“Never feel helpless…Never feel like there’s nothing you can do…With the right vision and the right kind of organization, amazing things can happen.”
— Dr. Oliver W. Hill Jr., paraphrasing his father
“There wasn’t any fear, I just thought—this is your moment. Seize it!”
— Barbara Johns, 1979, remembering her role in the student strike of 1951
“White and colored children shall not be taught in the same school.”
— Article IX, Section 140, Constitution of Virginia, 1902
“We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
— Chief Justice Earl Warren in Brown v. Board of Education, May 17, 1954
“If we can organize the southern states for massive resistance to this order I think in time the rest of the country will really that racial integration is not going to be accepted in the South.”
— United States Senator Harry F. Byrd, 1956
“It is with the most profound regret that we have been compelled to take this action. We do not act in defiance of any law or any court. Above all we do not act with hostility toward the Negro people of Prince Edward County.”
— Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors, 1959
“We may observe, with as much sadness as irony that outside of Africa, south of the Sahara where education is still a difficult challenge, the only places on earth known not to provide free pubic education are Communist China, North Vietnam, Sarawak, Singapore, British Honduras—and Prince Edward County Virginia.”
— Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, 1963