COURAGE, DETERMINATION HELPED COMBAT BIGOTRY

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 14, 1993                   TAG: 9302120022
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-3   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY  
SOURCE: LURA ASTOR
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium
COURAGE, DETERMINATION HELPED COMBAT BIGOTRY
The integration struggles of the late 1950s and early '60s were tough times in places such as Prince Edward County, but Blacksburg had its own difficulties.
Ellison Smyth, as pastor of Blacksburg Presbyterian Church, helped lead people toward new attitudes here. He didn't have to help in Prince Edward, too, but he did.
Under the strategy of "massive resistance," officials closed public schools in Prince Edward County and Tidewater rather than desegregate them after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in 1954 against racially separate schools.
Blacksburg, dependent on education funding from a legislature dominated by the Byrd political machine, was fearful of repercussions if it embraced the changes mandated by the Supreme Court.
Ellison and Mary Linda Smyth were instrumental in forming the original Blacksburg Council on Human Relations in the late 1950s and joined in leading the way for blacks and whites to eat together in public places, meet together in places of worship and, finally, be educated in the same classrooms.
At one point, they patronized a Blacksburg diner that had hired a black waitress, bringing in business when many people were avoiding the eatery.
Woody Leach, Presbyterian campus minister at Virginia Tech, had been hired by Smyth out of seminary in 1958 and received an instant immersion in social change.
"Ellison had the knack of never forcing you to do or say something, yet you felt what was important," he said.
"It's hard to remember how intense feelings were back then," Leach recalled. "It's my point of view that Ellison could not have been able to do half of the things he accomplished then without the support of Mary Linda. She stiffened his spine sometimes."
When Blacksburg Presbyterian Church was opened to blacks, at least one community leader resigned from the church board.
The Smyths "received strong criticism from individuals in the congregation and community. . . . She's tough, in a good sense, and delightful. They are a beautiful team."
Leach recalls a great example of Smyth's strength and support in the summer of 1963, when Leach was organizing a summer school called "Operation Catch-up" in Prince Edward County churches for children whose public schools had been closed for four years.
The county's Presbyterian ministers and lay leaders invited Leach and Smyth to a meeting and asked Smyth, "Why don't you keep your boy up there out of our business?"
Smyth stood up to his fellow ministers and told them the summer school's purpose was to help all the people of Prince Edward County get a decent education.
"Those people were angry," Leach said. "His action was to me more courageous than anything I was doing.
"I couldn't have asked for a better defender.
"Ellison still takes credit that he brought Woody Leach to this community, which I take as a compliment," Leach said.
Smyth said, "It takes a whole lot of living to find out the score, and you keep on. If you quit going, you're gone, and if you lose your sense of humor, you're gone."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB