The August 28th Chicago Tribune ran an article titled "For rights pioneers, another wall falls" by Ron Grossman.
In 1951, students at the all-black Robert Russa Moton High School, in Farmville, Virginia, went out on strike. This strike helped lead to the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision in which segregation in public schoolswas banned.
This is a little-known story, at least to me. I had never heard of it. People are familiar with the big names like Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, but not Joy Cabarrus Speakes, John Stokes, and Samuel Williams. They also played a role in the movement.
On April 23, 1951, on a ruse, students got the principal out of the building and teachers to bring their classes to the auditorium. The school, built for 180 was badly overcrowded with 450. Classes were being held in cheaply built buildings and education was not as good as what the whites got.
The strike ended two weeks later and the NAACP had persuaded them to aim higher than just conditions. Their parents signed a petition calling for the end of segregated schools.
These early Civil Rights activists could hardly ever have envisioned a black man saying that he accepted his party's nomination for president of the United States.
These people faced down huge odds to bring about what should have been all along.
A Job Well Done. --Cooter
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