RESOURCES
PEOPLE
Dorothy Davis
(1937 - )
Dorothy E. Davis was a high school student at Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia, when she became the lead plaintiff in Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, a pivotal case in the fight against segregated education in the United States. Born and raised in Prince Edward County, Davis was one of many African American students forced to attend the overcrowded and under-resourced Moton High School, which lacked basic facilities such as a gym, cafeteria, and adequate classroom space—many classes were held in tar-paper shacks.
In April 1951, Davis was among the more than 450 students who participated in a strike organized by 16-year-old Barbara Johns. Frustrated by the unacceptable conditions at Moton, the students demanded a new school building. Their two-week strike drew the attention of NAACP attorneys Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill, who agreed to take legal action—on the condition that the goal be not just better facilities but the complete desegregation of schools.
Dorothy Davis’s name was placed at the top of the list of plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed that same year: Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County. At just 14 years old, she stood as the public face of the suit that became one of five consolidated into the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. That unanimous decision declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
Following the case, Davis largely retreated from public life and avoided the spotlight. She moved north to the Washington DC area and lived a private life, reportedly reluctant to speak publicly about her role in the case. Little is publicly documented about her adult years, but her name remains permanently etched into civil rights history as a young woman whose courage helped to dismantle the legal foundations of Jim Crow education.
