Background
Background
Synopsis
Historical Timeline
The Prince Edward case ... posed the moral question of whether it is right and
just in twentieth-century America for a county to close its public schools, for
whatever reason.
– R. C. Smith
In 1959, local officials closed the
public school system of Prince
Edward County, Virginia, in defiance
of the desegregation ruling of the
United States Supreme Court in
Brown v. Board of Education of
Topeka, Kansas, 1954.
For a period of five years, 19591964, public education was denied
to more than 2,000 AfricanAmerican children and a number of
poor white children who, with only a
few exceptions, remained
unschooled.
No other political jurisdiction in the
United States had taken the
extreme step of closing its entire
Student demonstrators in Prince Edward,
public school system to avoid
July 1963
desegregation. The human legacy of
these tragic events was a crippled generation of uneducated and undereducated children who were denied their right to education and, thus, their right
to full participation in American society. It is fair to say that in no other
community in the country did the Brown ruling have such a significant effect.
The African-American community of Prince Edward was one of five plaintiffs in
the historic Brown case. The closing of the public schools there was the
climactic event of a decades-long struggle for educational opportunity by the
African-American community of this rural, agricultural region of southside
Virginia.
They Closed Our Schools is a documentary film of a history unique in the
American experience. This story of a community in crisis is a cautionary tale
that starkly illustrates the pain and damage inflicted by the denial of education
and asks us to consider that similar issues can still threaten public education
today.
(Photograph courtesy of the Richmond Times Dispatch)
Synopsis
Background
Synopsis
Historical Timeline
School bus delivering students to tar-paper building at Robert R. Moton
High School, 1953
... if you're looking at it on a national scale, I'd say we won a victory. I believe
you could say the black people of Prince Edward County saved the public
schools of the South, particularly in Virginia. Had we given in, I think
perhaps massive resistance might have become the order of the day
throughout the South. So in that sense we won a tremendous victory.
– The Reverend L. Francis Griffin
On April 23, 1951, in an event that foreshadowed the coming Civil Rights
Movement, Barbara Johns, a sixteen-year-old African-American high school
junior at Moton High, and fellow student leaders, organized their classmates in
a two-week boycott of their overcrowded and unsafe high school in Farmville,
the county seat. The strike, which began as a demand for equality in separate
educational facilities, became, at the urging of the NAACP, a vital part of the
growing movement for integration in all public education.
This documentary film is the largely untold story of how one girl’s courage
helped set in motion the most important Supreme Court decision of the 20th
century, Brown v. Board of Education, a decision that adjusted the path of the
United States back into alignment with the principles on which it was founded.
It is a story that is filled with unsung heroes, ordinary people whose faith in
those same principles - liberty, justice, freedom, equality - drove them to reach
beyond themselves to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the
United States.”
The student-inspired influence from Prince Edward County, Virginia, upon the
legal battles that became Brown v. Board of Education, has been largely
overlooked in the sweeping history of the Civil Rights movement. Yet the vision
and courage of Barbara Johns and her fellow students, the moral and spiritual
guidance of the Reverend L. Francis Griffin, and the commitment and purpose of
this African-American community, deserve to be honored and remembered with
the greatest moments in that history.
Building upon archival documents, film footage, still photographs, and sound
recordings, as well as personal papers and memorabilia, the historical
framework for the film will reveal the struggle of the African-American
community of Prince Edward for educational opportunity. Within this framework
the film will present contemporary film footage, on-camera interviews, and the
perspective of history through the words and voices of those who experienced
it.
They Closed Our Schools will examine the effects of the school crisis on the
children of both the black and the white communities and the years of the
“crippled generation” of undereducated and uneducated children. Of more than
two thousand children affected by the public schools closing, it is estimated that
less than five per cent received schooling for all five years and most received no
education at all.
Interviews conducted with individuals who, as children, experienced the
numerous consequences of the school closing are central to the film. These will
include individuals sent away from home for school, some of whom actually
found greater opportunity; those educated through the valiant efforts of their
churches and families; and those children denied any opportunity for literacy.
The stories will include those of African-American men who served their country
in WWII and the Korean Conflict, and then found education refused to their
children at home; of a young boy sent to Iowa for school in the care of a
Quaker family whose mother experienced similar deprivation as a JapaneseAmerican internee during WWII; of a Prince Edward student taken into the
home of Holocaust survivors so that he could continue his education; and the
story of a young girl who grew up to become a second grade teacher and now
marvels at her role as she, herself, was denied the opportunity to attend second
grade.
The film will chronicle the history of public education in Prince Edward from its
post Civil War origins in the Freedman Bureau schools, to the 1920s effort for
secondary education, to the building of the first black high school in 1939; from
the student school strike of 1951 against over-crowded, inadequate facilities, to
the inclusion of the Prince Edward schools in the 1954 Brown Supreme Court
case; from the rise of Massive Resistance against school desegregation to the
closing of the public schools in 1959 and the political example of Prince Edward
County which fueled the battle to sustain segregation across the South. The film
will examine the long legal battles to reopen the public schools in 1964; and the
decades-long struggle to reestablish and reinvigorate public education in the
county.
The attempt to end public education in Prince Edward County, provoked the
1964 ruling by the United States Supreme Court in Griffin v. County School
Board of Prince Edward County that ordered the reopening of the public schools
in Prince Edward and helped establish a fundamental right to public education in
the United States. This history of Prince Edward County, while not well known,
is a vital part of the Brown case and its historic legacy, and is deserving of
national recognition.
(Photograph by Hank Walker/Life Magazine courtesy of TimePix)
Historical Timeline
Background
Synopsis
Historical Timeline
Virginia & the Nation
Prince Edward County
1865
1865
April 9 – Lee surrenders to Grant at
Appomattox Court House
April 6 – Sailor's Creek, last battle of
Virginia campaign in the Civil War
April 7 – Lee, then Grant, passes through
Farmville
July – Freedmen's Bureau starts first school
for blacks
1870
First public schools in Virginia
1870
First public schools in county open on
segregated basis
1896
Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court Case
approves legally enforced segregation,
establishing concept of "separate but
equal"
1897
W.E.B. DuBois visits Prince Edward County
1902
Virginia Constitutional Convention
disenfranchises most black voters
1920s1930s
Black community petitions for high school
grades and better school facilities
1930s1940s
NAACP legal battles for equalization in all
aspects of education
1939
Robert R. Moton High School built with PWA
funding, one of only ten black high schools
in rural Virginia
1948
Tar paper buildings constructed at Moton
High School to alleviate overcrowding
1950
Sweatt v. Painter Supreme Court case
changes NAACP legal strategy from
equalization to desegregation
1951
April 23 – Student strike at Moton High
School
May 21 – First Prince Edward school
court case filed, Davis v. County School
Board of Prince Edward County, Virgini
1954
1952
Three judge Federal panel rules agains
plaintiffs in Davis case. Ruling appealed
by NAACP to the Supreme Court
1953
New Moton High School built by county in
effort for school facilities equalization to
thwart school desegregation court case
May 17 – Brown v. Board of Education
1954
Supreme Court case rules "separate but
equal" unconstitutional
June 25 – Governor Thomas Stanley states
he will use all legal means to continue
segregated school in Virginia
1955
May 31 – Brown II Supreme Court case
orders desegregation of schools "with
all deliberate speed"
Oct – Defenders of State Sovereignty
formed to preserve segregation in
schools.
1955
June – Prince Edward School Foundation
formed to develop private school education
program
1956
More than 4,000 white citizens petition
County asking not to be taxed to support
integrated schools
Dec 1 – Rosa Parks refuses to give up
her seat on bus in Montgomery,
Alabama
1956
Feb 25 – Senator Harry Byrd, Sr. calls for
"massive resistance" to desegregation
March 12 – Senator Harry Byrd and
Congressman Howard Smith of Virginia
introduce the "Southern Manifesto" in U.S.
Congress as a resolution condemning
Supreme Court encroachment on states'
rights
May 3 – Prince Edward Board of Supervisor
states that it will not appropriate money for
desegregated schools
Sept – Massive Resistance legislation
enacted in Virginia. State tuition grants
created to support private segregation
academy schools
1957
Sept – Central High School integrated,
Little Rock, Arkansas
1958
Sept – Massive Resistance laws invoked;
12,000 children out of school in Norfolk,
Charlottesville, and Front Royal, Virginia
1959
Jan – Courts strike down Virginia’s
Massive Resistance laws.
Feb – Public schools reopen and begin to
desegregate in Arlington, Alexandria and
1959
May 9 – U.S. Court of Appeals orders
Prince Edward to desegregate public
schools by September 1
June 26 – Board of Supervisors close
public schools after eight years of cour
1960
Norfolk
cases and delays
Sept – Desegregated schools open without
incident in Charlottesville, Virginia
Sept 10 – Public schools are closed and
Prince Edward Academy is opened for
white students
Feb 1 – Student lunch counter sit-in in
Greensboro, North Carolina
1960
Virginia General Assembly passes revised
legislation for tuition grants to support
segregation academy schools
1961
May – Freedom Rider buses travel to South
through Prince Edward County
American Friends Service Committee begins
efforts to send students out of county for
education
Prince Edward County passes local tuition
ordinance to support private segregated
education
1961
Interracial group "Richmond Committee of
Volunteers" begins educational and
recreational activities for out-of-school
children
Virginia Teachers Association organizes
summer remedial education program in
Prince Edward
1962
University of Mississippi desegregated
1962
March 28 – Martin Luther King, Jr. visits
county
Dec – U.S. Dept. of Justice joins NAACP
as friend of court in appeal of Prince
Edward case
Hampton Institute, Harvard and Yale
Universities organize summer education
programs
1963
Jan 1 – Centennial of the Emancipation
Proclamation
April-May – demonstrations in
Birmingham, Alabama
June 11 – George Wallace makes stand in
school door, University of Alabama
June 12 – Medgar Evers assassinated
in Jackson, Mississippi
1963
Feb 28 – President Kennedy addresses
Prince Edward crisis in message to
Congress
March 19 – Robert Kennedy speech,
"Something must be done about Prince
Edward County," Louisville, KY
Continuing legal battles in school
desegregation and tuition grant court cases
Summer – Sit-in demonstrations for
desegregated public facilities and reopening
of public schools
American Federation of Teachers and
students from Queens college organize
summer educational programs
Aug 28 – March on Washington
Kennedy Administration organizes the
Free Schools Association for Prince
Edward
Sept 15 – Sixteenth Street Baptist
Church bombed in Birmingham,
Alabama
Sept 16 – Free Schools Association
begins classes; first formal schooling
for black students since 1959
Nov 22 – President John F. Kennedy
assassinated in Dallas, Texas
1964
Jan 23 – 22nd Amendment ends poll tax in
Federal elections
1964
May – Robert F. Kennedy visits Free School
Association
Freedom Summer voter registration drive
July 2 – President Lyndon Johnson
signs the Civil Rights Act
May 24 – Griffin v. Board of Education
of Prince Edward County Supreme Cour
case orders the reopening of Prince
Edward County public schools
Aug 5 – Cheney, Goodman & Schwerner
murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi
Aug – Free Schools Association ends eleven
month program
Aug 18 – NAACP files suit challenging
Virginia state tuition vouchers
Sept – Public schools reopen in Prince
Edward after five years of being closed
Dec – Virginia tuition grants declared
unlawful
1965
March 7 –"Bloody Sunday" at Pettus
Bridge in Selma, Alabama
19671970
Continued black protest for adequate public
school funding, black teachers, and black
representation on the county school board
1972
Overcrowding at one county school the
same as at Moton High School at the time o
1951 strike
Aug 6 – Johnson signs Voting Rights Act
1968
April 4 – Martin Luther King, Jr.
assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee
May 27 – Green v. County School Board of
New Kent County, Virginia Supreme Court
case overturns "Freedom Of Choice" method
of slowing public school desegregation.
Produces first large scale public school
desegregation in most Virginia localities
1969
Tuition grants for segregated private
education rulled unconstitutional by the
federal court
1971
April 20 – Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg
Board of Education Supreme Court case
orders strong measures, such as busing and
school pairing, to accomplish full school
desegregation
County forced to increase public education
budget by 48 percent in order to meet new
minimum state standards
1974
Milliken v. Bradley Supreme Court case
limits use of desegregation methods to
single jurisdictions
1970s1980s
White students gradually return to public
schools
1996
October – Robert R. Moton High School is
placed on the National Register of Historic
Places
1998
August – Moton High School is designated a
National Historic Landmark by the U.S.
Secretary of the Interior, the highest level o
historical recognition offered by the federal
government
2001
Robert R. Moton Museum opens in former
Black high school
(Map Courtesy of McClintock & Derr Design)