Opening a School Named for the Organizer of the Library Sit-In of 1939

In 1999, Cathy David became the principal of a new elementary school in Alexandria, VA—a school that did not yet have a name and was still under construction. That year, the community held discussions about naming the school after a figure in Alexandria history. Among community members who remembered the library sit-in of 1939, one name rose to the top: the 26-year-old lawyer who organized that protest. The school board approved the name later that year, and Samuel W. Tucker Elementary School opened its doors in July 2000.

In this interview, we ask David how she learned the story of the Alexandria library sit-in and the role of Tucker—and how that knowledge infused her work in developing the staff, the students, and the mission of the school, which now enrolls more than 700 students, many of whom are from first-generation immigrant families. The conversation below, on video and as a transcript, is an excerpt of a longer interview and has been edited for clarity.

In 2000, you led the opening of this new school named after the organizer of the sit-in, Samuel W. Tucker. Take us back to that time.

Opening day at Tucker was September 5th, 2000. And it's important to note that this day was a culmination of more than 40 years of hard work and dedication on the part of so many people in this city, starting with the decision by the school board to open a new elementary school in the west end of the city. It was a monumental decision, given that it was the first new school to be built in Alexandria in more than 30 years. And so all eyes were going to be on this school. And long before I ever became involved, there was a multidisciplinary planning committee of citizens, parents, ACPS officials, and leaders that worked diligently to design a school that was going to be a state-of-the-art building worthy of the students, the parents, and the community that it was going to serve.

I assumed the position of principal (which was an incredible honor for me)—I was named in February of '99, and I assumed that position on July 1 of 1999. I spent a lot of time looking at materials we would need, looking at the students we were serving, looking at their achievement records, their needs, the parents, the community, all of those things, but nothing more important than looking at the staff that I was blessed to be able to hire. And so I knew these teachers and staff members were the ones that were going to really make the school work.

And I will never forget the absolute joy that I felt when my office staff and I were able to come in and set up shop in this school in July of 2000.

Two weeks later, the entire staff joined us. We had a week of team building and professional development and touring the school and getting ready. After the first meeting with faculty, we toured the school and it was nothing but “oohs” and “ahs” and “I can't believe this place is so beautiful and so wonderful.” Then we met in the multipurpose room, and my first item on the agenda was my opening remarks.

The staff immediately, instinctively, embraced their collective responsibility to carry on Mr. Tucker's legacy ... Samuel W. Tucker Elementary had to be the kind of school that Mr. Tucker would have envisioned and worked so hard to make happen.

And at this time, we had all the teachers and the staff, every cafeteria worker [and] custodians who were going to be a part of this school. And the topic of my remarks was “Heroes All Around Us.” And that's when I told the staff the story of Samuel W. Tucker and his life and the challenges he faced and the challenges he overcame and the work he did, his perseverance to make sure that all children had opportunities to get a quality education.

And you could have heard a pin drop, because nobody in that room had ever heard of Samuel W. Tucker before or knew what he stood for.

And so they immediately, instinctively, embraced their collective responsibility to carry on Mr. Tucker's legacy through the hard work that we were going to do with the students who were going to be fortunate to attend this school. And we were committed to the fact that Samuel W. Tucker Elementary had to be the kind of school that Mr. Tucker would have envisioned and worked so hard to make happen. So that was the first interaction with Tucker and tying his legacy to this school.

What did it feel like on opening day?

It was exhilarating. It was exciting. It was a little scary, and it was a lot of fun. We opened the school with about 540 students enrolled, most of whom had been, in the prior years in their education, bused across the city to attend Jefferson-Houston [another elementary school in the city]. So they were so excited to have a school in their neighborhood that they could call their neighborhood school. But there was a steady stream of new enrollees.

By Thanksgiving, I think we were at 575 students. It was built for 600 and we were almost at capacity by Thanksgiving. But what impressed us all the most was the incredible ethnic, socioeconomic, racial, spiritual diversity of the student population. It was amazing. And as I have said many times in my career, our diversity was our greatest strength and also our greatest challenge if we were going to meet the needs of all the students we served.

But a big poster, one of the first things we hung in the office, was a big poster of children of all skin tones and ethnicities with the words, “Everybody Belongs Here.” And that's what the teachers and the staff set out to make: a school where everybody was included and everybody belonged and everybody would achieve. So that sense of belonging and new beginnings permeated the atmosphere and the spirit of our teachers with that can-do attitude that we were going to make this a place where success was the only option for our students. So that's what I remember from opening day.

How did you yourself learn about Tucker, the sit-in, and Tucker’s work to desegregate schools?

The first time I ever even heard the name Samuel W. Tucker was on November 17th, 1999, when the school board voted to name the school after him. And somebody handed me a copy of the application, the nomination that was submitted by the Inner City Civic Association that the school be named for Mr. Tucker. And as soon as I read just that application, I knew that our school was named for a person that could be a real hero to our students and a legacy that we could try to continue on.

So that was the first time I ever heard his name. On November 18, I wrote a letter to the members of the Inner City Civic Association introducing myself as the first principal of Samuel W. Tucker Elementary School and thanking them for giving my students such a name, such a name of a wonderful individual, a hero nationally, and a hometown hero for Alexandria. I also made the commitment in that letter, and I have a copy of that letter, that every student who attended that school, I promised that they would all know about the life and the legacy of Samuel W. Tucker and the powerful examples of courage and perseverance and integrity and dedication that this man brings to this school.

Who else helped you learn about Samuel Tucker and the library sit-in?

I had the honor of knowing Ferdinand Day [the first African American school board member in Alexandria], and he would tell me more about Samuel W. Tucker.

He was just very similar to Tucker in his integrity and his perseverance and in building coalitions with other members of the school board and finally being successful in racially integrating the schools in Alexandria. And it's no coincidence that Samuel W. Tucker elementary School is located on Ferdinand Day Drive. He's another personal hero of mine.

So you can imagine my surprise, after never hearing about Samuel W. Tucker in school, anywhere, that I opened my Washington Post magazine on Sunday, I think it was June 11th [2000], where there was a major article written by a gentleman named S. J. Ackerman called “The Trials of S.W. Tucker,” and it was a feature article on Samuel W. Tucker that taught me even more than I had ever known about the man and enriched my education about him.

Never was I taught anything about this person who was such a major force in the city of Alexandria, in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It just wasn't taught.

But what struck a chord with me in reading this article is my own personal connection. Because the library sit-in was in August of 1939. My parents were married in August of 1939 and moved to Alexandria, VA, and lived in the Presidential Gardens apartments, which are now, I think, Presidential Greens, located in the Chirilagua neighborhood.

So they were here, at the same time this was happening in our hometown. I never heard anything from them about the Queen Street sit-in. I never heard anything from this about Mr. Tucker. I went to school, from first grade to 12th grade, in the Alexandria City public schools. I didn't go to kindergarten because they didn't have kindergarten back then, but first through 12th grade and never was there a lesson. Never was I taught anything about this person who was such a major force in the city of Alexandria, in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It just wasn't taught. And so I'm happy to report that Mr. Tucker's life is now a part of the ACPS elementary social studies curriculum.

The librarian here even wrote a book about Samuel W. Tucker for children,* and so he is now very much remembered. [School librarian Nancy Noyes Silcox wrote Samuel Wilbert Tucker: The Story of a Civil Rights Trailblazer and the 1939 Alexandria Library Sit-In, a book for middle-school students, published in 2014.]

What do you remember from the dedication ceremony? Who was there?

There was a dedication planning committee, because everything gets a planning committee. But again, this was community members and parents and school officials. And Ferdinand Day was a member of that planning and dedication committee, and so was Leroy Steele, who I think at that time…would be the president of the Inner City Civic Association. Every detail was covered. And of course, you had remarks by the mayor, who was Kerry Donley at the time, and by the chairman of the school board, Steve Kenealy, and by Superintendent Herb Berg.

Most impressive about that ceremony for me were the children's performances, because one of our students read a biography that he had researched about Samuel W. Tucker. Several students read short poems and essays that they had written about why Mr. Tucker was a hero to them. Songs like “Lift Every Voice and Sing” were performed as well as “I Am a Rainbow, We're All One Under the Sun.” I really believe that Mr. Tucker would have been very pleased with the ceremony.

The very end of the ceremony, we unveiled the portrait of Samuel Tucker, which now hangs in the lobby.

Tell us about the kinds of lessons that students are learning when they focus on Tucker.

I believe that young people need real heroes in their lives. And I think too often these days, young people confuse entertainers and celebrities and sports figures as heroes. Heroes are people that leave a legacy and are role models to emulate for their work to make the world a better place. I also believe that the students were given a true gift when Samuel W. Tucker became the namesake of this school.

Samuel W. Tucker was a man who endured countless acts of prejudice and injustice, but never gave in or gave up to it. He was—he never accepted the status quo. He instead used education and nonviolence to find peaceful ways to bring change to our world. He devoted his entire life, adult life, to ensuring equal rights for all people. And most importantly, he drew that first line in the sand, in the right of individuals to have access to good books found in public libraries that were open to all citizens.

Samuel Tucker never accepted the status quo. He instead used education and nonviolence to find peaceful ways to bring change to our world.

So of course, my students, our students, the school students had to know about Samuel W. Tucker. So teachers within the first three days of school [all knew] that the story of Tucker should be taught in an age-appropriate way to their students. And all over popped up students' portraits of Samuel W. Tucker that they did in art class or poems about Samuel W. Tucker. The whole school was displayed with information about Samuel W. Tucker, from kindergarten to fifth grade.

Every year, the first week of school, one of the first lessons was to remind or to teach new students (because we had quite a mobility rate) about the man for whom their school was named and how he relates. And, you know, our motto was “every school, every student in school has got to learn to read, because Mr. Tucker gave you access to those books.” So I can't think of a more important lesson to teach our students.