“[The 1951 Moton Student Strike] marked the start of the modern civil rights movement . . . [and] forever changed the landscape of American education.” – Don Baker, The Washington Post Magazine
Farmville Virginia’s former Robert Russa Moton High School, now a National Historic Landmark and museum, is the birthplace of America’s student-led civil rights revolution.
Dreamed of by 16-year-old Barbara Johns, the 1951 Moton Student Strike produced three-fourths of the plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the landmark Supreme Court decision desegregating U.S. schools.
From 1959 to 1964 Prince Edward County closed its public schools to avoid integration. The Supreme Court in Griffin v. Prince Edward (1964) ordered schools to reopen, declaring “the time for mere ‘deliberate speed’ has run out.”
“If . . . you are looking for the handful of places where this nation’s civil rights revolution began, check out the old Moton High School in Farmville, Va.” – The Toledo Blade