FARMVILLE — The answer was blowing in the wind.

The breeze carried the joined voices of dozens of students from Prince Edward County High School and Fuqua School.

“Black and white together,” they sang, arm-in-arm and hand-in-hand, as the Rev. J. Samuel Williams, Jr., led them through “We Shall Overcome” on the lawn of the Prince Edward County courthouse Wednesday morning.

The sun was shining brightly and the flag of the United States of America rippled against a blue sky punctuated by scattered small white clouds that carried no thunder or lightning.

The PECHS and Fuqua students had commemorated the historic April 23, 1951 student walkout at R. R. Moton High School, walking from that building—now the Moton Museum—where students gave birth to the civil rights movement and down Main Street to the heart of Farmville.

Sixty-three years ago to the hour and the day, led by 16-year old Barbara Rose Johns, the core group of student strike leaders had made the same walk to state their case against separate and unequal school conditions for black students.

“Black and white together today,” the Fuqua and PECHS students sang, joined by a handful of men and women in the audience who made history at R. R. Moton six decades ago, and others attending Wednesday’s ceremony.

“Deep in my heart, I do believe, black and white together today,” the voices proclaimed, swaying in unison as if they were the flesh and blood pendulum of a grandfather clock tick-tocking the moments of a new day, a human metronome marking the time of an old song with young meaning.

Three of the students whose walkout led to Prince Edward’s inclusion in the landmark 1954 Supreme Court Brown v. Board decision declaring segregated schools for black and white children to be unconstitutional shared their memories and perspectives of that historic day.

Among them was Barbara Johns’ sister.

“Thank you, Prince Edward County High School and Fuqua, for re-enacting the march of 1951 by the students of Robert R. Moton High School,” said Joan Johns Cobbs, who read her sister’s reminiscences of the history-making walkout (see page one story).

“Only after I was grown did I realize what a strong, brave, fearless and courageous person Barbara was. She had class and spunk,” said Cobbs, who expressed appreciation for the commonwealth of Virginia’s civil rights memorial on the capitol grounds in Richmond and Prince Edward County’s Light of Reconciliation atop the courthouse.

Johns’ tenacious and sagacious bravery was a common theme sounded at the foot of the courthouse steps.

“Barbara Rose Johns instilled within us,” Rev. Williams explained, “the way to combine courage with vision. Don’t forget that—courage with vision. That is what we had and that is what motivated us.”

The longer her former classmates reflect on Johns and their shared moment in history, the more they grow in understanding of what they achieved and how they were able to achieve it.

“Today, as I stand here, I realize what a courageous leader Barbara was and the difference that students from Prince Edward County made on the nation, being 75 percent of the plaintiffs in the Brown v. Board decision,” Joy Carrabas Speakes told the students. “The only student-led case of the five cases.”

But the students’ leader soon vanished.

Edwilda Allen recalled, “life became dangerous for Barbara Johns in Prince Edward County” in the aftermath of the strike.

“Barbara Rose Johns disappeared. We, the students, didn’t know what had happened to Barbara. We didn’t see her. Nobody talked about her,” Allen told the students. “We went back to school and I was one of the ones who was able to finish high school. But I later found out as an adult that Barbara Johns’ family had sent her to Alabama to live with her uncle, Vernon Johns. It was too dangerous for Barbara to remain in Prince Edward County and she graduated from schools in Alabama.”

The April 23 day that Barbara Johns led her classmates into history, Speakes remembered, “started out just like any other school day. The bus ran to school and the start of classes” in a school built in 1939 to accommodate 180 students but packed with more than 400 in classroom space that included tarpaper shacks built adjacent to the brick building.

What Speakes described as “deplorable conditions” also included classes held in an old school bus and two teachers teaching different classes in the auditorium.

But the school day became one for the history books when students, called to an assembly, saw the stage curtain open to reveal Barbara Johns.

“Barbara told us in her speech that we must go out on strike for a better school and equal opportunities for education,” Speakes said.

Those were not words the student body expected to hear from anyone, especially from another student.

“We were all shocked,” Speakes said. “In fact, Joan was sitting three seats down in front of me and she was sliding down in her seat every time Barbara spoke.”

The students quickly realized, however, that Johns was correct and that her vision needed their commitment.

Speakes said R. R. Moton had “the best teachers but the condition of second-hand books with pages torn out and derogatory words in the books was horrible. Barbara was very persuading. She said that God was on our side and the Bible said a little child shall lead them. I do feel that it was divine intervention that all of us walked out on strike that day as she had instructed us.”

The spiritual nature of their impetus was also a shared understanding.

“Many people…ask, ‘Why did it happen then?’” Rev. Williams remembers. “We said that divine intervention, or I call it in my book the intervening of divine mysticism, that’s what happened, when God began to turn over a new leaf in this universe or in this world.”

The strike lasted two weeks.

The repercussions were not confined by a calendar.

The walkout led, she continued, to “a movement that was a 13-year struggle, with massive resistance and much sacrifice of all of the citizens of Prince Edward County.”

Those repercussions were not the only ripples, however, in a story that continues being written and told.

“Look at us today,” Speakes said, gazing out at a diverse gathering of public and private school students. “Students from the school, Prince Edward Academy—now Fuqua—that was established to keep segregation, are with us today, celebrating the student walkout of April 23, 1951.”

But the time for sitting down and putting one’s feet up, in the belief that all has been done that needs doing, has not arrived in a world still begging for unity and harmony in so many of its corners

“We have achieved much, but still have a lot more to do. I trust that each student will leave today knowing that we are all God’s children, we are all created equal and what you can conceive you can achieve. You are our future. You can make a difference,” Speakes told them. “We can build great communities together through love and collaboration.”

Johns chose those with whom she collaborated with great caution and care.

Allen told the students that she was selected by Barbara Johns to be the eighth grade representative to “spread the word around because she (Johns) had a plan.”

Because Joan was “my best friend,” Allen said, Johns probably figured “she knew this eighth grader better than some of the other eighth graders.”

As a student council representative, Johns had been to many high schools in Richmond, Petersburg, Lynchburg and other major schools, Allen recalled, saying, “Barbara had seen what good schools look like. She wanted her school to look good.”

Allen was 13-years old when 16-year old Barbara Johns “gave us her plan. I was frightened. I respected her when she asked me to meet with her. I knew this was something serious. I went to her meeting and she asked me to notify the eighth graders about the walkout and, most importantly, not to tell parents.”

Keeping the information from her parents, she recalled, “was a heavy burden for me to bear because I was a mild-tempered child and would not break school rules or house rules. I admired Barbara Johns. She was brave, self-assured and extremely smart.”

And her plan, with the students behind her, made history, students who, even as that history was being made, were unaware that their eyes were seeing Johns for one of the very last times in their lives.

“The walkout in Prince Edward County last 10 days. Barbara Johns disappeared. Schools opened again and everything returned to normal. I could not believe when I was away from here that so much had happened,” Allen said. “But I was proud. And I’m still proud that Prince Edward County was the only (Brown) case that was started by children. There were 70 parents in Prince Edward County who signed the petition for their 118 children. These parents, their children and Barbara Rose Johns, a 16-year old student, initiated changes in America.”

That history is not meant to be confined to books, but should be learned, absorbed, and used as an inspiration to continue reaching out toward the places where the world needs healing, the speakers stressed.

“Our children need to know about this historical event in Prince Edward. They need to understand our civil disobedience,” Allen said. “Our history must motivate children to preserve the dignity of our cause and admire the enormous courage we found within ourselves in order to play the roles we played.

“We must pass this information to our children,” Allen said, adding her own commission for those listening to her words. “It’s important that children know the name of Barbara Rose Johns and the part she played in our community and in history. Barbara Rose Johns was able to see beyond her community to cause change. I challenge our children to learn all you can, use what you know, and make this a better place for all those who have to come after you.”

But the truth must first be learned for it to become knowledge and then, finally, motivating wisdom.

Moton Museum’s director of programs, Justin Reid, recalled that growing up in Farmville, “I didn’t know how important my own community was. We end that today. All of us here today, we promise that no other student will leave this community not knowing the change that kids in this community helped bring about. And it’s time we let the state of Virginia know. It’s time we let the United States know. And it’s also time we let the world know that this is the student birthplace of the civil rights movement. And that is the legacy that you all bear as graduates of high schools here in Farmville, Virginia. When you graduate in the next weeks, you tell the world the role that this community played in changing America for the better.”

A role that continues.

Before closing Wednesday’s program with joined hands and voices, Rev. Williams’ benediction offered, “Thanks be to God for all of you here assembled…and to see this great multitude of students from both schools…”

Black and white together.

Today.