by Ray Ezell, Virginia Headwaters Council Historian
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Seventy-five years ago, the first award of the Eagle Scout rank in the Stonewall Jackson Area Council (now Virginia Headwaters Council) to a black Boy Scout occurred in the fall of 1947 to Lansing Beard of Lexington, Virginia. He was a member of Troop No. 15, which was led by Scoutmaster LeRoy “Mr. Tiny” Richardson. Eagle Scout Beard was born February 7, 1930 and, after high school, enlisted in the U.S. Army in April 1948. After serving for nearly 10 years, he was discharged from the U.S. Army on February 13, 1958. He died on February 27, 1985 at the age of 55 in Trenton City, New Jersey. Unfortunately a photograph of Eagle Scout Beard could not be located for this essay.
Lexington, Virginia has a long tradition of Boy Scouting-both white and black. The first troop of white scouts was formed within a few years after the initial incorporation of the Scouting movement in 1910. As early as 1935 there was a call for Scouting to be implemented in Lexington’s black community; however the initiative did not receive the local support sufficient to bring it to fruition at that time. A May 22, 1935 letter from John W. Fix, Executive of the Stonewall Jackson Area Council, to Herman H. Bozeman, a teacher at Lexington’s Lylburn Downing negro school (and future U.S. Army veteran of World War II), abruptly stated that the Lexington District committee rejected the idea of starting a Boy Scout troop exclusively for Lexington’s black youth. No further information could be found as to why this proposal was rejected by the local Scouting leadership. Finally several years later in 1941, Lexington black Troop No. 15 was established with “Mr. Tiny” Richardson as its Scoutmaster and was chartered by Lexington’s black Methodist and First Baptist churches. The troop met at the Lylburn Downing school on Diamond Street. Richardson continued as the scoutmaster of the troop for many years and influenced hundreds of young men and boys during his long tenure.
Lansing Beard lived at 414 Maury Street in Lexington and joined Troop No. 15 in 1942 at the age of 12. Upon joining the unit, he was assigned to the Rattlesnake Patrol. By spring 1944, he was a First Class scout and was appointed the Rattlesnake patrol leader. In 1945 as one of the troop’s most senior scouts, Beard was appointed the troop’s junior assistant scoutmaster (at age 15) and had attained the Star rank. He obviously had the trust of the troop’s adult leaders, and he thrived in Boy Scouting. By age 17, Beard had completed the requirements for the Eagle Scout rank and was recognized in an advancement ceremony during the 1947 segregated, negro week at Camp Shenandoah. The Camp’s first segregated week began two years earlier in early August 1945, after the traditional six week program for white troops concluded. The first camp for black scouts was directed in 1945 by Scoutmaster Richardson, assisted by Scoutmaster John Slade of Waynesboro. Although segregated, seven white staff were retained at camp in 1945 to ensure a full program for the black scouts. Thirty-one black scouts from a handful of black troops from across the council attended the segregated camp that year.
An article in the August 5, 1947 edition of Staunton’s, The News Leader recognized the milestone achievement that Lansing Beard was the first black Eagle Scout in the Stonewall Jackson Area Council (although SJAC/VAHC records record his official Eagle date as 8/8/1947). Scoutmaster Richardson was again the director for the segregated camp that year, and he was assisted by Scoutmasters Wallace Brown and Phillip Heiter (both of Clifton Forge), and George Spurlock (of Covington). Brown was a veteran of WWII (enlisted in Feb. 1943). A total of 56 black scouts from black troops in Charlottesville, Lexington, Staunton, Covington, Clifton Forge, and Waynesboro attended the 1947 camp along with Lansing Beard.
According to the October 27, 1947 edition of The News Leader, Lansing Beard was a five year member of Lexington Troop No. 15 and served as the troop’s junior assistant scoutmaster for more than two years. He was also a student at the Lylburn Downing High School for black students. He was presented the Eagle Scout rank at a court of honor at Lexington’s black Methodist Church on October 26, 1947 by United States Senator A. Willis Robertson. It is interesting that Sen. Robertson was selected to present the badge to Eagle Scout Beard because several years later in 1956, Robertson was one of the 19 senators who signed the Southern Manifesto against the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), which mandated schools’ desegregation. The next year, Beard would go on to leave the town he grew up in, and he enlisted in the U.S. Army in April 1948.
Upon the conveyance of the Eagle Scout rank, Beard joined a small, select fraternity of black Boy Scouts that had earned Scouting’s highest rank before him. It is unknown how many black scouts earned their Eagle before Beard in Virginia (surely it was only a small number), but the first known black Eagle Scout in the Commonwealth of Virginia was James Edward Jackson, Jr. (Richmond Troop No. 75). He became an Eagle Scout in 1931 at the age of 16. However he has been incorrectly attributed as the first black Eagle Scout in the South in several contemporary articles and essays. Harry Cooper of Troop No. 92 in Kansas City, Missouri, was until recently believed to be the first black Eagle Scout in the history of the Boy Scouts of America. According to the 1921 Scout Annual published by the Kansas City (Mo.) Council, he earned Scouting’s highest rank in September 1920 (with at least 45 merit badges). However, according to recent scholarship and an essay appearing on the Bryan on Scouting blog, the first known black Eagle Scout in the BSA is actually Hamilton Bradley of Rome, New York. According to the Rome Daily Sentinel, Bradley’s Eagle Scout court of honor was held on Dec. 19, 1919 (several months before Cooper’s Eagle Scout award), at the Rome Free Academy. After turning 18, Eagle Scout Bradley was then appointed assistant scoutmaster of Troop No. 2 in Rome. The first two known Eagle Scouts south of the Mason-Dixon Line were from the Louisville (Ky) Council. Samuel Jordan and Carl Robinson earned this distinction in the Fall of 1921 and became Louisville’s first black Eagle Scouts. I am confident that continued careful research in this area will continue to yield a number of previously unknown “firsts” regarding black Boy Scouts that will rewrite the history of Scouting for this community.
The attainment of the rank of Eagle Scout is something to be celebrated and cherished, not only by the recipients (white and black), but by their communities. This distinction is especially worthy among Virginia’s black community and should be applauded by the generations that follow.
