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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 unsung stories in the struggle for Civil Rights. The student strike occurred four years before the actions of actions of Rosa Parks and nine years before the sit-ins throughout the South. Their story is one of courage and persistence against what seemed at the time like overwhelming odds. Eight years after the student walkout, rather than succumb to a federal mandate to integrate, the state of Virginia closed down the public schools in Prince Edward County as part of a policy called Massive Resistance. The closure lasted five years. The program features interviews with former students who participated in the strike and others who describe their wrenching experience of being locked out and the difficult decisions parents made to ensure education for their children. Also featured are interviews with historians who put the policy and legacy of Massive Resistance into context of the history of the Civil Rights movement in this country.
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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 unsung stories in the struggle for Civil Rights. The student strike occurred four years before the actions of actions of Rosa Parks and nine years before the sit-ins throughout the South. Their story is one of courage and persistence against what seemed at the time like overwhelming odds. Eight years after the student walkout, rather than succumb to a federal mandate to integrate, the state of Virginia closed down the public schools in Prince Edward County as part of a policy called Massive Resistance. The closure lasted five years. The program features interviews with former students who participated in the strike and others who describe their wrenching experience of being locked out and the difficult decisions parents made to ensure education for their children. Also featured are interviews with historians who put the policy and legacy of Massive Resistance into context of the history of the Civil Rights movement in this country.
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