After the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka in 1954 that American schools must integrate, Senator Harry S. Byrd and several Virginia governors followed a policy of massive resistance, and in Prince Edward County the governing bodies closed the public schools entirely from 1959 to 1964 rather than comply. White children could attend the newly established Prince Edward Academy, though many white families either could not afford it or did not think it necessary, leaving their children without schooling. For Black children, rudimentary training schools were created in churches, homes, and other buildings, often staffed by unpaid and untrained teachers because salaried teachers had gone elsewhere for work. An organized effort led by Farmville's First Baptist and Beulah AME churches created the so-called Free Schools, where student volunteers came to teach and live with local Black families. Many Black and white children were also sent to other counties to live with friends or relatives so they could attend school, while others kept working on farms, expecting the closure to last only a year or so. The result was that many of Prince Edward County's young people lost years of education during the civil rights movement, becoming part of the so-called Lost Generation. After the schools reopened in 1964, extensive improvements gradually produced a 135-acre campus with three schools serving the county's diverse student population.
