Calvin C. Green, a civil rights activist in New Kent County, led the movement for school integration there. An educator, pastor, Korean War veteran, and later a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, he chartered the New Kent branch of the NAACP in 1960 and served as its president for 16 years. After the county school board denied his petition to desegregate schools, he worked with other county residents and his state NAACP to file a federal lawsuit in 1965 in the name of his youngest son, Charles C. Green. On 27 May 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Green v. New Kent Co. that localities must swiftly integrate public schools, leading to a decline in school segregation across the U.S.
