The commemoration of a student civil rights movement in Farmville, Va., was evident in an article crafted by Carl Rowan entitled: "And a Little Child Shall Lead Them." The article was featured in the Saturday Evening Post. It was later shared with me by an early prominent student-civil rights activist: Barbara Johns Powell and her sister Joan Johns Cobbs in 1961. This was a decade after their student strike in Farmville, Va., sparked a revolution in the quest for equality and justice in American public education.
So much time has passed since that day. In fact, decades have passed. And now as historians research the early history of the civil rights movement, it is evident that it was Barbara Johns, an African-American child, who lead the first historic march out of a segregated school and changed the course of history and landscape of American public education in America forever.
It would be rather difficult to comprehend the enormous courage that it took to move against the institution of segregation that had become a way of life for centuries in American towns. An institution of segregation that was first embedded in the American slavery system and later ingrained in the quasi-freedom granted African Americans after the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a form of a racist segregation system of Jim Crow that had become so internalized in Virginia that everyone in town knew his/her "place." The physical signs, "whites" and "colored," were not really necessary but they were there. And as Joan Johns Cobbs states: "I remember that those signs were posted in Farmville at the train station and movie theater, etc." The Jim Crow laws were in the statutes and thereby enforced if anyone ever attempted to deviate from the norm. This was the law. Therefore, "Everyone in Farmville got along. They just lived and let live," my Aunt Inez Venable used to tell me.
Barbara Johns was born in 1935. She was only 16 years old when she decided to lead a student strike. She was frustrated by the inequities that surrounded her. "I decided, indeed, something had to be done about this inequality. I prayed for help. That night, whether in a dream or whether I was awake, a plan began to formulate in my mind. A plan that I felt was divinely inspired," Johns wrote.
And on that fateful day of April 23, 1951, Barbara Johns led the strike that occurred at RR Moton High School. And, the entire student body walked out with her. The students were walking away from the tar paper shacks which served as classrooms. They were walking away from the inadequate materials, equipment, and facilities. They were using nonviolent direct action as a means to end an injustice that had become a way of life for their ancestors, their parents, and their siblings. Surely, this was one giant step toward democracy. And that giant step resonated around the world.
The students walked out and their parents supported them. The federal court case, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward, supported them. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Attorneys Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill supported them. The students were supported by Brown v. Board's chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall who argued their case, which was one of the five cases that formed Brown v. Board of Education, which led to Justice Earl Warren's ruling of 1954 that "separate but equal" was unconstitutional. And again in 1955 Brown II, the second Supreme Court Case, Warren ordered desegregation of schools "with all deliberate speed."
The Supreme Court supported the student strikers. It supported the Reverend Francis Griffin in 1954 when a ruling was handed down, in Griffin v. County School Board. This forced the reopening of public schools in Prince Edward County six long years after the Prince Edward County supervisors voted to close public schools rather than desegregate them. In 1954 the Supreme Court reopened the public schools.
But it took the intervention of President John F. Kennedy, President Eisenhower's successor, and Robert F. Kennedy, the Attorney General of the United States, to place Farmville and Prince Edward County (as I remember my mother saying) "on the map." In 1963 the Kennedy Administration organized the Free Schools Association for Prince Edward County, which became the first formal schooling for black students since 1959. And the American Federation of Teachers and United Federation of Teachers helped in establishing freedom schools.
Robert F. Kennedy said the following in 1963 before visiting Farmville: "We may observe with much sadness and irony that, outside of Africa, south of the Sahara, where education is still a difficult challenge, the only places on earth known not to provide free public education are Communist China, North Viet Nam, Sarawak, Singapore, British Honduras - and Prince Edward County, Virginia. Something must be done about Prince Edward County."
Today, Barbara Johns' student-organized strike in Farmville, Va., has been viewed as the beginning of the democratization of the American public education system. Today we remember Barbara Johns Powell: a married mother of five children, who attended Spelman College and completed her education at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pa. Barbara Johns Powell, the young student activist, became a librarian/teacher in the Philadelphia Public Schools and served for 23 years, until her untimely death in 1991.
Now, her legacy lives on. Her leadership is remembered and revered by many throughout our country and even in Prince Edward County, where the civil rights movement in public education began. Therefore the following notice recently in the press seemed to be a fitting and lasting tribute to her:
"Stanley Bleifeld, sculptor, will design a monument to honor the legacy of two giants in the struggle for Civil Rights in America: the late Thurgood Marshall and the late Barbara Johns. This privately financed monument will stand on Virginia's Capitol grounds. Mr. Bleifeld's design centers on a massive stone block. One side will read "Brown vs. Board of Education," a nod to the landmark school desegregation case. The other would feature "Moton High School," the Farmville school central in that case. Bronze images of Virginia civil rights leaders surrounding the tablet would include one of Barbara Johns. A relief of the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall will also emerge from the block." And in the year 2008, it became a reality.
Perhaps it may be difficult to find Carl Rowan's tribute to Barbara Johns: "And and Little Child Shall Lead Them." However, the memory of Barbara Johns, as the leader of the student civil rights movement, will be cast in stone. It was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who told us to let justice roll down like waters in a mighty stream. We must be just like the Prophet Amos, who was seeking not consensus ... but the cleansing action of revolutionary change. America has made progress toward freedom. But King reminded us that measured against the goal, the road ahead is still long and hard. Therefore this could be the worst possible moment for slowing down.
We know even today, the road ahead which leads to justice and equality for all Americans is still long and hard. But King also said: "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." And surely, now that a little child has led the way, we must press on!
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