Timeline
1888 - Percy Casino Corbin was born on June 2, 1888, in Athens, Texas. He was the son of Edward Corbin and Priscilla Wright Corbin. He married Evelyn Carrie Linscom in 1914. He and his wife had five children: Evelyn Linscom Corbin, Percy Casino Corbin Jr., Alphonso Sullivan Corbin, Maurice Costello Corbin, and Mahatma N. Corbin.
1911 - Corbin earns his MD from the Leonard School of Medicine at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. He first attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., but transferred after one year.
1913 - Corbin moves to Pulaski, Virginia. He is the first and only Black doctor in the area. Due to his success, Corbin's medical practice broke the social limitations of segregation by treating white and black patients throughout the area.
1918 - In August the Spanish influenza outbreaks in Pulaski. Corbin, with four other doctors, fight the pandemic. Corbin, with four other doctors, fought the pandemic. Initially, Corbin only saw black patients, but the flu required all hands on deck, regardless of race. It is believed up to three hundred Pulaski residents died from the illness.
1936 - The first Calfee building was forty years old at this point. The building needed drastic improvements. While serving as the Calfee Training School improvement league’s president Corbin requests an accredited black school from the Pulaski County School Board. Getting accreditation would allow equal teacher training and instruction as the white schools.
1938 - Calfee Training School burned. He started by petitioning for a new building and equal pay for teachers from the county’s school board. He called on help from Calfee's principal, community members, and the NAACP. He wrote to the Southwest Times, which earned him the support of black and white Pulaski residents. Ultimately, the school board decided to build a new elementary school, but transport Black high school students thirty miles to Christiansburg Industrial Institute.
1947 - In December, NAACP attorneys, Oliver W. Hill, Martin A. Martin, and Spottswood Robinson, filed a lawsuit on behalf of Corbin's son, Mahatma, in the United States District Court in Roanoke, Virginia. They alleged that sending Pulaski students to CII, and without access to after-school activities, violated the "separate but equal" clause since Pulaski has three white high schools. Evidence included photographs, personal testimonies, and analysis of school conditions.
1949 - On May 2, 1949, Judge Alfred Dickinson Barksdale ruled in favor of the School Board of Pulaski County. This upheld the “separate but equal” ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson.
1949 - In November, NAACP lawyers appealed the previous decision in Baltimore's United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The appeals court rules in favor of Corbin. The judge ruled that there is discrimination in travel, curriculum, industrial art shops, science laboratories, gymnasiums, and summer courses. In the week following the decision, the Pulaski County School Board met and refused to provide high school facilities for blacks in Pulaski. The case did not proceed further.
1951 - In April, students in Prince Edward County went on strike, protesting for better school facilities. This progressed into Davis v. County School Board Prince Edward County. The 117 students and families involved in the lawsuit demanded the end of segregation. Similar to other cases at the time, the judge ruled in favor of the school board.
1952 - The NAACP consolidated several cases under the name “Brown v. Board of Education.” The cases included Oliver Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas, et al., Harry Briggs, Jr., et al. v. R.W. Elliott, et al., Dorothy E. Davis et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, et al., Spottswood Thomas Bolling et al. v. C. Melvin Sharpe et al., and Francis B. Gebhart et al. v. Ethel Louise Belton et al. Each appealed the decision made by the lower courts, upholding Plessy v. Ferguson.
1952 - While visiting two sons, Percy Casino Corbin dies in Detroit, Michigan. He is buried in Pinehurst Cemetery in Pulaski.
1955 - On May 31, Chief Justice Earl Warren read the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision on Brown v. Board of Education: school segregation is unconstitutional and states must make plans for integration.
1966 - More than a decade after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the Pulaski County school system integrated.