Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 13, 1995 TAG: 9503130068
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DONALD P. BAKER THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: FARMVILLE (AP) LENGTH: Long
Forty-four years ago, black students staged a strike to protest conditions at R.R. Moton High School, an eight-classroom building surrounded by shacks of wood and tar paper into which more than 500 black students were segregated.
For 10 days, the students boycotted Moton to persuade Prince Edward County's all-white government to abandon its dual school systems as unfair and inferior.
The strike evolved into one of the four lawsuits that led to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in the nation's schools.
Now, some of those same people are marching again, to preserve the deteriorating building as a reminder of its historic role in the civil rights movement.
They fear that when classes end in June, the building will be sold and demolished.
``Some people hope that if the school gets torn down, it will make us forget what happened to us in the past,'' said Grace Scott Ward, who graduated from Moton in 1948.
The one-story school, which today is called Farmville Elementary, sits atop a hill at one end of this Southside town of 6,000. Only fifth-graders study there now, and after it is closed this summer, future fifth-graders will join the rest of Prince Edward's pupils at a sprawling complex nearby.
Many black residents, and a growing number of white ones, want the building to be saved and converted into a museum to commemorate the events triggered by the walkout that began April 23, 1951. Some have suggested that its auditorium be turned into a lecture hall and named for the then-dean of nearby Longwood College, who was among the few whites to support the students' protest.
``This is a battle over our last legacy,'' said Vera Allen, whose older daughter attended Moton during that time and who is a leader in the fight to save it.
Not until nearly a generation later did Prince Edward schools finally move toward desegregation.
Between the 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education decision and 1964, the county shuttered and padlocked both its white and black schools. It gave white students tuition grants to attend a private academy.
Some black students found schooling elsewhere, living with relatives or friends or, in a few instances, with host families arranged by a Quaker group, but many were forced to abandon education. They became part of what is known in Farmville as ``the lost generation.''
Since 1990, the Martha E. Forrester Council, a branch of the National Council of Negro Women, has been trying to gain historical status for Moton. Doing so would make it more difficult for any public entity to raze the building. That would include state-supported Longwood College, which is considered a likely buyer.
Yet supporters of historical status fear that budget concerns will prompt the Board of Supervisors to sell the nine-acre property to the highest bidder, thus dooming the building. Last month, just days before two groups that advise the Virginia Department of Historic Resources were ready to recommend Moton's inclusion on the Virginia Landmarks Registry and the National Register of Historic Places, the supervisors asked that the decision be postponed.
``The county may be better served if the building is removed,'' said board Chairman Hugh Carwile, 70, a retired dairy farmer who has served on the board since 1964. Although he'd be willing to place ``an appropriate marker'' or plant a flower garden to commemorate the site, Carwile said he opposes going further.
``We don't want this to become a race problem,'' he said. ``People tell me it's a constant reminder, like rubbing salt in a wound.''
When Moton supporters learned of the delay in historic designation, they mobilized. James E. Ghee, a lawyer and alumnus, roused a crowd of 200 at First Baptist Church by noting that ``we got to this point after many of our people made sacrifices to uphold public education. ... We think that we ought to have a memorial to those efforts.''
At evening's end, more than $1,000 was collected for a fund to purchase the building from the county, and the Forrester Council was put in charge of the drive. In the years Moton was a segregated school, the council raised money for auditorium chairs, a stage curtain, a grand piano - equipment purchased with tax money for white schools.
Although many townspeople apparently would prefer to see Longwood as the purchaser, some Moton alumni distrust the college, itself once part of Virginia's segregated school system.
Executive Vice President Richard V. Hurley said that administrators' interest is limited to the playing fields at the rear of the elementary school. Although Longwood would not operate a museum itself, as some have suggested, it would consider retaining ownership of the building and allowing a nonprofit organization to step in.
``The college is willing to paint the trim on the building, to keep it from being neglected and sit tight and see if we can work out an agreement,'' he said.
Change has come to Farmville - its one school system is now 40 percent white and 60 percent black - but not all of it is predictable.
One of the more vocal proponents for tearing down Moton is Elsie Carrington, one of the three black county supervisors and president of the NAACP branch in Prince Edward.
``There's nothing racial about it. It's strictly economics,'' said Carrington, who retired after working as a nurse in New York City for many years. ``If that place was inadequate 40 years ago, why do we want to save it now?''
Conversely,
The Farmville Herald, which seldom wrote stories about black residents and never supported them in the days of segregation, has taken up the cause for preservation.
In a recent editorial, the paper criticized the supervisors for blocking historic designation for Moton. It noted that the 1951 student strike there ``precipitated a far more meaningful revolution than that spawned on July 4, 1776, by words that were only half true and deeds that left too many people untouched by liberty.''
by CNB