Farmville

In the spring of 1951 students at Robert Russa Morton High School in Farmville, Virginia walked out, kicking off a student strike in protest of the inferior facilities at their school, in comparison to those at Farmville’s all-white high school. The strike was led by 16-year-old Barbara Rose Johns and is now credited as the beginning of the school desegregation movement in America. The student strike got the attention of lawyers from the NAACP, who filed a lawsuit on behalf of the students. Eventually bundled with other lawsuits, the litigation ended at the United States Supreme Court with the Brown vs. Board of Education decision that required integration of schools.

Barbara Johns went on to graduate from Drexel University, afterwards becoming a librarian in Philadelphia and the mother of five children. She died of bone cancer in 1991 at age 56. She was the niece of prominent pastor and civil rights activist Vernon Johns. The image is her 1952 high school graduation photo.

The Farmville student walkout organized and led by Barbara Rose Johns began on April 23, 1951.