January 8, 2015
Ferdinand Day, the first African American School Board chair in the state of Virginia, died on Jan. 2 at the age of 96.
Stories this photo appears in:
Alexandria Civil Rights Pioneer Ferdinand Day Dies
The force behind the philosophy of “Every Student Counts.”
When Ferdinand Day was born in 1918, Virginia had just passed its first compulsory school attendance law for children ages 8-12. But with legalized segregation, funding for the education of African American students was sorely limited, with only four black public high schools in the entire state. It would take decades before one existed in Alexandria.
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