LAUSR

in school desegregation, and, in 1969, the NAACP also succeeded in federal court in ending state tuition grants. Busing, a key aspect of the NAACP’s approach in the early 1970s, foundered as an effective tool because of white opposition and increasing judicial restrictions. Nevertheless, Daugherity concludes that ‘the vast majority of Virginia’s student population attended integrated public schools by the mid-1970s’ (148). However, school integration of staff and students often came at the expense of closing less well equipped black schools or downgrading them to elementary schools and displacing many black teachers, administrators and principals ostensibly for being less qualified than whites. Although the Virginia NAACP sometimes challenged discrimination in the manner of school desegregation, its attention shifted to other areas of inequality, such as politics, housing and employment. Increasing judicial retreat from busing and continued white flight often brought the re-segregation of urban schools, but in rural areas and towns with little de facto residential segregation, public school districts ‘have been less affected by these changes’ (151). Daugherity contends that ‘integrated education is the norm for many of the state’s public school students’ (152) and has raised the educational attainment of minority students, while simultaneously improving understanding between students of different races. However, he fails to provide supporting evidence for these claims, leaving readers to search works cited in the footnotes for verification, and his analysis does not address the issue of private schools. Similarly, Daugherity asserts that most black Virginians supported the NAACP during the period of his interest, but he does not prove the point. Although earlier at pains to distinguish between desegregation and integration, he uses these terms interchangeably in an afterword that briefly discusses the period from 1970 and so muddies his analysis. One of the interesting features of the book is its brief occasional exploration of the relationship between local African Americans and the NAACP, particularly in the generation of school desegregation suits. Such references suggest the ways in which the NAACP worked with local people, rather than necessarily or always seeking to shape their actions. In so far as sources allow, it would have been interesting to have more examination of that angle. The book’s almost exclusive focus on school desegregation also leaves unclear the relative importance of other civil rights activities in the Virginia’s NAACP’s work. There is no examination of gender, although that has been an increasing focus in civil rights studies, and little discussion of Virginia NAACP chapters. With only 152 pages of text, space considerations may account for such omissions.