attend Venable Elementary School. The students became known as "The Charlottesville Twelve." The decree was received in Charlottesville on August 7, 1956. City Attorney John S. Battle indicated their intent to appeal the decree. Arlington loses its school board While campaigning in Arlington before his election, Almond had said that he favored a more flexible approach to school desegregation than Byrd's massive resistance. In 1946, when the nearby District of Columbia schools started charging fees for black children from Arlington, the suburban city/county combination with a burgeoning population of federal civil servants had petitioned a special session of Virginia's General Assembly for the right to hold a referendum to become the only Virginia community with an elected school board. In October 1948, the Virginia Supreme Court upheld that new board against a challenge raised by the old appointed board. However, even the new board's policy of building and improving schools proved inadequate given the county's financial limitations; black students were still sent to segregated and inferior schools, including Hoffman-Boston School for the small number of black middle and high school students. A federal lawsuit was initially dismissed by U.S. District Judge Albert V. Bryan, but in June 1950 the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit had ordered the county to provide equal facilities for blacks, and equal pay for black teachers. Arlington's Catholic schools integrated almost immediately after Brown v. Board of Education, with no disorder or public outcry. However, when Arlington's elected school board announced in January 1956 that it planned to begin integration in selected schools, shortly before the General Assembly met, it soon found that the state would not allow localities to determine their own positions on racial matters. The legislature dismantled Arlington's elected public school board, instead allowing the conservative Arlington County Board to appoint school board members. This—with other aspects of massive resistance—delayed Arlington's public school integration for years. County voters (95% white) had voted in early 1956 against the Gray Commission's proposals, although that referendum passed statewide. However, the American Nazi Party at that time maintained its headquarters in Arlington, and it, with the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties (a segregationist group), disrupted school board meetings and distributed tracts against integration. Arlington's new appointed school board delayed integration, so the NAACP filed another lawsuit in May 1956 demanding desegregation, similar to lawsuits filed in three other Virginia counties. Arlingtonians