Robert Russa Moton Museum

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Robert Russa Moton Museum
Robert Russa Moton Museum
Location900 Griffin Boulevard in Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia
Coordinates 37°17′28″N78°23′52″W / 37.29111°N 78.39778°W / 37.29111; -78.39778
Robert Russa Moton High School
Robert Russa Moton High School, Farmville, VA.JPG
USA Virginia location map.svg
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LocationJct. of S. Main St. and Griffin Blvd., Farmville, Virginia
Area5 acres (2.0 ha) [1]
Built1939 (1939)
Architectural styleClassical Revival
NRHP reference No. 95001177
VLR No.144-0053
Significant dates
Added to NRHPOctober 24, 1995 [2]
Designated NHLAugust 5, 1998 [3]
Designated VLRMarch 19, 1997 [4]

The Robert Russa Moton Museum (popularly known as the Moton Museum or Moton) is a historic site and museum in Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia. It is located in the former Robert Russa Moton High School, considered "the student birthplace of America's Civil Rights Movement" for its initial student strike and ultimate role in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case desegregating public schools. [5] [6] It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1998, and is now a museum dedicated to that history. In 2022 it was designated an affiliated area of Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park. [7] [6] The museum (and school) were named for African-American educator Robert Russa Moton.

Contents

The former Moton School is a single-story brick Colonial Revival building, built in 1939 in response to activism and legal challenges from the local African-American community and legal challenges from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It houses six classrooms and an office arranged around a central auditorium. It had no cafeteria or restrooms for teachers. Built to handle 180 students, already by the 1940s it struggled to hold 450; the County, whose all-white board refused to appropriate funds for properly expanding the school facilities, built long temporary buildings to house the overflow. Covered with roofing material, they were called the "tar-paper shacks." [1] [5]

Civil rights history

Robert Russa Moton High School
Location
Robert Russa Moton Museum
Information
TypePublic, segregated
Opened1939
Closed1954
Enrollment180 (1939)
450 (1940s)
Last updated: December 31, 2017

Robert Russa Moton High School was a segregated public high school in Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia. It was constructed in 1939 at the instigation of the Council of Colored Women, led by Martha E. Forrester. [8] [6]

In 1951 a group of students, led by 16-year-old Barbara Rose Johns, staged a walkout in protest of the conditions. The NAACP took up their case after students agreed to seek an integrated school rather than improved conditions at their black school. Howard University-trained attorneys Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill filed suit on May 23, 1951. In Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County , a state court rejected the suit, agreeing with defense attorney T. Justin Moore that Virginia was vigorously equalizing black and white schools. The verdict was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and was subsequently incorporated into Brown v. Board of Education , in which the court ruled against the principle of "separate but equal" facilities and mandated the integration of public school systems. [1]

In 1953-54, as part of an argument that it was active in seeking to improve separate but equal conditions, the county built a new high school for African-Americans, and this building became an elementary school.

The struggle to integrate the county's schools was one of the longest in the country. The county eventually refused to fund any public schools rather than integrate, as part of a statewide anti-integration effort known as Massive Resistance, and there were no public schools for five years, between 1959-64. [5] [9] [10] The Prince Edward School Foundation created a series of private schools to educate the county's white children. [11] These schools were supported by tuition grants from the state and tax credits from the county. Prince Edward Academy was one of the first such schools in Virginia which came to be called segregation academies.

Many families and students emigrated elsewhere or were forced to forgo formal education. Some received schooling with relatives outside of the County or in "training centers" and "grassroots schools" held in African-American churches, businesses and civic halls. Others were sent across the state and country to live with host families recruited by local NAACP leaders, the American Friends Service Committee and the all-black Virginia Teachers Association. In 1963–64, at the urging of local organizers, the Kennedy Administration-supported Prince Edward Free Schools opened in four County schools leased by the Prince Edward Free Schools Association. The 1964 Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County Supreme Court decision ordered the reopening of Prince Edward County Public Schools with full integration.

Museum

Today the Moton School stands as a reminder of the struggle for Civil Rights in Education. A 1994 New York Newsday report commended Prince Edward County as the only area involved in the Brown decision to desegregate its schools successfully and peacefully. The museum houses exhibits containing Moton High School memorabilia, artifacts of the Civil Rights Movement, and oral histories of former teachers and students who recall their experiences of the student walkout and the school closings. Docents are available to give guided tours of the museum. In 2013, Moton completed a $5.5 million renovation and open its first permanent exhibition, The Moton School Story: Children of Courage.

The museum also serves as a Center for the Study of Civil Rights in Education, providing programs to explore the history of desegregation in education and to promote dialogue about community relations. It is also an anchor site of the Civil Rights in Education Heritage Trail. The trail contains 41 sites across southside Virginia which depict the broadening of educational opportunities.

The building served as a primary school in the county school system until 1993. At the time of the school's final closure, the Martha E. Forrester Council of Women launched a movement to preserve it as a memorial to the struggle for civil rights in education. In 1998, R. R. Moton School was declared a National Historic Landmark. [3]

See also

Related Research Articles

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. The decision partially overruled the Court's 1896 decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, which held that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that had come to be known as "separate but equal." The Court's unanimous decision in Brown and its related cases paved the way for integration, was a major victory of the civil rights movement, and a model for many future impact litigation cases.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prince Edward County, Virginia</span> County in Virginia, United States

Prince Edward County is located in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 21,849. Its county seat is Farmville.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Farmville, Virginia</span> Town in Virginia, United States

Farmville is a town in Prince Edward and Cumberland counties in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The population was 7,473 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Prince Edward County.

Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County was one of the five cases combined into Brown v. Board of Education, the famous case in which the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1954, officially overturned racial segregation in U.S. public schools. The Davis case was the only such case to be initiated by a student protest. The case challenged segregation in Prince Edward County, Virginia.

Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park was established in Topeka, Kansas, on October 26, 1992, by the United States Congress to commemorate the landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Brown v. Board of Education aimed at ending racial segregation in public schools. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously declared that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" and, as such, violated the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees all citizens "equal protection of the laws."

Massive resistance was a strategy declared by U.S. senator Harry F. Byrd Sr. of Virginia and his son Harry Jr.'s brother-in-law, James M. Thomson, who represented Alexandria in the Virginia General Assembly, to get the state's white politicians to pass laws and policies to prevent public school desegregation, particularly after Brown v. Board of Education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Russa Moton</span> American educator and author (1867–1940)

Robert Russa Moton was an 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oliver Hill (attorney)</span> American lawyer (1907–2007)

Oliver White Hill, Sr. was an American civil rights attorney from Richmond, Virginia. His work against racial discrimination helped end the doctrine of "separate but equal." He also helped win landmark legal decisions involving equality in pay for black teachers, access to school buses, voting rights, jury selection, and employment protection. He retired in 1998 after practicing law for almost 60 years. Among his numerous awards was the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which U.S. President Bill Clinton awarded him in 1999.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fuqua School</span> Private school in Farmville, Virginia, United States

Fuqua School is a private primary and secondary school located in Farmville, Virginia. Founded in 1959 as Prince Edward Academy, a whites-only segregation academy, the school was renamed after businessman J. B. Fuqua made a large contribution to the school in 1993.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spottswood William Robinson III</span> American judge

Spottswood William Robinson III was an American civil rights lawyer, jurist, and educator who served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1966 to 1989. He previously served as a U.S. district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia from 1964 to 1966.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara Rose Johns</span> American civil rights activist

Barbara Rose Johns Powell was a leader in the American civil rights movement. On April 23, 1951, at the age of 16, Powell led a student strike for equal education opportunities at R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia. After securing NAACP legal support, the Moton students filed Davis v. Prince Edward County, the only student-initiated case consolidated into Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring "separate but equal" public schools unconstitutional.

Prince Edward County High School is a public high school located in the Farmville area of Prince Edward County, Virginia. The high school is part of the Prince Edward County School Division. The division consists of three Schools: Prince Edward County Elementary School, Prince Edward County Middle School and the Prince Edward County High school. Athletic teams compete in the Virginia High School League's AA Southside District in Region I.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virginia Civil Rights Memorial</span> Monument in Virginia State Capitol

The Virginia Civil Rights Memorial is a monument in Richmond, Virginia, commemorating protests which helped bring about school desegregation in the state. The memorial was opened in July 2008, and is located on the grounds of the Virginia State Capitol. It features eighteen statues of leaders or participants in the Civil Rights Movement on four sides of a rectangular granite stone block onto which are carved quotes. The memorial was designed by Stanley Bleifeld, who was chosen by the commission behind the construction of the monument. The memorial cost $2.8 million which was financed by private donations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First Baptist Church (Farmville, Virginia)</span> Historic church in Virginia, United States

First Baptist Church is a historic African-American Baptist church located at Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia. It was built between about 1855 an 1895, and is a one-story, rectangular brick Late Gothic Revival style church building on a full basement. The building features a square tower centered on the primary façade, pointed arch windows with stained- and milk-glass panes, a primary entry with double leaf doors topped by a pointed arch transom and, on the interior, original wood pews and beaded board wainscoting. The church was the site of a number of meetings related to the desegregation of Prince Edward County schools during the 1950s and 1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">School integration in the United States</span> Racial desegregation process

In the United States, school integration is the process of ending race-based segregation within American public and private schools. Racial segregation in schools existed throughout most of American history and remains an issue in contemporary education. During the Civil Rights Movement school integration became a priority, but since then de facto segregation has again become prevalent.

This is a timeline of the civil rights movement in the United States, a nonviolent mid-20th century freedom movement to gain legal equality and the enforcement of constitutional rights for people of color. The goals of the movement included securing equal protection under the law, ending legally institutionalized racial discrimination, and gaining equal access to public facilities, education reform, fair housing, and the ability to vote.

Moton may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martha E. Forrester</span> African-American civil rights activist

Martha E. Forrester (1863–1951) was an African-American civil rights activist.

Rev. Leslie Francis Griffin was an American civil rights advocate, and minister. He was nicknamed the "fighting preacher," because of his activism, and served as the pastor at First Baptist Church.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edwilda Gustava Allen Isaac</span> American civil rights pioneer (1937–2022)

Edwilda Gustava Isaac was an American civil rights pioneer. She participated in the 1951 walkout of the segregated Robert Russa Moton High School to protest unequal conditions.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Jarl K. Jackson, Julie L. Vosmik, Tara D. Morrison and Marie Tyler-McGraw (1998), National Historic Landmark Nomination: Robert Russa Moton High School / Farmville Elementary School; VDHR File No. 144-53 (pdf), National Park Service{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) and Accompanying 7 photos, exterior and interior, from 1995  (32 KB)
  2. ↑ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. January 23, 2007.
  3. 1 2 "Robert Russa Moton High School". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Archived from the original on June 6, 2011. Retrieved April 15, 2008.
  4. ↑ "Virginia Landmarks Register". Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Retrieved June 5, 2013.
  5. 1 2 3 Richmond, Emily (May 16, 2014). "The Forgotten School in Brown v. Board of Education". The Atlantic .
  6. 1 2 3 "Robert Russa Moton High School and Robert Russa Moton Museum". US Civil Rights Trail. Retrieved March 22, 2023.
  7. ↑ "President Biden Signs Law to Expand and Redesignate Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park". U.S. Department of the Interior. May 12, 2022. Retrieved May 13, 2022.
  8. ↑ "Virginia Department of Historic Resources". www.dhr.virginia.gov. Retrieved February 13, 2018.
  9. ↑ Bonastia, Christopher (December 21, 2009). "White Justifications for School Closings in Prince Edward County, Virginia, 1959–1964". Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race. 6 (2): 309–333. doi:10.1017/S1742058X09990178. ISSN   1742-0598. S2CID   145446946 – via Cambridge University Press.
  10. ↑ Bonastia, Christopher (2012). Southern Stalemate: Five Years Without Public Education in Prince Edward County, Virginia. University of Chicago Press. ISBN   9780226063898.
  11. ↑ J. Herbst (April 16, 2006). School Choice and School Governance: A Historical Study of the United States and Germany. Palgrave Macmillan US. pp. 98–. ISBN   978-0-312-37622-2.

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