![\"stan](\"http:\/\/media.education.uconn.edu\/aurora\/neag\/2013\/10\/Shawstudents-63_.jpg\")
<\/a>Given the success of the tutorial program, he and his fellow Queens College students decided to bring their efforts to the South, where \u201cblack communities were in segregated and unequal school facilities, faced constant economic threats and daily humiliation,\u201d recalled Shaw.<\/p>\n
In the summer of 1963, Shaw and 16 other Queens College students, all white except for a single black student, embarked on a trip to Prince Edward County in Virginia, where all its public schools were closed for nearly four years with 1,700 black children kept out of the \u201cprivate academies\u201d created for white students.<\/p>\n
The student tutors immediately felt the hostile climate from the white community, with their cars being followed in town and evening get-togethers surrounded by unfriendly locals. \u201cWe were told there wouldn\u2019t be a problem as long as we stick to the teaching and stay away from the marches,\u201d said Shaw.<\/p>\n
It turned out to be an unexpected challenge for Shaw and his peers, many of whom were new to teaching. It was especially difficult teaching kids in the same classroom who had missed different years of education. Yet, the group managed to attract more than 500 kids \u00a0\u2014 across five churches \u2014 to the classrooms in churches throughout the county while club-carrying policemen were arresting demonstrators in the streets.<\/p>\n
\u201cI realized teaching punctuation and algebra is so much less important than giving these kids an idea of the need for education, also an enjoyment of learning,\u201d Shaw wrote in his diaries recording the summer in Prince Edward County.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I could bring them to work better with groups of peers, to think and feel the problems and events facing their world, I would have done my job,\u201d he reflected.<\/p>\n
These goals were appropriate given that their last task in Prince Edward was to clean up and prepare the long abandoned classrooms to open as integrated public schools the following week.<\/p>\n
Shaw\u2019s six-week journey culminated in Washington D.C. where the Queens College tutors marched with a sea of people of all skin colors and listened to the \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. \u201cAs we headed home, our vision of the world and plans for the rest of our lives had been forever altered,\u201d recalled Shaw. \u201cWe learned that life was far more complicated than we had imagined, that we could make difficult choices and commitments, and live with the consequences of our decisions. We learned that we could confront danger and survive, but most importantly we could make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
In October 2009, 46 years after the Queens College Student-<\/p>\n
Help Project, Shaw and other tutors returned to Prince Edward County to be honored by the Moton Museum, the once closed segregated R.R. Moton High School, and reunited with the black students they had guided through that deeply difficult time. \u201cI thought I was only doing my small share, but I came to understand how much of an impact we had. We made a difference in their lives,\u201d said Shaw.<\/p>\n
Continuing his advocacy on civil rights and equality, Shaw has changed his battlefront to special education during his more than 40 years\u2019 academic career at UConn, focusing on education for students with disabilities especially law and policy providing equal access for students with disabilities. Shaw remains as a senior research scholar at the Center on Postsecondary Education and Disability.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am proud of the efforts of white and black Americans who have successfully fought for change, but there is still much to be done,\u201d said Shaw, looking back on the tremendous strides the country has made over the past 40 years since the summer of 1963.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would urge this generation of young people to pick up the mantle of social justice to continue the battle for equality for all including people of color, the LGBT community, immigrants and individuals with disabilities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The upbeat chant of \u201cWe shall overcome\u201d on August 28,1963 still echoes in Neag Professor Emeritus Stan Shaw\u2019s ears. The anthem led him through a sea of people at the Washington Monument where he joined his students from Prince Edward County, VA for the \u201cbest school field trip ever.\u201d That day became the peak of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":205053,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1855],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2455],"class_list":["post-205052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-neag"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 07:24:43","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205052"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":205056,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205052\/revisions\/205056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/205053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205052"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=205052"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=205052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}