Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County
By
John C Abercrombie
This is the 2nd case that was incorporated into what became the Brown v Board of Education case. Of the 5 cases incorporated, this is the only one started by students.
Students went to school in a very substandard building. The buildings were nowhere near the standards of the White kids. In fact, the schools were referred to as tar paper shacks. It has long been acknowledged that the pay for Black teachers was only a fraction that of White teachers, despite having larger classes and workloads.
The Prince Edward County, Virginia schools had no running water, and no indoor restrooms. To obtain water, they had to use a pump or draw water from a well. Since there were no bathrooms, students and teachers had to use outhouses.
Since there were no buses, most students had to walk miles to reach school. Heating was horrible and relied on potbellied stoves. There was often an insufficient supply of wood for heating. During periods of rain, students had to use umbrellas to keep the rain from soaking their papers. Videos later in this post show the condition of the schools and in many cases, it is necessary to see to believe.
Barbara Rose Johns was the student leader. In order to pull off the student strike, it was necessary to get the principal out of the school, which they did by making a phone call to the school, telling the principal that there were some Black kids in town causing problems. He took off like a shot.
While he was gone, the students assembled and organized the protest. They approached the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP. The NAACP at first was not interested in the case, but after seeing the degree of organization and the dedication to the cause, they changed their opinion.
As expected, many people associated with the protest were fired, including the principal. Any time people were willing to stand up for their rights, there were consequences, such a family members, friends and neighbors of those involved being fired. In some case, there were Lynchings.
Barbara Rose Johns, the student leader was only 16 years of age when she started the protest at R. R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. She was the niece of Reverend Vernon Johns, called the “father of the Civil Rights Movement. He had been pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. However, he was removed as being too radical and replaced with Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
The school was named in honor of Robert Russa Moton, a Black education who had served at Hampton Institute, Now Hampton University locate in Hampton, Virginia. Hampton is a HBCU, Historically Black College and University. HBCU’s came to be because Blacks were not welcomed into traditionally White institutions in any significant numbers.
In 1915, he was named principal of Tuskegee Institute (also an HBCU and now known as Tuskegee University) after the death of founder Booker T Washington. He served Tuskegee, which many people are familiar with because of long time teacher, George Washington Carver.
Robert Russa Moton was an African-American educator and author. He served as an administrator at Hampton Institute. In 1915 he was named principal of Tuskegee Institute, after the death of founder Booker T. Washington, a position he held for 20 years until retirement in 1935.
For many years, there were no schools for Black students. Moton was not built until 1939. The residents of Prince Edward County were so opposed to education for Blacks and the fear of integration that they closed ALL public schools in the county for 5 years!
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This post is part of a series posted daily during February 2020, Black History Month. In this series we have taken a look at factors that affect life in America that are seldom spoken of but are essential to understanding the experience.
We are now looking at the complex case of Brown v Board of Education. Many believe it is a Kansas case and while it does indeed involve Kansas, other states played a vital role.
We have looked at South Carolina in Briggs v Elliott. February 22. Today we look at the only student led protest that was included in Brown.
Today we look at Davis v Prince Edward County, Farmville, Virginia To see the index for the entire series, click here. Note: You will want to save this link as you will want to refer to it during the year. Also, we appreciate you sharing the posts and site, and are appreciative when you do.
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Davis v. Prince Edward County, Farmville, Virginia
In this University of Virginia video, John Stokes, a retired Baltimore principal, helped organize a walkout when he was a student at R. R. Moton High School in Virginia in 1951. He talks about secretly planning the protest of the school’s deplorable conditions, including NAACP involvement in a lawsuit that became part of the U.S. Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education.
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The Road to Healing: A Civil Rights Reparations Story in Prince Edward County, Virginia
Prince Edward County, Virginia closed its public school system in 1959 in “massive resistance” to the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic Brown v. Board decision of 1954. The editorial pages of the local family-owned newspaper, The Farmville Herald, led the fight to lock classrooms rather than integrate them.
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Politics and Social Sciences
As we look at the Brown v Board of Ed case, we arrive here because those elected that have a voice in the operation of what ever organization, be it the school board of city, country or state office got there by being elected. To make a difference, claim your seat at the table and the best way to prepare yourself is with our Amazon affiliate link below
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Robert Russa Moton Museum
One of the most remarkable — and least known — stories in the Civil Rights movement occurred in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Rather than integrate the public schools as mandated by Brown v. Board of Education, the county defunded its school system. All public schools — black and white — were closed. Local funding did not resume for five years. The Robert Russa Moton Museum — a grantee of the National Endowment for the Humanities — tells the story of Prince Edward County and the people who lived there.
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Law
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Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County:
A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Combining hard-hitting investigative journalism and a sweeping family narrative, this provocative true story reveals a little-known chapter of American history: the period after the Brown v. Board of Education decision when one Virginia school system refused to integrate.
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Barbara Johns Civil Rights Leader Documentary from PBS on Barbara Johns of Farmville, Virginia and her role in the Supreme Court case “Brown v. Board of Education” For educational materials that accompany this video please visit
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The Girl from the Tar Paper School:
Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement Before the Little Rock Nine, before Rosa Parks, before Martin Luther King Jr. and his March on Washington, there was Barbara Rose Johns, a teenager who used nonviolent civil disobedience to draw attention to her cause. In 1951, witnessing the unfair conditions in her racially segregated high school, Barbara Johns led a walkout–the first public protest of its kind demanding racial equality in the U.S.–jumpstarting the American civil rights movement. Ridiculed by the white superintendent and school board,
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Barbara Rose Johns
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U.S. Supreme Court Transcript of Record Brown v. Board of Ed. of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kan.; Briggs v. Elliott; Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Va.; Gebhart v. Belton et al. The Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978 contains the world’s most comprehensive collection of records and briefs brought before the nation’s highest court by leading legal practitioners – many who later became judges and associates of the court.
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Barbara R. Johns – 3 minute story
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We Face the Dawn:
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Martin Luther King and Rev Vernon Johns ~www.BlogTalkRadio.com/TheGISTofFREEDOM
Dr. Vernon Johns, Martin Luther King’s Predecessor at Dexter Ave Baptist Church Before Malcolm X, Before Martin Luther King Jr. Vernon Johns took the First Step on the long road to Freedom. Controversial Pastor Vernon Johns, one of the earliest voices of civil rights served as the outspoken spiritual leader of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
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Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights Charles Hamilton Houston (1895-1950)
left an indelible mark on American law and society. A brilliant lawyer and educator, he laid much of the legal foundation for the landmark civil rights decisions of the 1950s and 1960s. Many of the lawyers who won the greatest advances for civil rights in the courts, Justice Thurgood Marshall among them, were trained by Houston in his capacity as dean of the Howard University Law School. Politically Houston realized that blacks needed to develop their racial identity and also to recognize the class dimension inherent in their struggle for full civil rights as Americans.
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The Lost Generation of Prince Edward County (1965) In 1959, Prince Edward County, Virginia, closed its public schools rather than integrate them. White children went to publicly aided private schools while black students went to free schools staffed by volunteers. In 1964, the Supreme Court ordered the schools opened to all, but 90 percent of the whites stayed in private schools.
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Gallery III: Davis vs. Prince Edward
“Davis v. Prince Edward” is the “legal” gallery where the visitor will learn about the legal process that led from the Davis case to its inclusion as one of the five cases incorporated into Brown v. Board of Education, and the only one initiated by students.
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60 Years Since Brown v. Board of Education – ASBJ
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Lloyd Gaines and the Fight to End Segregation (Studies in Constitutional Democracy)
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