Virginia Harewood was eight years old in 1954 when the Supreme Court Case Brown v. Board of Education supposedly ended segregation in schools. But despite that, her elementary school in the southwestern city of Hillsboro was still divided.
As a Black student, she was required to attend Lincoln School: an aging, dilapidated buIlding with less resources than its white counterparts. Harewood’s mother, Elsie Steward Young, couldn’t let that stand.
“She said, ‘When you believe in something, you gotta fight for it,’” Harewood remembered. “You don't just lay down and let people treat you in any kind of way.”
So they didn’t. Harewood and her mother, alongside 18 other Black women and 36 other children marched for two years to desegregate their communities’ schools.
Unsung civil rights heroes
Each morning, families like Harewood’s trudged through snow, rain and heat to the local all-white elementary school. The families walked past jeering adults and crosses burnt by the Ku Klux Klan. And each and every day, the school turned them away.
Sometimes, Harewood would pretend to be sick, hoping to avoid the two miles and back each school day. But still, her mom helped her put her boots on.
“She'd be like, ‘You'll be okay, baby. Let's go. When you get back home, you can be sick.’” Harewood said. “Of course I wasn’t sick when I got back home.”
The walks weren’t just hard for kids like Harewood. With each march, the families risked their economic security and safety. Police once threatened to arrest one of the mothers, according to Melvin Barnes Jr., a historian with Ohio Humanities, a nonprofit that produced a documentary last year about the Hillsboro mothers.
“And she just had this beautiful reply that was like, ‘Okay, well, I'll go home and let me finish my laundry and then you can come take me to jail,’” Barnes Jr. said.
She wasn’t arrested, but she, and the other mothers, had much more than just the law to worry about. They had to make sure their kids were getting an education. After each day’s four-mile trek, they taught lesson plans provided by local Quaker teachers.
A long costly road
At the same time, the mothers were fighting segregation through lawsuits. In 1956, the issue was finally settled.
“We won it,” Harewood said. “And so we were able to go.”
But that win didn’t immediately fix everything. The majority of the children were held back a year in school. They were teased by their peers. Myra Phillips, who marched as a five-year-old with her mother, said after schools were integrated, she was forced to sit by herself in the back of the classroom.
“I always felt like my mom had enough to carry on her shoulder so I can handle this,” Phillips said. “She told me to be strong.”
The lawsuit was only resolved after two straight years of marching. That makes the Lincoln School Marches one of the longest sustained civil rights’ movements in American history, and a model that was replicated by other parents across the country.
“This action started before the Montgomery bus boycott and ended afterwards,” Barnes Jr. said. “So it's really this story that is a contemporary of Dr. King and Rosa Parks, people on the cutting edge of the civil rights movement.”
Blazing a trail
Despite its significance, the story wasn’t widely told for decades. The surviving marchers, local historians and storytellers are working to change that.
That includes Columbus natives Carlotta Penn and co-author Debbie Riguad, who wrote the children’s book “Step by Step: How the Lincoln School Marches Blazed a Trail to Justice.”
“This really is a story about mothers and the very often unrecognized labor and love of mothers for their families, for their communities and in particular in the civil rights struggle,” Penn said.
They hope to emphasize a message the Hillsboro mothers’ proved: anyone can enact change through perseverance. The book will also show Ohio youth that there are civil rights heroes in their own backyard.
“There are a lot of people in the civil rights movements, but we only know the boldface names,” Riguad said. “So I'm really, really glad that we're discussing the names beyond the headlines.”
Phillips says the marches have another lesson to offer.
“My mom said always get your education, push your kids to get your education. Because that’s something they can’t take away from you,” Phillips said.
After a long trek, she got her education. Now, she’s hopeful her story will offer a path forward for the next generation.
This story is part of the Black Excellence in Ohio series, made possible by the America 250-Ohio Commission.
