Historical Background:

     Public education in general was slow in becoming a solid reality in the South. Until 1870, no statewide, organized system of public education existed in Virginia, although a few localities operated their own systems. Before the Civil War, Virginia had private academies for those White parents who could pay for schooling and a few schools for "paupers." Before the Civil War, by law, neither slave nor free Black children could attend school or even be privately taught to read and write. There were Sunday school teachers and others who broke this law, and some African Americans taught themselves. Still, the Black population was largely illiterate when the Freedmen's Bureau opened the first free schools for Blacks in Virginia near Hampton Roads in 1862. Schools opened by northern teachers under missionary auspices right after the Civil War were too closely associated with the northern interests for most Whites to send their children to them. The Virginia Constitution of 1870, under Virginia's Reconstruction government, mandated a public school system, and the following year William Henry Ruffner was appointed by the General Assembly as first superintendent of public instruction.
     Ruffner's first duty was to draft legislation establishing the system. The bill he submitted was based on precedents set in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and called for the creation of a state department of public instruction, with the state having a share in the funding. Opposition to the plan was widespread and focused on the loss of traditional local authority represented by the new state agency and the state funding provision. There was also much concern expressed about the incorporation of education for Blacks, which had been illegal before the Civil War, although there was little debate about segregation. It was understood that schools would be separate, as all other aspects of public life had become racially segregated, in a de facto rather than statutory manner, after the Civil War. There was also concern that parents would be deprived of complete influence in their children's upbringing.
     Funding was a problem from the start, with monies initially earmarked for public education on the state level being diverted to cover Virginia's large Civil War debt. Enrollment and tax support were both viewed as referenda on the popularity of the public schools and continued to be a problem for years. Prince Edward County's first school superintendent, Benjamin Mosby Smith, once complained that even with his other income as a religious educator, it was hard to make ends meet. By the time of Ruffner's retirement in 1882, however, the public schools were firmly established and growing.
      Although Ruffner had expressed certainty that qualified Blacks would be chosen to serve on the local school boards, none were. White males, primarily property owners, made up the membership. Black teachers were paid less, for it was asserted that they were less qualified, and school facilities for Blacks tended to be less than adequate. One Black teacher in Prince Edward County remarked on the large, drafty holes in the school floors. The lack of adequate heat was also a problem. In 1896, the segregation of schools practiced in Prince Edward County and in the rest of Virginia and the south was given an implied legal sanction by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson that separation of facilities based on race was in fact legal, as long as these facilities were "equal." Before 1939, the secondary school education available to Blacks in Prince Edward County consisted of a few extra grades in one elementary school. What was loosely referred to, as "vocational training" was all that many Whites believed Blacks needed to acquire. This and "on-the job training" favored in rural areas like Prince Edward County, were considered sufficient, and even better suited for preparing Blacks than a high school education.
      (1) Under continuous pressure from local Black professional men during the 1920s, the Prince Edward County School Board reluctantly added high school grades to the all-Black Mary E. Branch Elementary School in 1930. Even then, the professionals themselves initially paid the teachers' salaries. The blame for such slow and inadequate effort was always placed on the lack of funds. Although it was true that financing problems existed, all-White schools tended to fare better. The financial problems faced by Southern school systems were in fact exacerbated by the policy of separating Black and White students, when integrated schools would have been more cost-effective.
      During the 1930s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) began a strategy of collecting information to prove that "separate" was not "equal." In Virginia as elsewhere, curricula quality, bus transportation, buildings and equipment were being challenged as inadequate. Their goal was to win cases protesting the injustice of Plessy v. Ferguson in courts on the local level and than to take those cases on appeal to the nation's highest court in the hopes of invalidating the ruling. Their legal strategy attacked racial discrimination in the public schools based on the unequal facilities provided for Black students.
      (2) Because of these challenges, a new high school for Black students was built in Prince Edward County. The school was completed in 1939 and named for Robert Russa Moton, a native son who had succeeded Booker T. Washington as the president of the Tuskegee Institute. At that time, only eleven other high schools for Blacks existed in Virginia, and like them, the new institution proved to have inadequate facilities. Unlike its Whites-only counterpart, Farmville High School, Moton High School had no gymnasium, cafeteria, lockers, or auditorium with fixed seating. Built with a capacity for 180 students, it had 167 when opened. The following year, 219 students were enrolled. By 1950, the enrollment had increased to 477.
      As many as three classes were held in the auditorium simultaneously, and at least one was held on a school bus. When the county received an offer of a matching grant from the state in 1947 to build an addition, the Board of Supervisors refused to appropriate the additional local funding necessary. The board was influenced by W.I. Dixon, building supervisor for the state department of public institution, who said any additional construction would be makeshift, with the implication that it therefore should not be undertaken.
      (3) In response to the demands to relieve the overcrowding at Moton High School, three temporary buildings were erected, promptly dubbed the "tar paper shacks" due to the material that covered their long, low framework. The Reverend Leslie Francis Griffin, a local Black leader, minister and member of the NAACP observed that while local Blacks became quite upset at the inadequate gesture, Whites did not see anything wrong with the shacks--if they noticed them at all. Griffin would soon figure prominently in the organized response to the continued inequity the shacks represented.
      When Willie Redd, a Black contractor looked upon by the White community as a spokesman for his race, resigned from the Moton Parent-Teacher Association in 1949, Griffin was elected chairman. Griffin viewed this as an opportunity for change from the old accommodationist approach represented by Redd, whereby Blacks attempted to make progress within the system.
      (4) Griffin headed the local branch of the NAACP, becoming the county coordinator, and thus establishing links with other Black activists on the state and national levels. His immediate focus, however, was on the local level, where the Moton P.T.A. offered to assist the county school board in its ongoing search for a site for a new Black high school. Although there was plenty of available land in Prince Edward County, none had deemed suitable. The school board accepted the P.T.A.'s offer to locate a site for the new school, and Willie Redd promptly informed them when a new site was identified. Despite a fair offer, the board delayed action. Then, on April 23, 1951, the students initiated a strike to protest the overcrowded conditions, the shacks and the seemingly futile efforts to build a new high school. Using the ruse of a false report of truant students at the local bus station to get Principal M. Boyd Jones out of the building, several students forged written announcements of a school assembly, calling all classes to the auditorium. Teachers were then escorted from the auditorium. Instead of the principal, student Barbara Johns, niece of Reverend Vernon Johns, native of Prince Edward County and the renowned minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, appeared on the stage and announced the strike. She asked the students to join with the organizing committee, a group of ten Moton students, in a strike to demand better facilities. The student body as a whole agreed to join them in the effort. Principal Jones returned from his wild goose chase at about the same time and pleaded with the students not to go through with it, but they refused and politely asked him to leave.
      Despite being deceived, Jones was accused by the school superintendent of participation in the conspiracy. Also implicated were Reverend Vernon Johns and Reverend Griffin. Griffin, the first person the students contacted once they gained control of the school, was asked to settle a dispute over whether or not to immediately send a delegation to the county school superintendent to present demands. His suggestion that a vote be taken resulted in a call to the superintendent.
      After consulting with Griffin, the students wrote a letter to the Richmond office of the NAACP requesting the assistance of the organization's special counsel. The office put them in touch with attorney Oliver Hill, whose firm was already handling a case involving Black Schools in Christiansburg, Virginia. Hill advised the students to return to class, promising to visit Prince Edward County immediately to talk with them. Although discouraged, the students sent a delegation to the superintendent, who initially refused to meet it. Superintendent McIlwaine directly accused the students of being misled by an adult agitator, perhaps Griffin or Boyd, and threatened expulsion if they did not end the strike.
      The next day, two hundred people, including students, Hill, and fellow attorney Spottswood Robinson, gathered at Griffin's church, where an attempt was made by the attorneys to get the students to end their strike. The students refused, convincing Hill and Robinson through organization and determination, to abandon this tactic. While many adults were divided on whether or not to support the students, Hill and Robinson suggested they go beyond pushing for better schools and demand desegregation. Students were called upon to consider the issue and discuss it with those not present.
      (5) NAACP state secretary, W. Lester Banks, attended a mass meeting called for the following day. The decision was made to sue for integration and to continue the strike until May 7, when the school year ended. On May 23, Hill and Robinson filed suit in the Federal District Court in Richmond for the immediate integration of Prince Edward County schools.
      (6) Known as Davis et al v. the County School Board of Prince Edward County, VA, et al, the case was decided by a lower court in favor of the county. On appeal, however, it was combined with four other appellate cases from around the country. Briggs et al. v. Elliot et al. (South Carolina) had been initiated on May 24, 1951, with Spottswood Robinson acting as assistant attorney for the plaintiff and an assistant attorney general from Virginia present as an observer. Gebhart v. Belton (Delaware), argued in 1951, along with Bulah v. Gebhart (Delaware), involved a high school in Wilmington and an elementary school in Hockessin. The Delaware cases, initially focused on bus transportation and unequal facilities, later centered their arguments on integration. The two cases were combined under Gebhart v. Belton and argued for desegregation under Brown in 1954. Bolling et al. v. Sharpe et al (District of Columbia) dealt with junior high school students who were refused entry to all-White schools. Finally Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, first argued independently in 1951, gave its name to the resulting historic Supreme Court decision under which the five school segregation cases were argued. The United States Supreme Court ruled on Brown in 1954, concluding that in the field of education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" was unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
      Although the cases were argued under the title Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, each case contributed equally to the 1954 landmark decision. Several explanations have been given for the order in which the cases were listed. Greenberg states that Brown was listed first based on the alphabetical listing of the cases and that Briggs, which would have been listed first, was initially sent back to trial court for further hearings and later added to the school segregation cases. Kluger argues that Brown was listed first in order to highlight a non-Southern state.
      On May 31, 1955 in Brown Il, the Supreme Court defined the pace of integration by saying it should take place with "all deliberate speed." National, state and local factors worked together to assure that the Brown decision did not end segregation in Virginia. Reaction to the Brown decision, especially in the South, was swift and negative. At that time, Virginia was ruled by the political machine led by U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd who responded by initiating a program of "massive resistance" which meant that schools would close rather than integrate. "Massive resistance," practiced between 1954 and 1959, became part of Virginia's political agenda and Democratic Party gubernatorial campaign platform, the state would "oppose it [integration] with every facility at our command, and with every ounce of our energy."
      (7) Virginia's strategy for preventing integration changed its emphasis and tactics several times between the years 1954 and 1959. A state pupil placement act, passed in 1956, removed from the localities the power to assign students to schools and invested it in a board of state appointees. In 1958, nine schools, all candidates for integration, were briefly closed and tuition grants issued to the students. In 1959, a "freedom of choice policy" for pupil placement caused three state board members to resign in protest. The "freedom of choice" rule allowed localities the option of participating in the state placement system. Opting out of the state placement program required the recommendation of the local school board and approval of the city council or county board of supervisors. Emphasis was placed on geography or residence rather than other criteria.
      Virginia's efforts to maintain segregation were demonstrated nowhere as strongly as in Prince Edward County. The county became the model for what would happen if integrationists pushed local school boards. Between 1954 and 1964, tactics initiated by the state unfolded.
      The first efforts to evade integration in Prince Edward County came in 1954 with the opening of a new Moton High School building. Students were moved out of the 1939 building into a newer and larger one in an attempt to prove the state was acting in good faith to ensure the equality side of "separate but equal." The 1939 Moton High School Building was converted to an all-Black elementary school. The opening of the new school and the 1955 "all deliberate speed" decision provided Prince Edward County all the ammunition it needed to maintain segregated schools for the next 10 years. Wilbur Brookover details the efforts to maintain segregation in Prince Edward County following the 1955 decision:
      Shortly after the second Supreme Court decision (Brown II, 1955) ordering desegregation "with all deliberate speed," the county's board of supervisors voted not to appropriate any money for desegregated schools. Shortly thereafter, the actively segregationist organization known as the Defenders of Liberty initiated efforts to raise money to hire teachers for White children in the county. When the U.S. District Court ruled that Prince Edward County did not have to desegregate immediately, the pledges of money were retained for further use. A strictly segregated public school system continued until further court action in 1959. At that time, the courts ruled that the county's schools had to desegregate. The county supervisors again refused to appropriate money for desegregated public schools. Although the school board favored maintaining the public schools and obeying the court order, they were helpless to maintain the schools because the board of supervisors controlled all appropriations. Because of the board of supervisors' actions, the public schools remained closed from fall 1959 to fall 1964. As far as this researcher has been able to determine, Prince Edward County is the only school district in the United States that closed its public schools for an extended period to avoid desegregation.
      After the schools closed, the board of supervisors requested that the school board sell the buildings to a private White school foundation. At the initiative of its chairman, school board members resigned en masse rather than sell the schools. There was, therefore, no official body in place to sell the buildings. When the new school board was appointed, the effort to force the sale was not reinitiated. The White school foundation thus moved rapidly to raise money to establish the Prince Edward Academy, which used a variety of facilities beginning in fall 1959. Permanent Academy facilities for both elementary and secondary students were built soon after. Essentially all of the White children in Prince Edward County were enrolled in the Academy in the next few years. Some of the poor Whites in the county were provided scholarships to pay their children's tuition. A few White families that could not afford the tuition and did not wish to accept welfare did not send their children to school. The number of such children is not available, but only a small proportion fell in this category.
      Although Whites established a private foundation to provide similar opportunities for Black children, many Black county residents and the NAACP refused this on the grounds that it continued essentially the same situation that the Brown decision was supposed to end. Those opposing this effort vocalized their concern by actively working to discourage Black children from signing up for the private schools. In January 1960, the Southside Schools, the name given to the private schools, received an application from one Black student. After that, private school advocates decided to postpone their efforts to educate Black students.
      There were, however, several Black students that continued their education by attending schools outside the county and state. Some students traveled as far as the high school branch of Kittrell Junior College in Henderson, North Carolina while others relocated to northern states.
      Prince Edward County became nationally known for its refusal to integrate. Notable civil rights activists such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Roy Wilkins visited Farmville. The NAACP used Prince Edward County as an example of all of its efforts to obtain civil rights during this period. In 1960, the National Council of Negro Women held a meeting in Washington, D.C., in which representatives of 21 organizations named the Reverend Leslie Francis Griffin chair of a project to set up training centers for Black children. The centers were to focus on "morale building" rather than on education. This choice was supported by many including the NAACP and other community members who believed that if they began to education on their own, the battle for integration would not only be lost in Prince Edward County but in other sections of the nation as well.
      In 1961, the state began disbursing grants to students attending private, nonsectarian schools, or schools outside their home district. Funds were contributed from the state and all the localities. The difference between this program and a similar, previous plan was that now no reason for the alternative choice was necessary. Many who took advantage of it attended private schools even though they came from still-segregated districts. Others went from segregated to desegregated districts.
      The General Assembly enacted laws permitting local school boards to provide transportation to private schools and allowing for a tax credit for those sending their children to such schools. Furthermore, teachers were permitted to discharge state education board scholarship obligations by teaching in private schools and to participate in the state retirement system while teaching in those schools. Legislation permitting local compulsory attendance laws, while repealing the state attendance law, was also passed that year. However, local school systems were still required to excuse children whose parents objected to their being sent to a particular school. In response, the NAACP asked the State Supreme Court of Appeals to demand that the board of supervisors appropriate funds for the public schools. In March 1962, the State Supreme Court ruled that the board of supervisors could not be forced to appropriate such funds.
      (8) The NAACP continued the battle in the courts while Griffin, chairman of the Moton P.T.A. at the time of the strike, continued efforts at the local level. In 1963, he circulated a petition throughout the County requesting that President Kennedy sponsor a survey to study the educational problem in Prince Edward County. The President was also asked to support a program that would prepare the students for re-entering the educational system. A report on the survey results stated that the federal government could not operate or finance schools in Prince Edward County.
      However, the report identified the needs of the Black children who had been out of school for four years. The Prince Edward County Free School System, created in 1963, was comprised of four schools leased from the county: Moton I, Moton II, and Worsham. It was intended to run for only one year after which, it was hoped, the regular public schools would reopen. This federally initiated, state-sponsored and privately funded free school system helped to bridge the gap. The Prince Edward Free School System, utilizing existing facilities, (with the permission of the school board) received support from President Kennedy and accreditation from the state department of education. Former Governor Colgate Darden was among the trustees. Three White children attended the Free Association with the Black children. The Free School System operated until the public schools were re-opened.
      (9) Because district courts were instructed to ensure compliance, the Davis case, the initial Prince Edward County desegregation case, continued even after the Brown decision was handed down. The litigation to end segregation in Prince Edward County began in 1951 with Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, a result of the Moton students' strike for equal facilities. In 1959, it was argued as Allen v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, which resulted in the district court decision that Prince Edward County schools were to reopen in September of 1959 to all students. Later, one of Leslie F. Griffin's own children became the named plaintiff in the case Griffin v. County School Board (Prince Edward) (1964) which came about in response to Prince Edward County's continued refusal to comply with the earlier decisions. The fight for integration in Prince Edward County ended in 1964 with Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, in which the United States Supreme Court decided that "the time for mere 'deliberate speed' has run out, and that phrase can no longer justify denying these Prince Edward County school children their constitutional rights to an education equal to that afforded by the public schools in the other parts of Virginia."
      Although the Griffin decision resulted in an order by the Supreme Court that Prince Edward County open its school, the county supervisors continued to resist integration. The Board of Education requested, and the board appropriated only enough money to educate Black students, while meeting secretly to appropriate funds for grants to private school education in the county. The courts had forbidden such grants after the 1960-61 school year, based on the argument that the state was participating in an unconstitutional attempt to evade the Brown decision.
      (10) Eventually, all state and local efforts to resist integration would collapse. The Prince Edward County public school system reopened in 1964 and the newer Moton High School (1954) was renamed Prince Edward County High School. The older, original building (1939) upon which the initial protests were based then became Farmville Elementary School.
       The Robert Russa Moton High School stands as a monument to the students who struck in 1951 and their contribution to the struggle for the desegregation of our nation's schools. Their strike led to the court case Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, which, combined with other, formed Brown v. Board of Education and contributed to the subsequent 1954 landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court. That decision struck down the "separate but equal" racial doctrine governing public school policy and constituted an important step down the road toward the integration of American society. It also led to the closing of Prince Edward County's public schools and Virginia's efforts at "massive resistance." Moton High School's importance lies in the series of events that began there in April 1951 and the dramatic and fundamental change in American society that resulted. The school is an example of the segregation that occurred in this country and the determination of African Americans to secure their rights as stated in the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Revised November 2005    

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