The Moton School Civil Rights Learning Center, previously known as the Robert Russa Moton Museum, serves as Virginia’s only civil rights National Historic Landmark. The Moton School Center honors the courage and tenacity of the movement towards the integration of schools in the Prince Edward County.
Serving the community by keeping history alive, the Moton School Center is currently in the process of restoration and continued community outreach.
Justin Reid, associate director for Museum Operations of the Moton School Civil Rights Learning Center, commented on the Moton School Center’s new title, saying, “It does a better job of capturing what we’re about because we’re interested in helping people learn and better understand the Civil Rights history and really inspire that kind of active citizenship that we saw here, but then really inspire people to really be courageous.”
The Moton School Center has been in a state of restoration for the past four years, and by April of this year, six total galleries will be open to the public, including photographs, texts, digital media and oral histories on the history of Barbara Johns and the Walk Out generation in Prince Edward County.
In the beginning, the Moton School Center was built in 1939 to be served as Prince Edward County’s all African-American high school. When built, the Moton School was the twelfth African American high school to be constructed in the state of Virginia. It served as a school until the 1990s where the Martha E. Forrester Council of Women, a non-profit, all-female Civil Rights organization, raised $300,000 in order to save the building from being purchased elsewhere.
Reid said that when the Moton School was first constructed, education was viewed as a privilege, especially for wealthy, Caucasian men
He said, “If you were a woman, if you were poor, if you were a person of color, really your education
wasn’t valued, and the common belief at the time was that black students didn’t need a high school education.”
Reid said that during the time of the school’s construction, the African-Americans in the community typically only went to school until the sixth grade before growing up to become tobacco farmers. After parents rallied for a high school to be built, the building was constructed too small, without a cafeteria and without a laboratory to teach science.
“When they built this building in 1939, they built it for only 180 students, and by 1951, there were almost 500 students,” said Reid. He further stated that parents rallied to have a bigger school built, but county leaders responded by building tar paper shacks to expand the Moton School. Reid described them as “essentially chicken houses.”
“That sends a very clear message about how they viewed black students in this community and their worth,” said Reid, who described how the students had to hold umbrellas when it rained to be able to complete their work
Finally enough was enough. Reid said the students spoke up to say, “We’re supposed to be separate and equal. We’re separate, but it’s definitely not equal, and we need to do something about it.”
Barbara Johns, a 16-year-old student at the Moton School, handpicked student leaders in the school to form a committee of about 20 students to present to the school on April 23, 1951 their plan to go on strike.
Reid said, “Not only did they go on strike, they also called Virginia’s two leading [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] NAACP attorneys, Oliver Hill and Spottswood Robinson.”
After meeting the students and parents in the Moton School, Hill and Robinson agreed to accept the case with two conditions. First, the students needed support from their parents, and second, that the case would be toward suing for an integrated school, rather than for a new school. After taking a vote, the students agreed to both conditions.
The case at the Moton School combined with cases from Topeka, Kans.; Delaware; South
Carolina; as well as Washington, D.C. All five cases were consolidated for the Brown v. Board Supreme Court case.
Reid stated that the Moton School case was the only student-initiated Brown case and that 75 percent of the Brown v. Board plaintiffs came from Farmville, Va. Despite Topeka being the title for all five cases, Topeka produced 13 plaintiffs, while Prince Edward produced about 1560.
The group of students known during this movement in Prince Edward County was known as the Walk Out generation. Students who were impacted by the Brown v. Board decision later were known as the Lock Out generation.
After the Brown decision, the Virginia General Assembly was determined to protest against integration and implemented the Massive Resistance in 1956, discontinuing the funding of public education. In September 1959, the public school system in Prince Edward County was shut down for five years, causing 4,000 local children of all races to be denied access to free public education.
Reid said, “You have all these kids being locked out of schools, and when I mean locked out, there were padlocks on school doors, see saws were chained down to the ground, playgrounds to keep kids off swing sets were cut down in order to keep kids off.”
During this time, wealthy Caucasian families sent their children to the Prince Edward Academy set up with the aid of tax-funded tuition grants and vouchers. Reid noted that many families went into debt to try to send their kids to the academy.
For the African-American community in Prince Edward County, they fought for their children’s education in many ways, one way including sending their children to relatives living in other counties or states. Some parents had to decide whether to send one child and not the other due to age differences, creating different life outcomes and privileges to either sibling where one would go to college and the other possible would not be able to finish high school.
One other way some families provided education for their children was by giving up legal guardianship to the child to enter him or her into the foster care system to continue their education in another state.
Different placement programs were set up to have students live with strangers in other parts of Virginia or around the country to be able to attend schools. One program included the American Friend Service Community, a Quaker organization established in Philadelphia, Pa.
Reid said, “For some kids it was tough. Suddenly, you’re separated from your parents, your entire world as you knew it from Prince Edward County.”
Reid commented that the majority of students from Prince Edward County were not able to leave to continue their education.
“I think we’re seeing some of the consequences of that to this day in the community because the kids of those who were impacted by the schools closing are in the schools now. These are their parents and grandparents who were locked out for five years,” stated Reid.
Discussing the Moton School Center’s goals, Reid said they are focused on inspiring the next generation and showing students they have the power to change their community in incredible ways.
“We always talk about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, but the real heroes were those individuals, the everyday, ordinary people, that did these extraordinary things. It’s really an inspiration,” said Reid.
For the future of the Moton School Center, Reid said that there are plans to work with educators to shift the focus to local advocates when educating students on America’s Civil Rights history.
Reid said, “We’re really teaching the next generation of students that we all have a choice. We all have a choice to accept the status quo or we can acknowledge a justice and actually do something, anything to try to correct it.“
The Moton School Civil Rights Learning Center is located at 900 Griffin Boulevard. Look online at the Moton Museum website to see upcoming events in the community. To learn more, call (434) 315-8775 or email info@motonmuseum.org.
