The
Brown V. Board of Education Case
Davis V. School Board of Prince Edward County
One hundred and seventeen students of an all-black high school called, Moton High, went on strike instead of attending said school because it needed desperate repair. At first, the students wanted to replace their old school with a whole new building that had indoor plumbing, unlike Moton. The leader of the strike got the help of the NAACP lawyers, and a lawsuit was soon filed on behalf of the Moton High students. Thurgood Marshall, a civil rights attorney, said while arguing this case that, “Equal means getting the same thing, at the same time and in the same place.”
Photo of strike sign used in the Moton Strikes
The District Court ordered that the students got new facilities that were equal to the white facilities, but County School Board then went against the US District Court’s orders, and rejected all of the black students. This resulted in an appeal by the NAACP attorneys to the US Supreme Court, where it would be joined with four other cases under one name; The Brown V. Board of Education of Topeka case. Walter A. Huxman, a judge in this case, said, “We weren’t in sympathy with the decision we rendered. If it weren’t for Plessy v. Ferguson, we surely would have found the law unconstitutional. But there was no way around it—the Supreme Court would have to overrule itself.”
Photo of Barbara John and her high school teacher
Barbara Johns was the leader of the strike. She, at the age of sixteen, quietly prearranged the entire student body of Moton High. She got the principal of the school to be lured off the campus. When the principal was gone; all four hundred and fifty students were called into the auditorium. The students convinced the teachers to leave, and Barbara got her classmates to walk out of the old and shabby building and to not return until a new school building was being constructed. Johns was not put on the lawsuit, in fear for her safety. She was eventually sent to live with her uncle in Alabama for safety purposes
Dorothy Davis was listed as the first plaintiff on the complaint filed on the behalf of the one hundred and seventeen Moton High students. The county school board strongly affirmed its stance on segregation and challenged all of the NAACP's arguments on how segregation hurt African American children.
Photo of Dorothy Davis and her fellow peers