Want the Normal School Building

A Richmond councilman proposes that the Richmond High and Normal School, a black school, accept white students.

Councilman Woodburn on last Monday night offered a resolution which was adopted providing for the removal of the white children from the Leigh St. School, First and Leigh Sts. and the placing of this building at the disposal of the Richmond High and Normal School pupils and according the practical abandonment of the attractive building of the Richmond High and Normal School. What is to be done with the building vacated by the colored pupils, “deponent sayeth not.” Here is the resolution:

Whereas the Leigh St. School is not now desirably located for the maintenance at that point of a school for white children, but it’s suitable for the High and Normal School, maintained for colored pupils; therefore, be it resolved by the Common Council, the Board of Alderman concurring, that the Committee on Police Elections and Schools be, and they are hereby, directed in connection with the School Board, to inquire into the propriety and feasibility of providing for another location and building for Leigh St. School, in order to make practical the removal of the High and Normal School to the building now used for the Leigh St. School, and to report to either branch of the Council the result of their investigation with such recommendation as they deem advisable in the premises.

“Want the Normal School Building,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed September 14, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1302.