The date is April 23, 1951. Students at the African-American Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville have gotten the principal, M. Boyd Jones, out of the building by reporting truant students at the local bus station and called all classes to the auditorium by forging written announcements of a school assembly. Teachers have just been escorted from the auditorium.
Instead of the principal, 16-year-old Barbara Johns, niece of Reverend Vernon Johns, native of Prince Edward County and the renowned minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, appears on the stage and announces a strike to protest the overcrowded conditions, the shacks and the seemingly futile efforts to build a new high school.
On Wednesday, January 20, Longwood faculty, staff and students and local community members are invited to attend a public reading of the unpublished diary of Barbara Johns. Student, faculty, and staff volunteers will take turns reading from the diary, providing insight into what inspired Johns and the challenges she faced.
The program will begin at 12:00 noon on the front steps of the Lankford Student Union and will last until approximately 12:45 pm. Robert Hamlin, president of the Moton Museum, and Dr. Neal Holmes, director of the Call Me MISTER program at Longwood, will open and conclude the event to provide historical context and discuss the role of civil rights in education today. Following the reading, Dr. Jennifer Capaldo and students will lead the audience in civil rights songs as they recreate the Moton High School walkout through a brief walk around Brock Commons.
This inaugural reading of Barbara Johns' previously unpublished diary has been generously supplied by the Robert Russa Moton Museum. This is a wonderful chance to hear how an “ordinary” young person and truly a citizen leader created change that would affect the course of history of our country.
For more information about the R.R. Moton student strike and subsequent actions in Prince Edward County related to educational equity, see the Farmville & Civil Rights tab.
The following excerpt of the previously unpublished diary of Barbara Johns is provided courtesy of the Robert Russa Moton Museum:
I decided indeed something had to be done about this inequality—but I still didn’t know what. All day my mind and thoughts were whirling and as I lay in my bed that night—I prayed for help—that night whether in a dream or whether I was awake, but I felt I was awake, a plan began to formulated in my mind. A plan I felt was divinely inspired because I hadn’t been able to think of anything until then. That plan was to assemble together the student council members whom I considered the “Crème de la Crème” of the school council. They were smart and thinkers. I knew them and trusted them and I was a part of them. From this we would formulate plans to go on a strike. We would make signs and I would give a speech stating our dissatisfaction and we would march out the school and people would hear us and see us and understand our difficulty and would sympathize with our plight and would grant us our new school building and our teachers would be proud and the students would learn more, and it would be grand—and we would all live happily ever after. Fully confident that all of this would transpire, I arose early the next morning, rushed to get everyone out, could hardly wait to get to school to call this meeting.
I was self-sufficient and independent because my Mother was not around to rely upon or to consult. My Father was too busy plowing and planting and harvesting to have time for any fantasy of mine—and he would have considered it foolish—never agreed with it—but he wouldn’t have stopped me. I was permitted free reign in my thinking and actions—as he put it I was too stubborn, too determined to have my way, anyway—so why hassle ourselves.
I didn’t consult my Uncle because he wasn’t around. And really, I didn’t feel a need to consult anyone, anyway. It had been given to me. All I had to do—was do it.
What is your reaction to the actions of Barbara Johns and the Moton High School students on April 23, 1951? Please record your comments below.