Neil Sullivan -- led efforts to integrate Berkeley schools, dead at 90

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

Neil V. Sullivan, an educator whose 1963 fight against racism in a Virginia school district and whose pioneering work to desegregate Berkeley's schools made history, died in his home state of New Hampshire on Saturday of heart failure. He was 90.

Five years after the U.S. Supreme Court banned racial segregation in 1954 in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case, officials in Prince Edward County, Virginia -- a rural tobacco farm county -- closed its public schools to avoid integration. Segregationists from all over the country donated money to open an all-white private school there, leaving nearly 2,000 black students without a way to get a free education.

At the time, Mr. Sullivan held a doctorate from Harvard University and had worked as a school superintendent from Maine to New York. He had distinguished himself by establishing non-graded schools -- assembling students according to their learning abilities rather than by their age.

So when President John F. Kennedy decided to address the problem in Prince Edward County, he sought out Mr. Sullivan. Together, with the help of U. S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, they started the Prince Edward County Free Schools in Farmville, Va. About 1,600 black students attended. In the meantime, the U.S. Justice Department went to the Supreme Court in an effort to force Prince Edward County to reopen its public schools.

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