
- Playing
- Strike
- From
- With Good Reason
In 1951 a group of African American students at Robert R. Moton High School in Prince Edward County, Virginia, organized a strike to protest the substandard school facilities provided for black students. The walkout, led by 16 year old Barbara Johns, is one of the great stories in the struggle for Civil Rights—a story of courage and persistence against what seemed at the time like overwhelming odds. Larissa Smith Fergeson (Longwood University) provides the historical context to the walkout; Lacy Ward Jr. (Moton Museum) interviews two students who participated in the strike and Mildred Robinson (University of Virginia) describes the effects on students and families when the Virginia government closed the schools rather than succumb to the federal mandate to integrate them.
More from With Good Reason
The Kids are Alright
(53:53)
From: With Good Reason
Have more children, spend less time on activities that you and your children don’t enjoy, and don’t stress out about parenting. Advice on raising children from an economist.
Chemistry Magic
(02:39)
From: With Good Reason
In mid-May, more than 1500 high school students competed in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. The winning projects included a prototype for a self-driving ...
The Art of Science
(53:48)
From: With Good Reason
Sometimes all it takes to get kids excited about science is a bag full of eyeballs.
First in the Family
(53:54)
From: With Good Reason
Nearly a third of college students in the United States are first-generation—meaning their parents and grandparents didn’t go. For many of these students, entering academia ...
The Temperament of FDR
(02:22)
From: With Good Reason
Scholars gathered recently at a conference in Virginia to explore the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The keynote address fell to a Stanford scholar who traced the role of ...
The Legacy of FDR
(53:54)
From: With Good Reason
An entire generation of Americans grew up knowing no other president than Franklin D. Roosevelt, who served four terms and led them through the Depression and World War II.
The Opera Singer
(53:48)
From: With Good Reason
John Aler made his operatic debut in 1977 as Ernesto in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale. Since then, he’s performed in some of the greatest opera houses in the world and has won ...
Butterfly in the Typewriter
(53:54)
From: With Good Reason
A Confederacy of Dunces, by New Orleans-born John Kennedy Toole, is one of the great stories of American literature. A new biography of Toole tells two stories: one of the ...
The Honeybees Are Alright
(02:27)
From: With Good Reason
For years, a mysterious “colony collapse disorder” has been killing honeybees across the nation. This year, commercial beekeepers have reported losses of nearly 50 percent of ...
Rainbows on Demand
(53:51)
From: With Good Reason
Spotting a rainbow requires a bit of luck—you know, being in the right place at the right time. But not if you make them yourself. For over two weeks last summer, Michael ...
Piece Description
In 1951 a group of African American students at Robert R. Moton High School in Prince Edward County, Virginia, organized a strike to protest the substandard school facilities provided for black students. The walkout, led by 16 year old Barbara Johns, is one of the great stories in the struggle for Civil Rights—a story of courage and persistence against what seemed at the time like overwhelming odds. Larissa Smith Fergeson (Longwood University) provides the historical context to the walkout; Lacy Ward Jr. (Moton Museum) interviews two students who participated in the strike and Mildred Robinson (University of Virginia) describes the effects on students and families when the Virginia government closed the schools rather than succumb to the federal mandate to integrate them.





