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New Moton High School
The building known as “Moton 2”, constructed in 1953, was a direct product of Virginia’s school equalization initiative—a statewide strategy launched by segregationist lawmakers to preserve racial separation in public education while avoiding legal challenges. By the early 1950s, the original Robert Russa Moton High School, built in 1939 for Black students in Prince Edward County, was overcrowded, under-resourced, and widely recognized as inferior to the nearby white schools. This stark disparity was a central issue in the 1951 student strike led by Barbara Johns, which evolved into the legal case Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County—one of the five cases later combined into Brown v. Board of Education.
Rather than commit to integration, Virginia officials chose a different path: they began constructing “separate but improved” schools for Black students across the state, hoping to convince courts that segregation could be legal if the facilities were made “equal.” Moton 2 was part of this effort. The new school was larger, with updated classrooms and a gymnasium—facilities the original Moton school lacked. But this construction was not a gesture of equity; it was a calculated move to preserve the legal fiction of separate but equal, a doctrine already under serious constitutional challenge by the NAACP.
When the Supreme Court handed down its unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, declaring that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” Prince Edward County and many Virginia leaders refused to comply. Rather than integrate, the county became the only school district in the nation to completely shut down its public school system, closing all schools—including the newly built Moton 2—between 1959 and 1964. This drastic measure was part of the state’s Massive Resistance policy, coordinated by the Byrd Organization, to oppose federal desegregation orders at any cost.
Following the reopening of public schools in 1964—under federal court order after Griffin v. County School Board—the Moton 2 building was repurposed and renamed Prince Edward County High School, serving students for several decades. It remained in use until 1993, when the county built a new high school facility. Though no longer functioning as a school, the Moton 2 building stands as a physical symbol of the lengths to which officials went to avoid racial integration, and the resilience of the Black community in demanding educational justice.