On April 23, 1951, more than 450 Black students at Robert Russa Moton High School in Prince Edward County, Virginia, staged a courageous walkout to protest their overcrowded and underfunded school. Led by 16-year-old Barbara Johns, the students demanded equal educational facilities, challenging the “separate but equal” doctrine that had long upheld school segregation. The protest sparked national attention and drew the support of the NAACP, whose lawyers—including Oliver Hill and Spottswood Robinson—filed suit on the students’ behalf. Their case became one of five consolidated into the landmark Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which ultimately led the U.S. Supreme Court to declare racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
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