Truckin' on the Western Branch

The Black Educational Experience As the 1960s unfolded, Churchland area schools and residents struggled with massive changes prompted by burgeoning residential development, court-ordered integration, and the 1968 annexation of Norfolk County by Portsmouth and the newly formed city of Chesapeake. Hezie Banks said that some 45 years ago his little son had to stand waiting in the weather for a bus to take him on the long ride from their home at Coleman’s Nursery to Southwestern Elementary School—while Churchland Elementary was less than a mile away. Banks talked to Principal Garfield Shafer, who enrolled the child the next day as the first black student at Churchland Elementary. After that, Banks said, a few other black children entered the school as well. Real estate developer Robert M. Stanton was part of the championship 1954–55 Churchland football team and remembered, We practiced until it got dark at about 6. We’d see a school bus drop off the black students who lived in Churchland but had to go to Crestwood. I always wondered why that had to happen—we could have used those guys on the team. But it left me trying to make a difference by welcoming minorities in everything I do. Nathaniel Howell, retired diplomat and former U.S. Ambassador to Kuwait, had a similar experience, he said. In ninth grade I went to Churchland High and graduated in 1957. Even though I lived in Simonsdale, we grew up thinking that Churchland was our high school. We rode half an hour or 45 minutes on a bus to get there. Each day we would pass a school bus full of black students going the other way to Crestwood High—and I remember

Jerry Gaines

thinking how silly is that?! Back then we could not go to school with the black children, but we could play with them after school. Now they all go to school together but don’t play together after school. When I was a kid on the community bus I once gave my seat to an old black man when no other seats were available. The crowd gave me lots of hard looks for doing that. Early black schools in the community were in Pughsville, Huntersville (northwest of Churchland), Belleville (on US 17 near Harbour View), Jordansville (in West Norfolk), and in the center of Churchland on what is now American Legion Road—formerly an unnamed dirt path. The Reverend Arceleous Elliot, a retired Episcopal priest, told the Churchland schools’ 200th anniversary committee that contributions from various philanthropists built the black schools in Norfolk County in the early 1900s but the funding did not cover bussing. When the black high school started in Churchland, all the students walked—a round-trip distance of five miles from Huntersville, six miles from Jordansville, and three miles from Twin Pines. Elliot grew up in Twin Pines and started school, along with his future wife, Ida, at the black Churchland School in 1927 when it was only a grammar school. Ten children from his neighborhood walked together to the school. In 1933 high school classes started there with two classrooms and an auditorium on one side of

Art Brandriff, longtime Western Branch principal. Image by Sheally

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