Moton High School, located in Prince Edward County, Virginia, played a significant role in the civil rights movement during the mid-20th century. The school became a focal point of the struggle for educational equality and integration in the United States.

In 1951, a group of African American students at Moton High School, led by a 16-year-old teenager named Barbara Johns, organized a student strike to protest the inadequate and overcrowded facilities at their segregated school. This protest eventually led to a lawsuit, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, which was one of the five cases combined into the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case in 1954.

The Brown v. Board of Education decision declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional, thus overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine established by the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case. The ruling marked a major victory in the fight against segregation in schools and paved the way for the desegregation of educational institutions across the country.

Moton High School itself was eventually closed in 1959 as part of the strategy by Prince Edward County officials to resist desegregation. This decision led to the infamous “Lost Generation” of students, where thousands of African American students were denied an education for five years during the county's school closure. The Moton Museum, which now occupies the former school building, serves as a reminder of the sacrifices made by the students and community members who fought for equality in education.