The Legend of Barbara Johns & the Moton High Strike

ED: Thanks for downloading this episode of “Backstory” about young people in American politics. If you like what you hear, there are over 200 other episodes to choose from at backstoryradio.org. Enjoy the show.

JOANNE: Major funding for Backstory” is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Virginia, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

ED: From Virginia Humanities, this is “Backstory.”

BRIAN: Welcome to “Backstory, the American History Podcast.” I’m Brian Balogh.

JOANNE: I’m Joanne Freeman.

ED: And I’m Ed Ayers.

BRIAN: If you’re new to the podcast, Joanne, Ed, our colleague Nathan Connelly, and I are all historians. Each week, we explore the history of a topic that’s been in the news.

ED: Farmville, Virginia is just about an hour south of our studio here in Chloette’s. And in 1951, Farmville became the epicenter of the desegregation movement in America. But this movement didn’t start in a church or a lunch counter, it was started at a high school by a 16-year-old girl.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JOANNE: Robert Russell Moton High School was built for African-American students in Prince Edward County. It was one of only 12 black high schools in rural Virginia.

BRIAN: The school had no plumbing and was heated by wood stoves. No gymnasium, athletic field, or cafeteria. Tar paper buildings were constructed to alleviate overcrowding. And some students took classes in an abandoned school bus.

Farmville High, the white high school in town looked a heck of a lot better by comparison.

SAMUEL WILLIAMS: For instance, they had a modern science lab, we did not. We had just one microscope, one for 400 some students.

BRIAN: This is Rev. Samuel Williams, who was a student at Moton High.

SAMUEL WILLIAMS: They had a first aid room, teacher’s lounge, we didn’t have any of that. Athletically, we received their hand-me-down football clothes. Athletically when we had to play football, our coach would get together with the white coach to let us go over and practice the night before the game so that we could get accustomed to playing at night. We didn’t have lights on our field.

[BELL RINGING]

BRIAN: On April 23, 1951, Moton High students gathered for a morning assembly. Here’s Joy Cabarrus Speaks, a Moton student at the time.

JOY CABARRUS SPEAKS: We thought that it was just the principal calling us in for the usual assembly, something that he had to discuss. But when we got into the auditorium, all of us and the curtain open, there was Barbara Johns along with the others, Kerry Stokes, John Stokes, and others that were on the committee.

BRIAN: Barbara Johns, that 16-year-old we mentioned earlier, had taken it upon herself to do something about Moton.

BARBARA JOHNS: This is a meeting for the students to talk about the bad conditions here at Robert R Moton High School. I asked that all the teachers please leave before we begin.

SAMUEL WILLIAMS: None of the students or the bulk of the students did not know, they were not aware of really what was transpiring in the auditorium at that time. It was done in such fashion, that the principal, Mr. Jones, was tricked to go downtown to check on some students. He had received a call that things were disordered, at that. And that was how the internal committee structured things in order to get him out of the auditorium.

BARBARA JOHNS: For too long, we have quietly accepted the hand me downs that end up in the school. I say, no longer. There are some who tell us that we should be content with what we have, that some day in the future things will be better. When will that day happen?

JOANNE: Barbara Johns and a small committee of friends lead their fellow students to walk out of Moton High and strike against the substandard conditions of the school. And they did a number of things, they picketed houses of school board members with placards that read, “We want a new school, or none at all.” And, “Down with tar paper shacks.” They met with the school superintendent, who told them nothing could be done until they went back to class. The students refused, and parents weren’t sure what to make of it.

SAMUEL WILLIAMS: There was a lot of ambivalence, immediate ambivalence among the parents and other relatives in the community. For instance, we went from one extreme to the other. “Go back to school, you may not have the state of the art equipment as to what white people have in the white high school, but I didn’t have that when I attended school. Go back.”

JOY CABARRUS SPEAKS: The day of the strike when I went home– and really that day, I was more fearful of what my grandparents were going to say than I was on any other repercussions at the time. But when I got home, my grandmother, who was a teacher also, she said she did not think it was right.

SAMUEL WILLIAMS: Then there were others who said, “No, no. You stand your ground. Protest, develop dull determination.” And then there were some who weighed in between until they began to grasp the meaning and get a firm grip on what we were doing.

JOY CABARRUS SPEAKS: The parents had been fighting for a better school for a long time, and they didn’t get it. So their children just got ahead of them and were able to put it into motion.

ED: The Moton High students stayed on strike for nearly two weeks. But it was two years until they were able to move to into a building with facilities equal to the white school. With help from the NAACP, the Moton strike resulted in a court case that became part of Brown V Board of Educaton, the Supreme Court decision that mandated desegregation in public schools.

As for Barbara Johns, well her life was never the same. She left Farmville shortly after the strike.

JOY CABARRUS SPEAKS: Because they feared for her life, because of the threats on her life. But the thing is that anything that you do, you have to make a sacrifice. There’s a sacrifice for everything that you can do that you achieved something from.

BARBARA JOHNS: We wanted so much here, and have so little.

BRIAN: Here’s Barbara Jones in a rare television interview.

JOY CABARRUS SPEAKS: And we have talents and abilities here that weren’t really being realized. And I thought that was a tragic scene. And then basically, what motivated me to want to see some change take place here.

JOY CABARRUS SPEAKS: And what she did will show a young person, a young man, a young woman that they can change government. Whatever they feel that’s unfair or should be different, they can make a difference in this world and in this nation. All they have to do is stand for what they feel should be changed.

[MUSIC PLAYING]