Moton High School, Farmville, Virginia, 2011
In 1951, 16 year-old Barbara Johns was a junior at the all-black Moton High School in Farmville. Across town was another school, open exclusively to white students. The resources available to each school, and the quality of the facilities, were unequal. Barbara's school was designed and built to hold roughly 200 students, though by 1951 enrollment was up to 450.
On April 23rd, 1951, Barbara Johns tricked her principal into leaving the school so that she could start a protest to this segregation. While the principal was away, Barbara Johns forged a memo from that principal telling the teachers to bring their classes to a special assembly. The teachers brought their classes and were surprised to find Barbara Johns standing on the stage. She delivered a speech revealing her plans for a student strike in protest of the unequal conditions of the black and white schools. The students agreed to participate, and on that day they marched down to the county courthouse to make officials aware of the large difference in quality between the white and black schools.
A month later the NAACP filed Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County in federal court. The court upheld segregation in Prince Edward County, and the NAACP appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Davis v. Prince Edward County along with four other cases became part of the case Brown v. Board of Education. As Davis was the only case in Brown initiated by student protest, it is seen by some as the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement.
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The Opposite:
Portrait of Barbara Rose Johns, Moton Museum, Farmville, Virginia, 2011
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