Communities that requested schools were often stalled, and land for schools had to be conveyed to, rather than purchased by, the county. In facilities, supplies, monetary support, wages, term length, and academic standards, black schools lagged far behind, despite the stringent efforts of their communities to achieve equal educational rights.įrom 1872, when Maryland law provided for the construction of public schools for black students, up until the 1940s, the Montgomery County school board resisted the construction and maintenance of black schools. 1912.įor nearly a century, schools for black students in Montgomery County (and indeed most of the country) were denied the benefits provided to their entirely separate, but supposedly “equal,” white counterparts.

Students and staff of the Sharp Street School, Sandy Spring, c. The Board of Education in Montgomery County In 1950 the NAACP decided that it would no longer file lawsuits seeking equal educational facilities, but only those that sought to end segregated schools entirely.This is a past exhibit which was displayed at the Beall-Dawson Museum between Aug. The Brown decision of 1954 was actually a judgment in five different lawsuits that had been consolidated because the principle to be decided was the same-the constitutionality of laws establishing separate schools for white and Black students. One of the five lawsuits came from Virginia- Davis v.

On April 23, 1951, sixteen-year-old Barbara Johns led a student strike against inadequate facilities at grossly overcrowded Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, where science classes lacked even a single microscope. The NAACP took the case, however, only when the students-by a one vote margin-agreed to seek an integrated school rather than improved conditions at their black school. Then, Howard University-trained attorneys Spotswood Robinson and Oliver Hill filed suit.Ī state court rejected the suit, agreeing with defense attorney T. Justin Moore that Virginia was vigorously equalizing Black and white schools. Supreme Court, where it was combined with four other cases, including Oliver L.

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