This innocent-looking school building built in 1939 at the corner of South Main Street and Griffin Boulevard in the Prince Edward County town of Farmville was an object of national attention in Virginia’s school desegregation crisis of the 1950s. The Robert Russa Moton High School was the scene of a strike begun on April 23, 1951 by students of the then all-African American institution to protest their inadequate and unequal educational facilities. The strike led to the court case Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, which was combined with others before the U. S. Supreme Court as Brown v. Board of Education. That case was the basis for the landmark decision that struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine governing public policy. The decision gave birth to Virginia’s massive resistance movement during which Prince Edward County closed its schools until 1964 rather than desegregate. Since its listing in the registers, the former Robert Russa Moton High School has been developed into a civil rights museum.