The Forgotten School in Brown v. Board

In 1951, black students in Farmville, Virginia—led by 16-year-old Barbara Johns—staged a strike to protest conditions at Robert Russa Moton High School. The subsequent lawsuit later became one of five cases folded into Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark desegregation decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that made “separate but equal” unlawful. Moton was the only one of the five cases that began with a student-led challenge.