How Can We Right History?
Guest post by Beau Dickenson, Rockingham County Public Schools Social Studies Coordinator
On On May 17, 2025—the 71st anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision—Rockingham County students took center stage in two powerful commemorations in our community. At the Federal Courthouse in Harrisonburg, a new state historical marker was unveiled. Just a few miles away in Dayton, a student-curated museum exhibition opened at Rocktown History. These companion projects sought not only to right history—by shedding light on long-overlooked civil rights cases in Virginia—but also to write history by preserving these stories through student scholarship, public history, and civic action.
Among the cases brought into public memory are Allen v. Charlottesville—the first federal court order in Virginia to enforce the Brown decision—and Kilby v. Warren County, which led to the state’s first public school closure during the period of “Massive Resistance.” Both cases were heard by Judge John Paul of the Federal Courthouse in Harrisonburg, the site of the new marker. The museum exhibition builds on these narratives, placing them within the broader context of Virginia’s struggle for equal education, and serves as a compelling companion to the marker by deepening public awareness of the fight for school desegregation.
This dual unveiling is the culmination of years of student-led work and community collaboration that began with the Knocking Down Walls documentary premiered by Rocktown History in May 2023. In that award-winning project, students from Spotswood High School uncovered and documented Virginia’s earliest enforcement of the Brown decision. What began as a high school research project became a nationally recognized documentary featured on Good Morning America—and now inspires both the permanent state historical marker and museum exhibition.
Resilience Amid Resistance Marker Text
In July 1956, two years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, federal judge John Paul of Harrisonburg issued the first school desegregation order in VA, ruling for the NAACP in a suit against Charlottesville City Public Schools. In Sept. 1958, after two years of appeals in this case, Paul also sided with the NAACP in a suit against Warren Co. Public Schools. In response, Gov. J. Lindsay Almond closed the schools slated to admit the Black student plaintiffs in these two cases. This was the first use of the state’s Massive Resistance laws to shutter public schools. The VA Supreme Court and a special federal court declared the closures unconstitutional in Jan. 1959.
But the work didn’t end there.
To build on that momentum, the annual Farmville Tour Guides Project was reimagined as an exercise in public history through exhibition development. In previous years, students traveled to Farmville to lead public tours of the Moton Museum and its surrounding landmarks. This year, participants were challenged to bring that history home—by designing a museum-quality exhibit that explores the deep connections between local communities, the broader civil rights movement, and the events and individuals commemorated on the new historical marker.
On the same day the community gathered to honor Judge Paul’s rulings and the courageous student plaintiffs of Charlottesville and Warren County—who risked everything for equal education—this new generation of students unveiled a gallery of their own making. Their exhibit traces the deep links between Harrisonburg, Farmville, and the ongoing pursuit of racial justice in public education. It is not only a tribute to the past—it is broad public history, led by a new generation determined to ensure that all stories are seen, heard, and remembered.