Early Growth and Challenges of a School Founded on Social Justice

Courage and Resilience of GDS’s First Countercultural Visionaries

Georgetown Day School was founded in a climate of serious opposition. But it was also a time of great change. In 1945, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on the governance of the District of Columbia was Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi, an outspoken proponent of racial segregation and white supremacy. He was also a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and author of a book called, “Take Your Choice, Segregation or Mongrelization.”

Extreme in his views, even in southern, segregated Washington, Bilbo was considered a controversial figure within the Senate. He opposed civil rights for Black Americans, fought anti-lynching legislation, opposed efforts toward racial equality, and even presented a bill to the Senate that proposed relocating African Americans to Liberia.

Most of Washington was deeply segregated at the time, much as the rest of the South, with widespread discrimination in housing and employment as well as in its schools. The city was also rapidly growing, crowded with an influx of federal workers due to World War II and from the Great Migration, and full of tension with the start of the Cold War. But also the climate regarding race relations was evolving. 

In this landscape Aggie O’Neil, Philleo Nash, and the seven families who founded GDS decided to create an integrated school in order to best educate their children, and to also instigate social change. They envisioned something better than the segregated, crowded, or elitist educational options available. Fully aware of the opposition they would face and a bit wary of the risk involved, they mustered courage to create the school.

“Chairman McMillan (D.-S.C.) and other Congressmen had a stake in their own district to keep segregation intact in the Nation’s Capital,” said Philleo of the time of their founding. “The fact that we were doing something that the other private schools did not dare and the public schools were not able to do was a threat to them.” 

But the founders managed to keep focus on the task at hand, educating children while shielding them as best as possible from the political and social chaos of the day. Maintaining this focus on education, as well as on the original mission, would prove to be what gave the school its longevity.

Red Scare in the 1950s

In April 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died, and Harry Truman became President. Philleo Nash had worked for Roosevelt, and then began working as an administrative assistant to President Truman.That same year, he also began serving as GDS’s first Board Chair. At the end of WWII, with the emerging Cold War, government officials began prioritizing national security. Americans grew fearful of "un-American" ideologies, seeing Communism as a threat to national security and traditional values. In this new climate of fear, attention inevitably turned towards our countercultural founders. 

While McCarthyism had no direct connection to GDS’s educational mission, and investigators at the time had targeted mainly government employees, unions, and activists rather than private schools, several members of GDS’s Board of Trustees fell under investigation as suspected Communist Party members. Though widely respected for his loyalty to both president and country, Philleo himself became a target of Senator McCarthy and the subject of an FBI investigation. Ultimately, the FBI records showed contradictions in their findings, with no substantiation of any subversive ties. Reflecting on this, Philleo remarked, “We all felt devoted to the school and endeavored to handle our personal difficulties to minimize the effect on the school. It was a conscious political decision.”

Farmville and Social Activism in the 1960s 

By the 1960s, Washington was a city in transition. Though it was more progressive than much of the South, racial segregation was still deeply embedded in housing, schools, employment, and social life. Many restaurants, movie theaters, and public spaces had just begun desegregating. As the nation’s capital, it was a central focal point of political power and social struggle. The city had a large and influential Black population, and became the center of civil rights activism, with sit-ins and protests. It was a time of extremes and fraught with contradictions. The inauguration of John F. Kennedy in January 1961 created a sense of cautious optimism and hope around the civil rights movement. At the same time, African American residents could not yet vote in presidential elections. (The 23rd Amendment was ratified later that year, and took effect in 1964.) 

Despite efforts to protect the school from negative political or social influence, GDS’s mission had been founded on social justice, and in this climate of extremes, the school’s focus on this deepened. 

In the very same year as Kennedy’s inauguration, GDS students and teachers took an excursion to the segregated South. Edythe Rich, the 9th grade teacher who organized the trip, said it began when one of the students brought up an article he’d read in the Washington Post about schools closing down in opposition to the Supreme Court’s landmark case Brown vs. the Board of Education (1954), which unanimously declared state-sponsored segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The ruling had resulted in a massive resistance, with some Virginia schools closing rather than be forced to integrate.

While many white students affected by school closures were able to continue their education in new, private academies, Black students had very limited options. Many had no access to formal schooling for several years, but some Black communities organized makeshift schools in church basements or community centers. When the student asked Edythe if what he’d read about the schools closing was true, Edythe replied that the only way to know for sure was to go there and see for themselves. “He looked at me in astonishment and I said of course I’ll have to get permission from Aggie [Founder and Head of School], and you’ll have to get permission from your parents, because to go into a potentially unfriendly place like that does take a good deal of courage. They all got quite excited about it and first we went down to the Supreme Court to see how the decision was reached,” said Edythe.

The students decided to visit Farmville, a town in Prince Edward County that was mentioned in the Court’s case, where schools had closed. There, they made friends with the Farmville students, and invited them back to their homes, where GDS families hosted them during a visit to GDS, and then to tour the city and visit the Supreme Court. Courageous as their children, these parents welcomed the Farmville students despite threats of violence made against them. Taking action in the hope for a better future proved infectious. 

“I somehow keep thinking that this week was a good, good dream and I’ll wake up and discover it didn’t happen at all,” said Helen Baker, one of the chaperones of the Black students from Farmville who visited GDS and Washington. 

In the late 1960s, Georgetown Day School once again demonstrated its dedication to progressive education and social justice. After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., GDS began one of its signature assemblies: MLK Justice. Held around the date of Dr. King’s birthday, this formal celebration became an integral part of GDS tradition. Focusing on the theme of justice, it remains one of the five major thematic assemblies at GDS and is tied deeply to the school’s mission. During the program, first grade students sing songs of protest and recite poetry in an effort to help fellow students understand the importance of Dr. King’s legacy and the ongoing struggle for civil rights.The assembly is powerful, beginning with the first graders invoking the peaceful march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 21, 1965, linked arm-in-arm. The assembly closes with a communal singing of “We Shall Overcome,” a gospel song associated heavily with the civil rights movement. 

Establishing a DEI Office

In 1999, a board-appointed Diversity Task Force established an Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at GDS to provide leadership on diversity initiatives. Among its many accomplishments are the formation and support of affinity and alliance groups that create spaces for students and adults to connect around shared identities; an Anti-Racism Action Plan; equity-focused training for faculty and staff; support for attending major diversity conferences such as the People of Color Conference (PoCC), White Privilege Conference (WPC), and the National Diversity Practitioners Institute (NDPI); and internal DEI training programs such as “Explorations: Myself and My Journey” and the National SEED Project on Inclusive Curriculum. GDS also hosts Social Justice Teach-In Days, where students participate in or lead workshops, seminars, and discussions focused on topics related to social justice. Since the establishment of the DEI Office and diversity initiatives, GDS has been recognized as a national leader in diversity education, receiving the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) Leading Edge Award for Equity and Justice.

While striving to maintain a curriculum and culture that is forever true to its mission, GDS is still a work in progress. “We are of the world. We have not arrived. We are simply on the journey. Our history calls us to engage these things with a growth mindset and an open heart, with a commitment to learning and getting better,” are words Head of School Russell Shaw shares in his welcome speech to new faculty at the beginning of the school year. 

From its founding to the present day, GDS has aspired to be a safe haven for the education of all its students. With a focus on mutual respect and inclusion, GDS strives to keep its educational pursuits as free as possible from the influence of the turbulent social and political currents in the world around it. Despite the pressing influence of a society marked by racism and widespread segregation in its early years, to today’s book bans and debates over DEI initiatives, the school’s aim has always been to preserve a space where commitment to education–and to each other–remains paramount.