THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 10, 1995 TAG: 9507100021
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KATHRYN ORTH, RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
DATELINE: FARMVILLE, VA. LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
Howard Lawrence took down the sign he put up 25 years ago in front of Farmville Elementary School as students left the building for the last time.
``We won't throw it away. Somebody will want it,'' the Prince Edward County Schools maintenance worker said last month as he removed the bolts from the wooden part of the sign that displayed the school's name.
The school, which in recent years has housed fifth-graders in the Prince Edward County school system, is being replaced by a new wing on the county's middle school.
Farmville Elementary was built in 1938 as R.R. Moton High School. It was Prince Edward's high school for blacks. The school was the site of a protest that ultimately became part of the Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education civil rights decision.
In 1951, black students boycotted Moton for two weeks to protest conditions at the segregated school. In the same year, 33 Moton students asked permission to attend all-white Farmville High School. Refused admission, the students filed suit in U.S. District court in Richmond. That suit, Davis vs. the Prince Edward County School Board, became one of five cases considered by the Supreme Court in its landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision.
In 1959, Prince Edward's Board of Supervisors voted not to fund the school budget and the county's schools closed for five years. By then, a new R.R. Moton High School had been built and the old Moton became an elementary school. It reopened in 1964 as Mary E. Branch Elementary School No. 2.
In 1970, the School Board renamed the schools according to their locations and the school became simply Farmville Elementary.
The building's future is uncertain.
County Administrator Mildred Hampton said the Board of Supervisors will conduct a public hearing on the building in July or August.
The school sits on a prime triangle of land next to Longwood College and across from a shopping center. Supervisors have suggested selling the land to pay for the $1.1 million addition to the middle school, where the fifth grade will be in the fall.
But some Farmville residents have formed a group to try to buy the building and turn it into a museum. An architect for the Branch-Moton Historical Society has estimated it would cost about $500,000 to renovate the building.
While parents of the fifth-graders at the school have complained for years about the school's age, overcrowding and the lack of air conditioning, their children are not necessarily happy to have the school close.
``I don't want them to close down this school. You can walk to school and it's cool. It doesn't matter about air conditioning, because look at those big windows,'' fifth-grader Matavius Johnson said during the last day of class last month. Next year, Matavius will ride a school bus about two miles to the central county school complex.
Said his classmate Troy Walker: ``This is a historic school. I felt good about being here, because I knew that people went here long ago for an education.'' ILLUSTRATION: AP photo
Prince Edward County workers in June removed the sign in front of
what was once R.R. Moton High School, the site of a protest that
became part of the Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education
decision.
KEYWORDS: SEGREGATION by CNB