Barbara Johns and Beyond: Black Male Youth Activists, School Desegregation, and the Black Freedom Struggle in Virginia, 1951–1970

The dominant narrative of youth activism and the Black freedom struggle in Virginia focuses on Barbara Johns and Prince Edward County. This article widens the dominant historiographical lens to include Black male youth and school desegregation and expands into other Virginia locales, moving the chronology beyond the immediate aftermath of the Brown decisions. Drawing upon archival materials, oral history interviews, newspapers, and reports, it focuses on Charles Alexander of Charlottesville, Virginia, and Owen Cardwell of Lynchburg, Virginia, to interrogate how race, class, and gender shaped their experiences as students and activists. On one hand, Alexander and Cardwell, due to their family’s independent socioeconomic status, could contest segregation, anti-Blackness, and white supremacy within and beyond the desegregated school. On the other hand, as Black male youth activists, they became subject to the emerging school-to-prison nexus.