By: Maria-Paula

University of Richmond Professor, Pippa Holloway, Cornerstones Chair in History, has received funding from the National Park Service for an exploration of the history of public-school desegregation in Prince Edward County, Virginia. 

Holloway also the author of Living in Infamy: Felon Disfranchisement and the History of American Citizenship (Oxford University Press) equally researches the history of disenfranchisement and sexuality and politics in the American south.

With a lawsuit filed by the NAACP in 1951 in focus, Holloway who joined the University of Richmond in 2020, in collaboration with Professor Brian Daugherity of VCU are compiling a guide to archival resources on Davis v. Prince Edward County intended to synthesize scholarly literature. 

The lawsuit came about after Black students in Farmville, Virginia, went on strike to demand a new school building. NAACP argued in court that the conditions endured by African American students in the segregated school were unconstitutional. When the Brown decision required desegregation of schools, Prince Edward County officials refused and instead withdrew funding for the public schools, leading to the schools closing for five years.

Holloway’s scholarship is meant to look into the county’s five-year school closure impacts by examination of the effects it caused and commemoration of the results of the case. 

“The desegregation of public schools happened because people in communities across the country stood up and protested, and one of the most important of those protests happened right here in Virginia. Davis v. Prince Edward County is unique among the five Brown cases because it came from student demands for educational equity. When Congress expanded the Brown v. Board National Historical Park to include other locations, including Virginia, they recognized the contributions that all of these local communities made to one of the most important court cases in the U.S. history,” said Holloway. 

In the fight for school desegregation in Prince Edward County, the report will help fact find for the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Park and the Robert Russa Moton Museum in Farmville. The reports main aim is to manage cultural resources and identify needs for further research in the coming days.