What Happened in
Prince Edward County?
*The following information is taken from
the Moton Museum brochure publication and was reproduced with
permission.
Prince Edward County may be most widely known for having closed its
public schools for five years (1959-1964) rather than desegregate them.
1951: The Student Strike
Arguably the most important date in Prince Edward history
is April 23, 1951. On that Monday morning Barbara Johns, a sixteen-year-old
student, led the 450 students at all-black Robert R. Moton High School
out of their classes in a two-week protest against the deplorable building
conditions at the school. Other student leaders including Irene
Taylor, President of the Student Council, supported Barbara.
The Robert R. Moton School, built in 1939 was designed
to house 180 students. The school was named for a distinguished
black educator, Robert Russa Moton, born in Prince Edward County, and
who later became president of Tuskegee Institute. By 1940 Robert R.
Moton High School was massively overcrowded. Rather than build a new
black high school, the county school board erected three large plywood
buildings covered with tarpaper to accommodate the overcrowding. The
buildings were called “tar-paper shacks” by
the students and Negro community and symbolized for the Moton
students their unequal facilities, sparking their protest demanding
a new black high school. At one point, some classes were also
held on an old school bus.
National Impact
Shortly after the “walk-out” the state NAACP was
consulted. Carrie Stokes, another student leader, cosigned the
letter with Barbara Johns to the NAACP requesting their legal
assistance. Initially the case first went to the Virginia state courts
where it was defeated. The Legal Defense NAACP attorneys Thurgood Marshall,
James Nabrit, Jr. and Robert Carter recommended that Prince
Edward join with four other cases in pursuit of desegregation
of public schools. Prince Edward therefore became one of the plaintiff
cases in the 1954 Brown V. Board of Education decision,
generally considered the most important case decided by the U.
S. Supreme Court in the twentieth century. In that case, the Court
held that racially segregated public schools are inherently unequal.
It should be noted that the Prince Edward county case was the only case
initiated by students.
Virginia's Response: The Closing of the Schools
In 1953 the county Board of Supervisors found funds
to construct a new segregated high school for its black students hoping
that such a move would prompt Prince Edward County to withdraw from
the national case. Later the Virginia General Assembly instituted
a state-wide policy of “massive resistance” to defy the court-ordered
desegregation and the outcome of this policy took its most destructive
form in Prince Edward County. In 1959 the Prince Edward County Board
of Supervisors voted to close its public schools. The vast majority
of the county's 1700 black students and some white students went without
formal education from 1959-1964.
Restoration of Public Education
Reverend L. Francis Griffin, a community activist,
initiated a court case challenging the closing of the schools. In 1964,
the Supreme Court decided in Griffin v. Prince Edward that local
authorities had to fund public education and reopen the schools. Funding continued to be inadequate for several
years until the hiring of Dr. James Anderson as superintendent of
public schools. It was his diligent leadership that assisted in
the resurrection of the Prince Edward school system as a viable
and credible school system for all students. One of his greatest
achievements was the construction of new educational facilities,
including an elementary and middle school, plus a vocational technical
center. Desegregation was slow, but through the years the Prince
Edward school system evolved into an educational system with comparable
facilities and faculty. Prince Edward County has been viewed by
some as being successful in their desegregation of its public schools.
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