At the former R.R. Moton High School, African-American students began a courageous, non-violent fight for equal educational opportunity that helped end legal segregation in American public schools. Built for 180 black students, the school held 450 on April 23, 1951, with some classes taught in tar-paper shacks, prompting a student walkout against unequal facilities, course offerings, and buses. Within weeks, the students sought legal redress, and the NAACP backed a suit for school integration as being in the community’s best interest. That case, Davis et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward, was decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1954 as part of Brown v. Board, which declared that in public education the doctrine of separate but equal had no place. A second Brown decision in 1955 ordered integration with all deliberate speed. Prince Edward County responded by withholding funds for public education rather than integrating, closing all county public schools from 1959 until 1964, when the Supreme Court ruled in Griffin v. Prince Edward that localities must fund and operate public schools. Prince Edward’s fully integrated public schools carry the legacy of this struggle, which began here and led to three historic United States Supreme Court rulings; the site became a National Historic Landmark in 1998 and formally opened as a museum in 2001.
