New historical marker honors the ‘Courageous Four’ teachers who integrated county schools

Zella Brown remembers the day 58 years ago when Herb Saunders, then Prince William County Schools personnel director, told her she’d soon be transferred from her job as a fourth-grade teacher at all-Black Antioch-McRae School, in Haymarket, to teach second grade at Loch Lomond Elementary in Manassas, one of the county’s all-white schools. 

She didn’t have much time to prepare.

“School had already started, so I wanted to know when all this would take place,” Brown said Saturday, recalling the day in 1964 when she received the news. “He said the next day.”

Brown said she initially felt numb and then nearly overcome with emotion.

“There was a barrage of emotions that exploded in me,” she said. “Because I didn’t think anybody would reach out to where I was – in the country – to be a part of school integration. So it was really a surprise. Quite a surprise.”

Brown, 86, is the sole living member of the group of teachers who would come to be known as “the Courageous Four” for their trailblazing role in integrating Prince William County schools. 

Under pressure from the federal government to desegregate public schools – and with an eye toward new federal funding the county would receive if they complied – Saunders began the process in 1964 by selecting four Black teachers to lead the way. 

Before any Black children were transferred to the county’s white schools, Saunders picked Black teachers to integrate all-white faculties. While Brown went to Loch Lomond Elementary, Fannie Fitzgerald, a fellow teacher at Antioch-McRae, transferred to Fred Lynn, which was then an all-white elementary and intermediate school in Woodbridge. Meanwhile, Mary Glaze Porter went from the all-Black Washington-Reid School to Dumfries Elementary, and Mary Elizabeth “Maxine” Coleman was sent from Jennie Dean School to Westgate Elementary in Manassas.

The county’s schools were officially integrated by September 1966 – 12 years after the Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional in the landmark 1954 case Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka.

On Saturday, Sept. 10, the “Courageous Four” teachers were honored with a new historical marker erected outside the Woodbridge-area elementary school named for one of them: Fannie Fitzgerald Elementary, which opened in 2008 along Benita Fitzgerald Drive in Dale City. The school was built on a road named for the late Fitzgerald’s daughter, Benita Fitzgerald Mosley, who won a gold medal in the 100-meter hurdles in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

More than 100 people, including several elected officials, attended the afternoon ceremony to unveil the marker. Prince William County Historical Commission Vice Chair Yolanda Green led the event, which featured brief remarks from Brown as well as School Board Member Lillie Jessie (Occoquan), who was one of the school division’s first African American administrators when she was hired in 1971.

Also speaking during the event were the daughters of the late Fitzgerald, who died in 2016, and the late Porter, who died in 1992.

Porter’s daughters, Gwen Porter Washington and Hazel Porter Sykes, read a poem about the Courageous Four. Washington called Saunders “an innovative person” who chose their mother and the other three women because he believed they would be successful. Saunders, the namesake of Saunders Middle School, died in 2007 at the age of 92.

“He knew these ladies personally,” Washington said. “He had dinner with them; he came to their homes; … he visited their classrooms. So when he was picking these teachers, he was not picking them just because they were Black. He was picking teachers he knew had the expertise to be able to teach in any situation.”

Mosely said her mom and her fellow trailblazers “quietly enacted change behind the scenes.”

“…Not calling a lot of attention to themselves – not at the time, at least – and not being lauded for their efforts, just quietly, doing the right thing,” Mosely said. “… [T]hat moment in time has created a movement of action, a movement of change.” 

Brown unveiled the marker at the end of the event. In an interview afterward, she said her experience as the first Black teacher at Loch Lomond Elementary went fairly well. 

“I was not confronted. There were not issues as far as racist concerns, none of that,” she said. “I met some very nice people. … But of course, I was nervous. Yes, I was, because I did not know what to expect. But it turned out to be a wonderful day and a successful day, and I will never forget it. I was truly blessed.”

Reach Jill Palermo at jpalermo@fauquier.com