University of Richmond History Professor Receives National Park Service Grant For Research on Virginia School Desegregation

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

In partnership with Professor Brian Daugherity at VCU, Holloway will synthesize scholarly literature and compile a guide to archival resources on Davis v. Prince Edward County, a lawsuit filed by the NAACP in 1951. The lawsuit came about after Black students in Farmville, Virginia, went on strike to demand a new school building. The NAACP argued in court that the conditions endured by African American students in the segregated school were unconstitutional. When the Brown v. Board decision required desegregation of schools, Prince Edward County officials refused, and instead withdrew funding for the public schools, which would remain closed for five years.

Holloway’s scholarship will consider the impacts of the county’s five-year school closure, and examine the commemoration of the case and its aftermath. The report will help the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Park and the Robert Russa Moton Museum in Farmville manage cultural resources and identify needs for further research on the fight for school desegregation in Prince Edward County.

“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,” says Holloway. “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 of Education 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 U.S. history.”

Holloway, who joined UR in 2020, also researches the history of disenfranchisement and sexuality and politics in the American south. Her most recent book is Living in Infamy: Felon Disfranchisement and the History of American Citizenship.

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