FARMVILLE – On April 23, 1951, students at R. R. Moton High School went on strike against separate and unequal school facilities for black students.

Those footsteps began a nation-shaping odyssey that replaced segregated public schools with integrated classrooms across the United States of America with the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board decision, and finally in Prince Edward County, itself, with the high court's subsequent Griffin v. Prince Edward decision in 1964.

Sixty-two years and six days later, the museum within that skin of bricks and mortar at the intersection of Main Street and Griffin Boulevard will open its heart and soul and America will see its human reflection.

The Moton Museum debuts its long-awaited history-telling six-gallery The Moton School Story: Children Of Courage at noon until 4 p.m. on Monday, April 29, following a lead-in build-up of dedication week events that begin Sunday (see end of story for listing).

“This is it. This is everything inside,” the museum's director Lacy Ward told The Herald on Wednesday. “We still have a parking lot and a tar paper shack project but that's exterior…It's a full-scale museum (inside).”

The museum, in all other respects, has crossed the finish line and will begin its life telling the Prince Edward County story, filling visitors with that history and its lessons, which they will take with them back into their own communities, near and far.

The museum's take-away for those visitors?

“Complex though it may be,” Ward answered, “that this is probably the best self-governing system in the world for resolving conflict in a peaceful, albeit prolonged, process.”

The museum, he believes, will tell the nation and the world that “the Republic stands. And it really is about our form of government. That we have a democratic republic, democracy at the local level that creates representation at the higher level and there's a system of resolution, be it courts or, of course, the contribution you make through the editorial pages, or contributions pastors make through sermons, but there's a place for public discourse and there's a system that allows that discourse to influence the way the government operates.”

Ward continued, saying the museum and the historic story it tells, “Stands up and says that the American democratic republic is the best form for collective self-governance and peaceful resolution of conflict.”

The push for change, the legal battle to end segregation, was “from within the established system, not from violent overthrow of the system,” he stressed.

There have been some sneak peeks and the reviews are telling.

“What's been interesting is people have been sneaking in to see stuff, board members and people who work there,” Ward said. “There's hardly anybody from the local community who doesn't come in and say 'Oh, that's so and so' or 'I go to church with him' or 'that's my uncle.' I really think it is going to come across as a community museum and people will see people they know and be able to place them in the story.”

The museum's main objective through the gallery approach is to show policy making at a local level and to see how within one school system “you go from a policy of segregated schools to integrated schools. And what are all the different actors in making that come about, be it at the local level, the state level or the national level,” Ward explained.

“So the start point is the challenge to segregation and the finish line is integration. And that's what we're trying to explain. It's broken up into six galleries or six events that are sort of markers,” the museum's director noted.

In order, the six galleries are: Strike (April 23, 1951), Living Separate But Unequal (Tar Paper Shacks), The Court Speaks (Davis vs. Prince Edward), Virginia Responds (Massive Resistance), Prince Edward County Says No (They Closed Their Schools), Rebirth (Bound For Freedom).

“The final chapter is the resolution of the conflict through the Free Schools and the Griffin decision,” Ward said.

The galleries will provide what Ward describes as “a road map” that shows the sequential steps in the Prince Edward case.

The chapters in a very American story.

“I think so. There are probably two groups of professionals who should know a great deal about Prince Edward County-attorneys and teachers. But we find that when we get law school students who come through or education students come through, even for them there's still something new and more nuanced than they've been previously exposed to about what Prince Edward means in American civil rights history,” Ward said.

In terms of recognition and awareness, the Prince Edward County story is “not quite at the level of some other localities at this point but I think it's definitely going to grow and people will have a greater appreciation of the nuances…

“…So that's what we wanted to do, first off, so that people have a good overall understanding of what the series of events are,” he continued, “that define Prince Edward County's move from segregation to integration.”

Ward believes word about the museum will spread slowly but quite surely as more and more visitors describe their Moton experience with others.

“I think it's going to open slowly and I don't think that's such a bad thing. I think it's going to like one of those TV shows that doesn't get a lot of marketing, doesn't get a lot of hype, but viewers find it,” Ward predicts, “and sort of word of mouth it grows into a hit. And I think that's the way this is going to be. It's been absent from the civil rights narrative for so long that I don't think people know to tune in to it but I think as they do it will really be a word of mouth spread between visitors that really makes the momentum grow.”

Prince Edward County seriously considered selling the former R. R. Moton High School building two decades ago. Purchase by a developer would have provided the County with funds that could have been used for education but the building that subsequently earned National Historic Landmark status would have been torn down, perhaps a fast-food restaurant taking its place, its story lost forever.

The community gathered together, led by the Martha E. Forrester Council of Women, and said 'No, sell it to us and we will save it and create within those historic walls a museum about the nation-shaping civil rights history that flowed from within out into the town, the county, the state, and the nation.'

Prince Edward County agreed.

The journey of that vision has been a long one.

Determined footsteps.

But the promise made by the Martha E. Forrester Council of Women, an oath sworn onto by so many in the community, has been kept.

Ward believes the museum keeps faith with the dreams of those who began gathering in the 1990s, initially with National Park Service staff in the basement fellowship hall of First Baptist Church, the church of the late Rev. L. Francis Griffin, the leader of the civil rights movement through the 1950s and massive resistance, the 1960s and the opening of schools, with the Supreme Court decision that bears his family name, and as the path of civil rights and integration continued through the 1970s, until his death in 1980.

The path winds on and there are more and more people walking together toward the horizon.

What does the fact of the museum, the fact that it exists, say about this community?

“I think the museum says a lot about the community through the Moton Council. A little bit over half of our board members are appointed by local institutions-the County, the Town, Fuqua, Prince Edward (County's public school system), Longwood, Hampden-Sydney College, the NAACP, the (Martha E. Forrester) Council of Women. And these local institutions, that may have taken differing sides over the issue of segregation and integration, collectively contribute membership to the stewardship of the story of that transition,” he pointed out.

And while the museum necessarily speaks of the past, telling history's story, it also contributes to the dialogue of the today and tomorrow in the living galleries that surround the national historic landmark, locally and in the wider world beyond.

“I would say that, candidly, as we approach it, the focus of the museum is to provide historic backdrop….but then for that historic backdrop to contribute to contemporary discussion,” Ward said. “So, one we call 'interpretation', looking at the past. And the other we call 'programming', bringing together the elements…necessary to have an informed contemporary discussion based on what we know from the past.”

Moton Dedication Week Events:

Sunday, April 21, 3 p.m. at First Baptist Church in Farmville, the Johns-Griffin Day Service, with the Mayor of Richmond, the Rev. Dr. Dwight C. Jones, Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of South Richmond, the guest minister.

Tuesday, April 23, 6 p.m. in the Blackwell Ballroom at Longwood University, the Virginia film premiere of Barbara Johns, The Making of An Icon, co-hosted by the Library of Virginia and LU's Greenwood Library, with civil rights leader and State Senator Henry L. Marsh III as guest speaker.

Wednesday, April 24, 6:30 p.m. at the Moton Museum, Our Schools, Our Vision Presents, co-hosted by the Prince Edward County Public School system and Fuqua School, an ensemble jazz concert featuring local high school musicians, directed by Longwood University Music Department Chair, Dr. Charles Kinzer.

Thursday, April 25, 6:30 p.m., at Crawley Forum at H-SC, The Walter Taylor Reveley II Lecture, co-hosted by H-SC, keynoted by W. Taylor Reveley III, President of William and Mary College, son of the former H-SC president, and father of W. Taylor Reveley IV, recently selected as LU's next president.

Monday, April 29, from noon until 4 p.m., the Moton Museum unveils its Exhibition, with free admission.