Herland Sister Resources

In 1951, Barbara Johns was a 16-year-old high school student at a segregated school in Farmville, Va. Though the school was designed to hold 180 students, it was massively overcrowded with 450 — the overflow housed in tarpaper shack added to the school. Barbara Johns organized a walkout of her entire student body to protest the separate and definitely unequal educational facilities. A few weeks later the NAACP brought suit demanding the end of school segregation.

This suit, eventually bundled with four similar cases from elsewhere in the country, became part of Brown v. Board of Education. Generally considered the most important case decided by the U. S. Supreme Court in the twentieth century, it held that racially segregated public schools are inherently unequal and, therefore, unconstitutional.

Thousands of young people like Barbara Johns made a stand to integrate lunch counters, community centers, and sports leagues.

As the end of the calendar year approaches, you may be starting to think about taxes. You can use charitable donations as deductions on your tax return to the extent allowed by law. If you make the donation by check and the charity doesn’t receive the money until after the start of the new year, you can still take the deduction for the current year if you mailed the check by Dec 31.

Herland has been the beneficiary of a couple of extra-large donations this month. A big thank you goes out to the anonymous donors who gave generous gifts of $1,000 and $200 to Herland. And our heartfelt thanks to each of you, our supporters — we couldn’t do any of it without you.