Reaching for the Moon: The Struggle for Integration in Prince Edward County and America

Before the sit-ins in Greensboro, before the Montgomery bus boycott, before Rev. Martin Luther King, there was the 1951 Moton Student Strike in Farmville, Virginia. The 13-year battle to desegregate Prince Edward County’s public schools would reshape the nation and the future of American education. In April 1951, 16-year-old Barbara Rose Johns led her fellow Moton students to strike and file suit against “separate but equal” school accommodations. Their lawsuit would become the largest and only student-initiated case among the five combined into Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court ruling banning segregated public education. Profits from this Galley version will be donated to the Robert Russa Moton Museum.