A Virginia County's Little Known Place in Civil Rights History

Humanites Magazine:

For some Farmville residents, the building, constructed in 1939 to house an all-black high school, reminds them of an era they’d rather forget. For others, it commemorates a thirteen-year legal struggle that should not be forgotten. For many, it has become a place to begin talking about what happened in Prince Edward County in the 1950s and ’60s.
In 1951, long before well-known actions such as the Montgomery bus boycott, students at Moton High School went on strike to protest inadequate facilities. Eventually, these students became plaintiffs in one of the five cases that were part of Brown v. Board of Education.
After the 1954 Brown ruling, there were efforts across the South to block integration. In Virginia, the governor closed public schools in several cities to prevent them from integrating. In 1959, the courts ruled that the closings were unconstitutional, and those schools reopened—at the same time, Prince Edward County refused to integrate and locked its doors.
For five years, Prince Edward schools remained closed while legal challenges bounced between courts. During that time, most white children attended the new private school created by segregationist leaders and funded by state tuition grants and private donations. About 1,700 black and lower-income white students tried to find schooling elsewhere or stayed home, waiting.

A little more:

Prince Edward leaders, including the Farmville mayor, a County Board of Supervisors member, and Wall, organized a group called the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberty. The Defenders believed violence would only hurt their cause. Their leader, Robert Crawford, quoted in the New Republic, said, “If this community should suffer just one incident of Klanism, our white case is lost. No matter who starts it, the whites will be blamed. We must not have it.”
After Brown II was handed down, the Defenders organized a meeting at Longwood College that drew more than 1,300 people. At the meeting, the Defenders presented their plan to close the public schools should they be ordered to desegregate. Those who questioned the plan were accused of being against the community. Through a conspicuous stand-up vote, the Defenders won approval to create what would become the private Prince Edward School Foundation.
Byrd called for “Massive Resistance” to the desegregation law and banded together with other southern congressmen in Washington to sign the “Southern Manifesto,” which stated: “This unwarranted exercise of power by the Court, contrary to the Constitution, is creating chaos and confusion in the States principally affected. It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through ninety years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding.” It continued, “We commend the motives of those States which have declared the intention to resist forced integration by any lawful means.”
Back in Virginia, the General Assembly passed a new set of laws in 1956 known as the Stanley Plan, which gave the governor the power to close any school that integrated and stipulated that school districts that integrated would lose state funding. In September 1958, when the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that schools in Charlottesville, Norfolk, and Warren County had to desegregate immediately, the governor closed those schools.

"It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through ninety years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding.”  Yes, indeed.  Shouldn't it more accurately read, "we don't want those black folks anywhere near our children because we think they are a lower form of life"?  Sounds like amicable relations to me.

Please, read the whole story.  I'm currently reading The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson.  It is such a tremendously powerful and tragic book.  It covers the Great Black Migration of the 20th century, and the massive racism faced by the migrants, both in the south, and in the rest of the country after they migrated.  If somebody wants to understand modern America, and today's Republican party, I suggest this article and Wilkerson's book.