At The Crossroads
The southern Virginia community is adorned with red, white, and blue signs that mark significant historical sites from the Civil War era, resembling the prevalence of stop signs in the area’s rolling farmlands. This county served as the backdrop for the final moments of the war, with the decisive battle taking place at Sayler’s Creek, just 20 minutes east of here, resulting in the loss of over 3,000 Confederate soldiers. Notably, both Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant stayed in Farmville, the county seat of Prince Edward County, for a night before proceeding to Appomattox Court House, located 28 miles away, for the formal surrender.
Moving forward almost a century, the county’s white population found themselves engaging in a similar struggle, but this time against the U.S. Supreme Court. One of the five landmark school desegregation cases decided by the Supreme Court in 1954 as part of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling originated in this very county. However, unlike other communities involved in the legal battle, Prince Edward County chose not to comply with the federal court’s decision. Instead, they closed down their public schools and kept them locked for an agonizing period of five years.
As the 20th century comes to a close, the residents of the county have finally put their fight behind them. White students have gradually returned to the public schools, resulting in one of the most integrated educational systems in the country. The school system, once considered the worst in the state, is now widely recognized as one of the best in this rural area of Virginia known as the Old Dominion.
Isaac, a friend of Barbara Johns’ younger sister, was among the student leaders called upon by Johns to lead the strike in 1951. Isaac’s 83-year-old mother, Vera J. Allen, vividly recalls how they first learned of the news. "My husband was in town when a man approached him and said, ‘Didn’t I see your daughter walking with that group heading downtown? Why don’t you go and pull her out?’ My husband replied, ‘Well, I didn’t put her in.’" Allen, who worked as a visiting teacher in the black school system at the time, remembers feeling terrified.
When Allen’s teaching contract was up for renewal the following year, the county refused to extend it. She spent the next few years working in the school systems of Wayne County, N.C., and Caroline County, Va., while commuting home on weekends, where her husband managed the family funeral home and raised their two teenage daughters. Allen eventually returned to Farmville in 1960 and became the assistant to the superintendent of the Prince Edward County school system. Now retired, she is currently leading an initiative to transform the old Moton school into a museum dedicated to civil rights. The group is halfway towards their fundraising goal of $300,000 needed to purchase the property from the county. When asked why she didn’t leave, Allen explains, "We had our family business and a home. In those days, owning a home was a significant accomplishment."
Allen’s daughters, Edwilda Isaac and Edna Allen Bledsoe, managed to graduate before the schools closed down. They both pursued higher education out-of-state and are now employed as teachers. Isaac teaches band at a public middle school, while Bledsoe works at Longwood College, a state institution located in downtown Farmville.
However, younger black students faced tremendous challenges in continuing their education. Some never returned to their hometown. Rita Moseley, who was 12 when the schools closed, remained at home for two years until a Girl Scout leader convinced her mother to find a way for her to continue schooling. The American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that helped secure school placements for some older black children, arranged for Moseley to live with a white family of educators in Blacksburg, Va., so that she could attend an integrated public school there.
As a result, majority of the students from Moseley who were eager to attend school missed out completely during the lengthy lockout. In their late teens and early twenties, they felt too old to return to their studies. Anna Harrison also experienced this hardship when her mother sent her off on a train to live with her brother in New York City when the school closures began. "I was not accustomed to being in such a big city," Harrison recalls. She was only 14 years old at the time and had to take on the responsibilities of shopping, cooking, and managing the household for her brother. When she returned, she was devastated to see the chains on the school doors and felt cheated. She never had the opportunity to know her older siblings and made a promise to herself that if she ever had a family, they would stay together no matter what. Harrison struggled academically during her first semester at the integrated high school she attended in New York and hoped her poor grades would convince her mother to let her come back home. However, her school counselor, Mrs. Cosby, encouraged her to persevere. Harrison followed her advice and successfully obtained her diploma. "If you were to listen to everyone from that time, they would each have a different story, like pieces of a quilt," says Penny Hackett, who attended 1st grade in a neighboring county. "To each person, it meant something different, and we all know that quilts are passed down from family to family. They hold significance."
Hackett and her siblings had to travel to a relative’s roadside market every morning to catch a ride with a white teacher from the neighboring Appomattox County who would take them to school. "If she had errands to run after school, we had to hide in our seats because we were not supposed to be transported across county lines," Hackett remembers. The hiding and separation finally came to an end in 1964 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Griffin v. Board of Education that public schools had to resume operations. Now, all three women are involved in the school system that once rejected them. Hackett teaches art at Prince Edward County High School, which is located in the same building that was built to replace Moton. Moseley, who is a parent of two graduates from the school, works as the school secretary, and Harrison is a substitute teacher. Harrison’s youngest daughter, Dwauleka, is currently a 10th grader at the high school and has never experienced the educational hardships her mother went through. Dwauleka is a B student who plans on attending college and studying physical therapy or sports medicine. She has found that most of her classes are diverse and include students from different racial backgrounds. Dwauleka only remembers experiencing prejudice once, in a 9th grade math class where a few white students isolated themselves from the rest of the class and never interacted with Dwauleka or her black classmates.
His great-grandfather passed away during the Civil War, a mere month after joining the Confederate army. Taylor vividly recalls the battle casualty numbers and the unjust tariffs imposed on the South, as if they occurred just yesterday. In his perspective, the fight for desegregation in the county was, much like the war itself, a matter of states’ rights. In a slow, drawling baritone, he expresses, "At that time, people hadn’t completely submitted to the federal government like they do now. We were chosen, mainly by Senator [Harry Flood] Byrd [Sr.], to carry the torch on this issue." Senator Byrd, a dedicated segregationist, had attempted to organize a campaign of "massive resistance" throughout the state, but only Prince Edward County stood firm. However, Taylor admits that he himself vehemently opposed desegregation. He argues, "Black children with a 7th grade education were not receiving any more education than white children in 4th or 5th grade. If we had implemented gradual integration and elevated the education of these children so they could reach parity, I don’t believe there would have been a problem. But just look at the kind of graduates we have now, with this social promotion still ongoing." His own children and grandchildren all attended private schools, with the majority graduating from Prince Edward Academy. Eventually, Taylor became the chairman of the academy’s board.
Although Taylor’s mindset has not changed in the four decades since the school closings, the institution he helped establish is making efforts to transform itself. With its expansive 60-acre campus and modern school buildings resembling those in California, the academy, now operating under a new name, caters to 600 students, which is less than half of its original enrollment. These students, previously predominantly from Prince Edward, now come from 13 counties in Southside Virginia. Decreasing enrollment in the early 1990s nearly led to the closure of the school. Taylor managed to save it by reaching out to J.B. Fuqua, a wealthy Atlanta businessman whom he had grown up with in the nearby village of Prospect. Fuqua initially invested $10 million into the school with the condition that it be transformed into a "model school of excellence for rural America." "When he referred to a ‘rural model of excellence,’ he also meant for the school to be open to all qualified students," explains Carolyn Culicerto, the academy’s communications director. The school’s leadership at the time seized this opportunity, swiftly changing the school mascot and colors, renaming it Fuqua Academy in honor of its benefactor.
Nevertheless, the sudden transition encountered initial challenges. To address these issues, J.B. Fuqua brought in Ruth S. Murphy, a public school administrator from North Carolina, to assume the role of school president four years ago. Murphy introduced block scheduling and an open-governance policy, conducting school board meetings in public and seeking input from faculty in decision-making. In the early grades, she implemented multi-age classes, enabling children to progress at their own pace. Additionally, she opened up the school’s summer pool memberships to the wider Farmville community. "Diversity enhances the school community," states Fuqua Academy’s revised mission statement, "and should be embraced."
In the case of demolishing the former R.R. Moton High School, Woodley suggests that Independence Hall should also be torn down and the Liberty Bell should be thrown into the river. Woodley, who is a member of the project’s board of directors, received recognition from the black community two years ago for his contributions to the museum. He values the museum project as a way to improve race relations in the county and believes that it brings together the black and white communities. Woodley sees this as a personal mission and believes that it can set an example for bringing people from different backgrounds together.
A Confederate soldier statue stands outside of Farmville United Methodist Church, where Reverend Sylvia S. Meadows serves as an associate pastor. Rev. Meadows also views racial unity as a personal mission. Having attended a predominantly white school herself, she did not realize anything was unusual about her education. However, she now acknowledges the existence of racism. While growing up, Meadows experienced private classes in the basement of the church where she now works, but her family never showed any racist attitudes. Although she heard occasional racist jokes from classmates, both white and black colleagues have made jokes about each other. Meadows recalls some frightening incidents, such as her parents being called to a bank in the middle of the night to secure grants for private school tuition. Despite these experiences, her perspective on the desegregation conflict expanded when she began working in the predominantly black Prince Edward County school system. She was impressed by the enthusiasm of the students and the dedication of black teachers. Meadows continued her career in education and eventually became a guidance counselor in public schools.
During President John F. Kennedy’s administration, Farmville received funding from the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity to address the lack of education for its young residents. Robert Taylor and Francis Griffin were entrusted to lead this program. Griffin, a pastor at the First Baptist Church, had grown up in close proximity to Taylor. Taylor acknowledges the significant role Griffin, who has since passed away, played in preventing violence during a time marked by racial tensions. Griffin made sure to inform the local sheriff about planned demonstrations, which allowed the visits of U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to occur peacefully.
Others in the community also contributed to maintaining a peaceful atmosphere. Rita Moseley chose to wait several years before sharing with her own children the years of missed schooling she experienced during her upbringing. She feared that revealing this earlier would breed resentment towards their white neighbors and classmates. Anna Harrison attributes the lack of open doors in education to the government rather than the people themselves. She believes that the government had the authority to facilitate integration.
James M. Anderson Jr. was a natural choice to lead the predominantly black school system into the era of integration due to his deep roots in rural Southside Virginia. Although he was white, Anderson’s upbringing in neighboring Buckingham County made the black community trust him as superintendent of schools. Reluctantly, the white community also accepted him due to his strong reputation. As the principal of Buckingham Central High School, Anderson made a significant change by awarding the valedictorian title to a black student for the first time in 1969. Traditionally, this honor had been given to the student with the highest grade point average.
Upon hearing this news, Anderson’s superintendent asked him to reverse his decision, claiming that the student had transferred to Buckingham Central High School. However, the determined principal pointed out that the previous year’s valedictorian, who was white, had also been a transfer student, and no objections were raised then. The superintendent argued that the African-American student had achieved her grades in the black school, but the principal politely refuted this claim.
When the superintendent threatened that county officials would not attend the graduation ceremony if Anderson persisted, the principal stood his ground. As a result, no superintendent, school board member, or county supervisor attended the ceremony. Anderson recalls the two empty rows at the commencement, symbolizing the absence of support from the superintendent and county officials. He felt strongly that denying the African-American student her rightful recognition would be a grave injustice that he couldn’t sleep peacefully knowing he had contributed to.
During that time, a law had been passed in the state requiring school systems to provide a minimum level of funding. Anderson remembers that in order to meet that minimum, there was a need for a 48 percent increase in school funding. Consequently, he spent the next few years advocating for funds to renovate old schools and construct new ones to alleviate overcrowding. One elementary school, for instance, became so congested that the absence of walls made it necessary for visitors to navigate between student desks to enter the building.
A pivotal moment occurred in 1979 when Longwood College closed its campus school, which had previously catered to the children of faculty members from both Longwood and Hampden-Sydney. As a result, more than half of the former students enrolled in the public school system. Around the same time, the new president of Hampden-Sydney, Josiah Bunting III, arrived in town and chose to send his own children to public school. This decision by prominent, highly educated white families may have influenced others to consider the public schools as a viable option.
Anderson takes pride in the fact that the demographic transformation of Prince Edward County’s schools occurred without any violence, busing, magnet schools, or federal programs. His approach was simple: disregard the competition and focus on improving the schools. In addition to enhancing regular instruction, he made sure that the schools offered a variety of opportunities. Foreign language classes in the district’s high school and middle school expanded beyond Spanish and French to now include Latin, Russian, Japanese, and German.
Extracurricular activities flourished at the high school, making it a source of envy for students in neighboring counties. Prince Edward High School now provides a wide range of options, from literary journals and debate clubs to tennis and golf teams. The yearbook serves as evidence that these teams and clubs include students of different races. Anderson considered his goal accomplished when the county board of supervisors unanimously approved his request for $5 million to renovate the high school, a project that was completed recently in the summer. With his work concluded, Anderson retired in 1997.
As a seventh-generation Southerner himself, Anderson comprehends the sentiments that led the prominent residents of Prince Edward County to make the decision they did four decades ago. His own grandfather served as a Confederate soldier, a fact which he staunchly defends due to the matter of states’ rights. However, Anderson proudly highlights that after leaving the army, his grandfather obtained a teaching job in a one-room school for black students.
