. Mason’s role during this time period is local legend (she has been referred to as the dean of black women in Tidewater; Mather, 1980, p. G1). Indeed, her contributions arguably are of equal importance to the nationally recognized male attorneys who successfully argued against Massive Resistance, such as Oliver Hill, Thurgood Marshall, and Victor Ashe. For example, she played a principal role in guiding the Norfolk 17, “the first cohort of Black student transfers to all-White schools, in an effort to end public school segregation” (Littlejohn & Ford, 2012, p. 2), to be successful during school integration. The purpose of this article is to add Mason’s name to the national roster of unsung woman heroes of the Modern Civil Rights Movement. While many organizations during the Civil Rights Movement were gendered (Robnett, 1996), Mason’s WCIC was not a mainstream Civil Rights organization. Nonetheless, its specific focus on responding to the Massive Resistance policy made a critical mobilizing component in Norfolk throughout this era. Unlike many women of the movement, by forming this all-women’s organization to address human rights issues of education, housing, employment, and health care services, Mason became a de facto civil rights leader.

Other African American female leaders were indispensable in the fight for human and civil rights, such as Mrs. Daisy Gatson Bates. Bates gained national notoriety as a leader with the 1957 Little Rock Nine in Arkansas, due to heavy television coverage of that event and is celebrated for her bravery and leadership that she was titled “Lady of Little Rock” and was the first woman and African American to lie in Arkansas’s state capital at her death (Reed, 2000). Women were indispensable in the fight against the violence and oppression of segregation (Robnett, 1996), as there are numerous female social justice advocates who strategized and organized against the segregationist system in America, which denied economic, political, and educational rights to African Americans. As other African American social work pioneers, Mason “struggled and strategized against social injustices; implementing programs for social change and group empowerment” (Carlton-LaNey, 2001, p. xiv). Mason’s human rights agenda aligns with the profession of social work’s articulation of human rights as improving the health and quality of life of groups marginalized and excluded from society, by forming the WCIC on April 17, 1945. Her life’s work as a social worker who prioritized a human rights agenda in this era lack a scholarly analysis. She was an important leader in the struggle against a major governmental directive designed to suppress the educational and economic opportunities, and societal inclusion, of people of African descent. Given the devolution of federal governmental funds in public education and community development, the contributions of the WCIC, during a violent and heinous period in America’s history, have replicative possibilities.

Theoretical Framework and Methodology

The historical research methodology utilized for this project was archival research, culling data from a mix of primary and secondary sources, including archival research aimed at uncovering previously reported materials. Research repositories at the Harrison B. Wilson Archives at Norfolk State University and the Special Collections and University Archive at Old Dominion University were consulted as well as the Norfolk Journal and Guide database within the Norfolk State University library system, and personal interviews with persons who knew Mrs. Mason were conducted. Mason’s work showed an intersection of race and gender. Theoretically, the study is grounded in womanism, a framework that equates conscious treatment to racial, female, and class issues because “women are not equal, and many White women because of their social status, race or class privilege have more resources and power in comparison to other women” (Watkins, 2007, p. 230). Alice Walker, the famed novelist of The Color Purple (1982), is credited with introducing the concept of womanism in her book, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens (1983) to the general public. Clenora Hudson-Weems advanced the term as Africana womanism in 1987, positing that “Africana womanism is a theoretical concept designed for all women of African descent … to create their own criteria for assessing their realities, both in thought and in action” (1993, p. 50). It is an ideological framework that equally posits race and gender as existential and reality-based concepts of being because these oppressive realities endure without conflict. Womanism as a framework has been applied to interpreting the practice behaviors of social reformers. An example of the application of this framework can be found in Perry and Davis-Maye’s (2007) analysis of the African American women who founded and were active with the Alabama Federation of Colored Women’s St. Meigs Reformatory.

Vivian Carter Mason was fully aware of her reality as an African American and as a woman and of the valuable contributions of black women. She said,

Black women are doers, long the matriarchs of their families, they are no strangers to hard work, whether it be cooking and cleaning in someone else’s home or more recently cracking the books in law school …. They follow Black men and White women as the new minority that is gaining power and recognition …. She is anxious for the day when the gold pens are pitched and Black women’s achievements will be considered commonplace. (Mather, 1980, p. G1)

Mason showed her concern for African Americans noting some human rights violations, “the schools were still decidedly inferior, there were no Black policemen, and the jobs … the only Black you’d see in a bank was a man with a broom in his hand” (Lake, 1982, p. C10). Thus, Mason’s work showed an intersection of race and gender.

Social reform womanist efforts have always existed outside of the economic as well as social mainstream.

White women raised money, of course, but they also lobbied aldermen and congressmen, attended White House conferences, and corresponded with Supreme Court justices; Black women had less access to such powerful men and spent proportionally more of their time organizing bake sales, rummage sales, and church dinners. (Gordon, 1991, p. 561)

Mason understood that creating change to address human rights violations caused by segregation and Massive Resistance meant that she would have to create an organization attuned to and committee to such change. She said,

If you are taught to resist, when you know what your human rights are being violated … when you’re taught from childhood that this is something that you must recognize and you must do something about, then you have to do it when it happens to you. (James, 1978, Transcription of Oral Interview, p. 20)

Repelling Massive Resistance in Virginia could not have been victorious if it wasn’t for the unheralded leadership, unequivocal and venerated of Mrs. Vivian Carter Mason.

Early Influences: A Life in Social Work

Born on February 10, 1900 in Wilkes-Barre, PA, to George Cook Carter and Florence William Carter, and reared in an integrated neighborhood in Auburn, NY. Mason was undoubtedly influenced by her family’s progressive experience. Meaning that although she experienced racial discrimination, her middle-class educated household exposed her to a host of black intellectuals including Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, Frederick Douglas, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, as well as to black newspapers and history. As she later noted, “the Black newspaper became a bedrock in the Black community … a bedrock for freedom, a bedrock for enunciation … a bedrock for hopes and dreams” (James, 1978, Transcription of Oral Interview, p. 35). She remembered her history book from the fourth grade, “There was nothing to describe the family life that existed and has existed for centuries in Africa nor the reverence and the situation where the family was a powerful force in the community … ” (James, 1978, Transcription of Oral Interview, p. 36).

Mason graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science and social work from the University of Chicago in 1921, where she was active with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), and was initiated into Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. (AKA), Beta Chapter, where she is twice elected president of the chapter. In the sorority’s organ, The Ivy Leaf, it is noted that Mason is

the only colored girl to have received a degree in the School of Commerce and Administration. She is now Girl’s Work Secretary with the YWCA (Young Women Christian Association), Baltimore, Maryland, where she has been instrumental in establishing the latest chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha. (Dickerson & McMiller, 1996, p. 18)

Mason was a lifelong active member of AKA, chartered Sigma Graduate Chapter (Epsilon Omega) in Baltimore, where her contributions are noted, “she fills her position with unusual success … she has, in the short time that she has been here, won the affection and respect of the girls and the admiration of the community at large by her vivacity and capability” (Dickerson & McMiller, 1996, p. 33). Mason was also active in New York’s Lambda Chapter, served as the third North Atlantic Regional Director, and later affiliated with Iota Omega in Norfolk, VA. In 1925, Mason married her classmate, Norfolk native William T. Mason in Brooklyn, NY, and had a son the following year.

As Girl’s Work Secretary of the YWCA in Baltimore, MD, she connected not only the women working in Phyllis Wheatley YWCAs (Phyllis Wheatley YWCAs were the “Colored” component) but with the national YWCA, which became a forum for communication between black and white women (Gordon, 1991). Additionally, her activism with the NACW and the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), founded by legendary educator Mary McLeod Bethune in 1935, provided her with another national organization to use her skills as a social worker. She founded the Interracial Committee of 100 Women in New York (Littlejohn & Ford, 2012, p. 39). To create this organization, Mason solicited white women who were civic minded, many of whom were married to prominent members of the business class. She noted in a 1978 interview that she had prepared for an executive position in social work (Silverman, 1978, p. 13) and applied for the highest position in New York. When turned down for that position, she was offered a position as interviewer (case worker) at New York’s Welfare office in 1939. In Silverman’s interview, Mason shared that she became director of social service in New York City by working her way up through the system. Mason became the first black director of New York’s Administrative Division, in the Department of Welfare from 1940 to 1942. After a horrible train accident, she recuperated in Norfolk in 1942, turning her efforts to the NCNW.

A 1944 letter to NCNW President Bethune illustrates Mason’s interest in outreach programs to black women in other nations, particularly in recording histories of black women around the world (Henry, 1981). This example of Africana womanism, which asserts an identity and action of race and gender equally, can be found in her letter:

There is a wealth of material that lies buried in hundreds of communities about the contribution of Negro women and the accurate, detailed story should be told by us and not left to the beneficent memories of others, many of whom have very deficient memories when it comes to us. I would like to see a grant sufficiently large so that a Negro woman could cover the major part of the U.S., have access to records of the government on a federal, state and local level and write a comprehensive, objective and factual record of the Negro woman, in this war …. Such a volume or volumes would be of infinite value to darker women in other lands aside from our own …. With all deepest affection, I am, As Always, Vivian C. Mason. (1944, in Henry, 1981, p. 259)

As a NCNW delegate to the Women’s International Women’s Democratic Federation (IWDF) Meeting in Paris, France in 1945, Mason addressed the well-being of black women who were victims of war and political oppression as well as the historical documentation of black women contributions during World War II. In Norfolk, Mason found that Norfolk’s segregated situation had not changed (William T. Mason, Jr., personal interview, January 20, 2012). She would not return to an executive position in the field of social work. Yet, as a social worker, she was compelled to respond to human dramas as a result of segregation, she would birth a dimension of women leadership during the Civil Rights Era that has been neglected in historical narratives. As a social worker, she used her leadership mantle to respond to “an array of life-threatening social ills, as clearly, racism and its attenuating grasp made life harsh and oppressive for African Americans” (Carlton-LaNey, 2001, p. xiii).

Mason’s leadership was informed by her experiences with an interracial organization, the Congress of American Women, and within the national network of black women, through the NACW, IWDF, AKA, and as third national president of the NCNW between 1953 and 1957, succeeding her friend and sorority sister, Norfolk native Dorothy Boulding Ferebee M.D. (Boulding would become the 10th International President of AKA; McNealey, 2006), she developed a portfolio of best practices for engaging women in coalition building against economic and political inequities. Her activism in these organizations informed her global perspective of the interrelatedness of human and civil rights. Importantly, Mason’s early employment with the YWCA in Baltimore, MD, gave her direct practice and administrative skills as a social worker with those who were denied health care, education, and economic sustainability due to racism. These cross-racial experiences undoubtedly informed her work with the WCIC in the 1940s and 1950s. Mason understood how to work within organizations and used this knowledge to create the WCIC from her national network of African American women and her working relationships with white women. “The Black Women’s Network was made more coherent by its member’s common experience as educators and builders of educational institutions, as education was the single most important area of activism for Black women” (Gordon, 1991, p. 565). As a proponent for equal educational opportunity, Mason was a national leader in this network.

Interracial Cooperation and Massive Resistance

There was no organization like the WCIC as it selected its slogan, “Children Today, Citizens Tomorrow” (Norfolk Journal and Guide, 1947, p. 20) in 1945. Coupled with progressive black women, WCIC was poised to do something different from the NAACP, AKA, NCNW, Masonic lodges, and other civil rights organizations. It would concentrate on a locality where they lived and worked. Although Mason continued to be an active member in the Iota Omega chapter of AKA, in Norfolk, and became the third national president of NCNW, she applied equal priority to building the WCIC as a local engine of social change. WCIC listed 86 women members during its first year. They met in the vestry room of Ohef Sholom Temple, in churches, and at the YWCA on Freemason Street. They adopted a constitution, maintained minutes and correspondence, produced annual reports, and published articles. They attended to health and political issues of the poor and school integration. Although minutes, reports, and newspaper articles featuring their work often used the husband’s names as identifiers, that is, Mrs. W. T. Mason (Vivian), Mrs. H. M. Silverman (Zelda), Mrs. J. A. Q. Webb (Wanser), Mrs. Sylvan Altschul (Ethel), Mrs. Louis Jaffee (Alice), and Mrs. Arnold Strauss, (Marjorie), save if they were unmarried, that is, Miss Hettie Frazier, Miss Sue Slaughter, and so on, this Southern tradition did not hinder their progressive social agenda and interaction with male power brokers. Mason reported, “We were concerned about our husband’s businesses … but you know, women are stubborn. They are more determined, I think, than men, if they have a cause to which they are dedicated” (James, 1978, Transcription of Oral Interview, 1978, p. 7).

In 1948, noting that affordable housing was Norfolk’s major need, Mason turned WCIC’s attention to housing issues. They assisted the housing authority by conducting a door-to-door survey. The women discovered that there were homes without running water and indoor plumbing. The Council found

two and three families living in a four room apartment, rooms and hallways where the ceilings had disappeared … bare boards would be on display through which the wind whistled in the winter and the rains came in the spring. (James, 1978, Transcription of Oral Interview, p. 10)

Members urged parents to vaccinate their toddlers, cooperated with other groups to obtain vocational training for black veterans, and were regularly on radio programs. In fact, the organization was able to have two extra vaccination stations set up, and birth certificates were distributed. They also worked with programs to start school on time, transported children to dental clinics, and reported about school facility conditions to the city. The Council organized itself into officers, committees which targeted issues of human life, from school to civil liberties, health and community education (Norfolk Journal and Guide, 1947, 10), members at large, and a statement of purpose. The organization met regularly with state influencers, such as J. Rupert Picott, head of the Virginia Teachers Association, William Shands Meachem, associate editor of The Virginian-Pilot, P. B. Young, Jr., editor of the Norfolk Journal and Guide, many white and black ministers of various denominations, and attorneys with the NAACP. WCIC boasted a membership of 263 in 1949, by 1958, “Mrs. Edith White estimated … that the Council had 360 members” (Littlejohn & Ford, 2012, p. 57).

WCIC connected with the community by sponsoring events with other partners, which helped to make WCIC a household word in Norfolk. For example, WCIC sponsored music programs which featured The I. Sherman Greene Chorale and the Norfolk Division of Virginia State College Choir under the direction of legendary Noah Ryder, educational film showings, luncheons, and panels as fundraisers. Another example is inviting Patrolman William W. Louis to a meeting. As one of the newly appointed Black police officers, Louis shared his experience (New Journal and Guide, 1946, 17). The Council also issued reports with their analyses of their city, noting in 1949 the advantages of having a black person on the School Board, of which they expressed to each city Councilman, as well as their hopes (conveyed to the city manager and the director of safety), that a biracial committee be appointed to deal with tensions between the races (Norfolk Journal and Guide, 1949, E6). In fact, Mason would run unsuccessfully for Norfolk City Council in 1952. The WCIC, members helped families with tuberculosis testing, transported children to dental clinics and opticians and worked for “Negro” sight-saving classes. They studied black elementary schools to learn what facilities were lacking and surveyed 500 Booker T. Washington High School (the only black high school in Norfolk) graduates and dropouts to get their input on how to improve that school. For 6 weeks, they also organized an integrated nursery for children of WCIC members (WCIC, 1959, Transcription of A Panel Report, pp. 2–3). Undoubtedly, these activities readied the Council for challenging Massive Resistance.

Mason work with the WCIC coincided with her reign as national president of the NCNW between 1953 and 1957. Her interest in quality of life issues of all women led her to internationalize the NCNW, whose members were involved with the International Council on Women and the United Nation’s Commission on the Status of Women. This experience allowed Mason to continue to apply her administrative social work skills through strengthening the internal structure of the NCNW, while simultaneously maintaining her pulse on national and international issues affecting people of color. Given her tenure as national president, Virginia’s statewide implementation of Massive Resistance, a policy that limited opportunities for an entire race of children, would elicit her justifiable ire. Her greatest contribution to systemic and social change would be the Council’s interventions against Massive Resistance, a confidently enforced statewide policy, and its push for school desegregation.

Public services was the main platform of the council, yet “The Women’s Council [is] among the many other moderate citizens who found themselves helpless in the face of public apathy here, [as] few concrete steps were taken in Norfolk to prepare for any change in our school pattern” (WCIC, 1959, Transcription of A Panel Report, p. 4). As a moderate organization, Mrs. Robert Thrasher explained,

We were under great pressure from news media to become public in our organization and purpose … If we were to add up all the hours, all the phone calls, all the shoe leather, all the gasoline we used to see prominent men in Norfolk trying to get them to join with us because we knew we needed them, it would be an amazing figure, I am sure. (WCIC, 1959, Transcription of A Panel Report, p. 5)

In a 1972 interview, Mason placed the Council in context—“while the Council was not an activist group in terms of political activity, it was an activist group in terms of ideas and the hope of changing people’s minds by letting them see and hear the truth” (Silverman, 1978, Transcription of Oral Interview, p. 2). The pressure to go public, to have their names published because there wasn’t any other organization that seemed moderate, was an intimidation tactic that did not deter them from combating Massive Resistance. Mason and others chaperoned children into the violent mobs outside of schools, educated, counseled, and comforted them apprised parents of their unsung heroes in their children, despite indubitable fears, organized lessons, and drilled students in nonviolent practices. These efforts are often lost to public memory. Mason reflected about the Council:

I’m sure of those women were grateful that they had the opportunity because it hurt them to see other people treated in such a disgraceful fashion. It hurt them, but you know, we can be hurt by a lot of things, but you don’t get out there and do anything about it, except under very rare circumstances. We had some people who had a fixation about justice … you see, it becomes a fixation and it is a blessed fixation because if you don’t try to teach these children the right to be human beings, seeds of destruction are planted. That is ….what we tried to do was exhausting … heart-breaking. (James, 1978, Transcription of Oral Interview, p. 22)

The implementation of Brown versus Board of Education, Topeka, KS, resulted in Governor Almond closing schools in certain districts. Almost 10,000 white children in Norfolk were not in school from September 29, 1958 to February 1, 1959, reopening on February 2. After federal and state courts invalidated school closures, Almond repudiated Massive Resistance in favor of local options and token integration. Yet discriminatory tactics continued to dissuade and aggravate processes for integration through subversion. For example, one tactic used by whites was discriminatory administrative discretion with regard to pupil enrollment (Klarman, 2003; Littlejohn & Ford, 2012), including denying residency requirements and failing black students on pupil academic placement tests and interviews. The Virginia State pupil placement board was all white and all male. The creation of private schools was also subversively used. As the NAACP lawyers advanced the lawsuits of the Norfolk 17, Mason reflects that “the Council opened a school, under the auspices of the NAACP, for those seventeen students. It would be held at First Baptist Church, [Bute Street] and we had teachers who were responsible for the learning process of these students” (Silverman, 1978, Transcription of Oral Interview, p. 8). Community leaders created a school at the church, consisting of an integrated teaching staff of six faculty members—Hortense R. Wells, Charles S. Corprew, Jr., Rudolfo Cejas, LuElla S. Howard, Elizabeth Jones, and Eleanor G. Jones—spread over 5 grades and 12 topics (Littlejohn & Ford, 2012, p. 96). Knowing that the Norfolk 17 had to perform excellently, in order to prove the success of school integration, the Council and others mobilized to prepare them. Using her administrative skills from her years as secretary for the YWCA, Mason became administrator of the school, as she instructed the following:

We said, quite openly and frankly, that they can’t go to school and be behind these other students. They must be not only equal, but they must surpass them in subject matter. They were told that if they have to give up such things as recreation and playing to study, they must to come out on top. (Silverman, 1978, p. 8)

The Norfolk public schools and the WCIC actively addressed racial equality, and their presence made a difference in the Norfolk movement:

The Norfolk Committee for Public Schools, the Women’s Council for Interracial Cooperation, and Tidewater Educational Foundation represent the bulk of the major citizen organizations that were heavily involved in the City of Norfolk’s desegregation struggle. Each of these groups issued declarations, resolutions, pamphlets, and heard meetings to voice their opposition to, or proposition for Massive Resistance. (Nichols, 2003, pp. 8–9)

Always educating themselves on the national movement, they solicited and studied documents, such as the Commission on Interracial problems and Relations to the Governor and General Assembly of Maryland, Dade County Schools and Desegregation, Desegregation in the Baltimore City Schools Congressional Record, and the CORE-Lator, the Congress of Racial Equality newsletter.

WCIC would merge with the Norfolk Council on Human Relations in 1961 and would no longer maintain its separateness as a female organization (Silverman, 1961). Yet, their activity and contributions to awareness of poverty and discrimination laid the groundwork for the development of local community-based organizations such as Southeastern Tidewater Opportunity Project of Hampton Roads to address the needs of the indigent programmatically. The WCIC represents an important chapter in women’s history that deserves more analysis and attention.

Conclusion

Vivian Carter Mason’s vital role prioritizing responses to human conditions continued, as in 1971, she would become the first black woman appointed to the Norfolk City School Board, ultimately serving as vice chair for 7 years. She would also create and serve as the first presiding officer of the National Women’s Political Caucus Council and establish the Norfolk branch of the National Urban League (later expanding as the Urban League of South Hampton Roads) in 1978. When she died in 1982, she was remembered as a history maker and game changer who believed in the collective power of black and white women to lead by example. Norfolk felt the presence of the WCIC, as a racially integrated female organization who added their voices, talents, and will to subvert Massive Resistance and eliminate poverty and educational inequality. The replicative possibilities in this young century are that womanist theory can be applied to ending recalcitrant challenges facing all women, particularly women of color today, such as pay equity, home ownership, educational opportunity, racial and gender profiling, domestic violence, and the development of community networks for childcare and eldercare necessities.