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![[Picture of young school boy at his desk]](images/menu_bottom.jpg) |
What
Will The Moton Museum Be Like -
The Robert Russa Moton Museum will be a repository for
historically significant materials which cover the ongoing struggle for
civil rights in education, particularly in Prince Edward County. The
Museum will feature traditional and interactive exhibits that document
and reflect upon the transition from segregated to biracial public
education. It will commemorate the local students and families whose
courage and personal sacrifices brought about change. It will also serve
future generations as an educational center dealing with the whole
question of civil rights in education.
We envision exhibits and displays such as the following:
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Artifacts and whole rooms which recreate the separate and
unequal conditions under which African-American students were forced to
study at the Robert R. Moton High School before 1951;
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Dynamic displays which dramatize the Moton student strike
of April- May, 1951
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Extensive coverage of the judicial battle for
desegregation in Prince Edward, beginning with the filing of Davis vs.
County School Board in May, 1951, and continuing through Brown vs. Board of
Education (both the original 1954 decision and the follow up decision a year
later) to Griffin vs. County School Board (1964), in which the Supreme
Court in effect ruled that a state must provide public education to all its
citizens;
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Coverage of the low point of public education in Prince
Edward, the closing of the public schools from 1959 to 1964;
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Personal profiles of the individuals involved in the
local struggle for civil rights in education, from the Rev. Vernon Johns to
his niece, Barbara Johns, who at age 16 led the student walkout at Moton
High School, to other student leaders of 1951; from NAACP attorneys Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill of Richmond, who filed Davis, to the
Rev. L. Francis Griffin, leader of the local civil rights movement in the
'50s and '60s; from white public officials who fought what they perceived
as federal government intervention in local affairs to white citizens who
were opposed both to desegregation and to the closing of the schools to
Dean Gordon Moss of Longwood College, the most outspoken white supporter of
desegregation;
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Oral histories and personal reflections of local people,
black and white, who lived through the student strike, the legal battles,
the closing of the schools, and the years since 1964;
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Ongoing coverage of the remarkable transformation of the
Prince Edward County public schools from the time of their reopening in
1964 to their success as strong, biracial schools in the latter part of the
century;
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An exhibit showing the NAACP's legal strategy to achieve
equality in public education, worked out by Charles Houston, Thurgood
Marshall, and others in the '30s, culminating in the Brown triumph twenty
years later;
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Mini-exhibits of the struggle for civil rights in education in
the other four locales involved in Brown, as well as numerous
other cases throughout the country;
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A comprehensive library of print, audio, and visual materials
on the whole subject of civil rights in education in this country.
But the Moton Museum will not simply look to the past.
It will serve as an active center for the study of civil rights and racial
justice and harmony in education-for instance, by cosponsoring with Longwood
and Hampden-Sydney Colleges seminars for teachers and students featuring
major scholars.
Finally, the Moton Center will provide community outreach
services to support area citizens - for instance, by hosting church or civic
groups which might gather to discuss issues of racial cooperation.
In short, the Robert R. Moton Museum will both chronicle
the past story of the struggle to overcome racial segregation and injustice
in education and - appropriately for an old school building - serve as an
active educational center to promote racial cooperation and harmony.
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