Central High School

Amherst County opened Central High School here in 1956 to serve African American students. The school, established at the same time as the all-white Amherst County High School, was built in an effort to create “separate but equal” facilities despite the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that segregated public schools were “inherently unequal” and thus unconstitutional. Central, the county’s first school to offer 12th grade to African Americans, replaced the Madison Heights Negro School and the Amherst County Training School. After the county desegregated its schools under federal court order in 1970, Central High became a junior high school.