Barbara Johns statue
On this date in 1951, a 16-year-old Black girl led students from her overcrowded, segregated school in a civil rights protest.
Barbara Johns led students from Farmville, Virginia’s Moton High, on a historic walkout against insufficient education. The resulting court case from Ms. Johns’ activism became part of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling in which the Supreme Court declared segregation unconstitutional. Moton High had 400 students in a building intended for about 150 at the time of the protest. Prince Edward County's Black parents had unsuccessfully petitioned the all-white school board for a new, larger school. Eventually, tar paper shacks were set up in the schoolyard to accommodate Moton's overflowing student body.
Robert Russa Moton High School, constructed in 1939, remains a one-story brick building designed for eight classrooms, an office, and an auditorium. During the period, Moton High was typical of the all-Black schools in Prince Edward County, Virginia. It had twice as many students as designed for and no gym or cafeteria. The highest-paid teacher at Moton earned less than the lowest-paid white teacher in the county.
That day, the students gathered in the small, overcrowded auditorium and marched down Main Street to the County Courthouse. There, they attempted to make the county officials aware of the grave inequities in the public education provided to the Black students in the county compared with the education provided to the whites. Johns and other students convinced the NAACP in Richmond to file suit against the county school board. Prince Edward County refused to integrate and, in 1959, closed all its public schools. It took Davis v. Prince Edward County, another Supreme Court ruling in 1964, to reopen and integrate them.
