Bernice Victoria “Sandy” Byrd Couch — one of the 12 Black students who desegregated Claymont High School in 1952 — passed away on November 13, 2025, at age 84.
At just 11 years old, she took her place among the Claymont 12, who on September 4, 1952, entered Claymont High School — making it the first public high school in the 17 legally segregated states to integrate, two years before Brown v. Board of Education.
Their enrollment followed the Delaware case Gebhart v. Belton, the only one of the Brown companion cases in which state courts ordered immediate desegregation…