Living Racial Integration in the South

Ken Whitlock was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, once the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War, and which maintained racial segregation until Mr. Whitlock’s adolescent years. In the early 1960’s when he was in 7th grade, he joined a small group of black children who integrated public schools in Richmond despite Virginia’s near decade-long campaign of “massive resistance” to the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision banning racial segregation in public schools.

Mr. Whitlock’s long-standing family legacy of educational achievement spurred him to high standards. He earned his undergraduate degree in American History and Civilization from Boston University and his M.A. in History at the University of Virginia. His master’s thesis on the impact of the Anglican Oxford Movement on the 19th century American Episcopal Church influenced his family’s conversion to the Catholic Church in 1995.

Mr. Whitlock taught in public high schools in Virginia and Massachusetts before spending the last 27 years teaching at the Middlesex School in Concord, where he was recently honored with an endowed chair. He and his wife, Montrose English teacher Mrs. Barbara Whitlock, have five daughters.