Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle

by Kristen Green

Combining hard-hitting investigative journalism and a sweeping family narrative, this provocative true story reveals a little-known chapter of American history: the period after the Brown v. Board of Education decision when one Virginia school system refused to integrate.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s unanimous Brown v. Board of Education decision, Virginia’s Prince Edward County refused to obey the law. Rather than desegregate, the county closed its public schools, locking and chaining the doors. The community’s white leaders quickly established a private academy, commandeering supplies from the shuttered public schools to use in their all-white classrooms. Meanwhile, black parents had few options: keep their kids at home, move across county lines, or send them to live with relatives in other states. For five years, the schools remained closed.

Kristen Green, a longtime newspaper reporter, grew up in Farmville and attended Prince Edward Academy, which did not admit black students until 1986. In her journey to uncover what happened in her hometown before she was born, Green tells the stories of families divided by the school closures and of 1,700 black children denied an education. As she peels back the layers of this haunting period in our nation’s past, her own family’s role—no less complex and painful—comes to light.

At once gripping, enlightening, and deeply moving, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County is a dramatic chronicle that explores our troubled racial past and its reverberations today, and a timeless story about compassion, forgiveness, and the meaning of home.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Education, Race, Memoir, Social Justice, Politics

336 pages, Hardcover

First published May 19, 2015

About the author

Kristen Green is the author of two nonfiction books, THE DEVIL'S HALF ACRE (April 2022) and the New York Times bestseller SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY. She has worked as a journalist for two decades for papers including the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Boston Globe.

SOMETHING MUST BE DONE REVIEWS
"A gripping narrative"​ -New York Times​

"A gift to a new generation of readers"​ -The Washington Post

"This intimate and candid account.... personalizes politics, jangles nerves and opens minds."​
-Richmond Times-Dispatch

"Green's work brims with real-life detail from the journalist's eye and ear and joins the likes of Diane McWhorter's CARRY ME HOME in further developing the dimensions of the South's desegregation struggle"​ -Library Journal

"Green feels compelled to stare down her past, and she does so with uncommon humanity."​
-New York 1 News

"A potent introduction to a nearly forgotten part of the civil rights movement and a personalized reminder of what it was truly about."​ -Kirkus Reviews, (starred review)

"Absorbing. . . . A merger of history both lived and studied."​ -Publishers Weekly

"Green has rendered a deeply moving account of historical injustice and a personal search for redemption for her family's role in it."​ -Booklist, (starred review)

"A vivid reminder of how things were, not so very long ago."​ -Harvard Magazine

Reviews

[African Americans on the Move Book Club · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book. I felt like the author spent a lot of time trying to convince me that she wasn’t racist. Maybe it was because she felt guilty about the part her grandfather played in the closing of public schools. She kept reiterating that she has a brown husband and brown kids. She repeated that she herself has full lips. She kept telling us that she reported about the mistreatment of black people in college. She moved to a black town. I mean it just went on and on. It was as if she wanted the readers to know that she had a right to tell this story. In my opinion the fact that her grandfather played a part in the schools closing was reason enough for her to write this book.
In the beginning I didn’t feel like the book flowed well but towards the middle the author got into a good groove and execute the transitions well.
Overall it was a good book. I loved the premise and couldn’t help but think this would be a great story as a fiction novel.


Natalie Carter
AAMBC Reviewer

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Growing up, I was aware that Prince Edward had once closed its public schools to avoid integration, but beyond that I knew nothing. I had no idea of the impact it had on the community. I can't believe we never learned this in my VA history classes in high school, especially since we were so close to Prince Edward County.
It took me a while to read this book. Every 25 pages or so, I would have to stop because I was so appalled at what I read. It took time to digest; and often I was grabbing my computer to look up an event the author referenced. Reading the stories of those people who were denied an education for five years was heartbreaking. The author really brought these people's stories to life. I only wish she could have printed more of them or gone into more detail. She could use a companion book where she prints all their stories. For me, those were the best parts of the book.
The only thing I didn't like about the book were the parts about the author- she tended to repeat herself a lot, which sort of detracted from the book. Otherwise the story of these people is easily worth five stars.
This book covers an important part of our history; one that people often pretend didn't happen. I think this ought to be required reading for high-schoolers; and not just for those of us who grew up in or currently live in VA. A definite must-read. This is so much more than just your average history book.

[Alice · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story and history of this book is very much worth reading and learning about, but the authors presence in the story is overwhelming and the whole book sadly suffers very much for it.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the interesting and appalling story of Prince Edward County, Virginia, which shuttered its public schools in the late 1950s, rather than integrating them. While the details of how the town came to close the schools and the impact the closures had on the local students makes for a fascinating read, the author's personal quest to make sense of it all and her pains to demonstrate her political correctness derail the effort.

[Maya Smart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Journalist Kristen Green seems born to write this particular and personal history of Prince Edward County’s legendary segregationist resolve. Yet her book, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County, reveals the many ways her family and community groomed her to do otherwise–to look the other way as devastating racial divides persisted.

The story of her awakening is powerful. It is rooted in history that began before her birth but is by no means past. In 1948, the all-white school board of Prince Edward County, Virginia faced overcrowding of its black schools. The board decided that seeking a bond measure for “a nigger school” was out of the question, and instead built two flimsy tar-paper shack classrooms that reeked of petroleum and leaked when it rained.

Black students went on strike in 1951, to draw attention to the deplorable conditions and demand acceptable schools. The battle quickly morphed into a desegregation movement, including a lawsuit that joined four others and went to the Supreme Court under the Brown v Board of Education banner.

The local backlash was immediate, fierce, and determined. The Supreme Court mandated public school desegregation in 1954, but the county resisted. When its actions were deemed unconstitutional, the white county leadership began underfunding the public schools and laying the groundwork for a whites-only private school called Prince Edward Academy.

Later, when given a firm deadline of desegregating by September 1959, the Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors voted to eliminate its entire education budget rather than comply. They shuttered every last one of the county’s 21 public schools and sent their own kids to the Academy, a hodgepodge of classes in churches, former homes and vacant stores, stocked with supplies pilfered from the abandoned public schools.

The county’s 1,700 black children were completely shut out, denied a free education for five hard years. That devastating loss reverberates to this day in high rates of illiteracy and poverty in the community.

Green recounts this history, as well as her personal story of coming of age in Prince Edward County, being (mis)educated at the Academy, and graduating oblivious to the harsh toll the segregationist history exacted on black residents. She bravely calls out the racism of revered figures in Farmville, the small rural town where she was reared, even of her own beloved grandfather.

The release and circumstances of this particular story of white hate and recalcitrance is perfectly timed, given recent debates over the confederate battle flag in public spaces. The depiction of Green’s earnest efforts to grapple with the past is much needed. I suspect that as a white woman, she’ll be able to reach audiences who have been deaf to these stories for years, like her former classmate, referenced in the book, who denies the racist origins of their school.

Little of the ground covered in the book is new–The Moton Museum bookshop features several accounts of the school closing, written from a black perspective–but Green’s synthesis is welcome. I’m reminded of the Daily Show parody where Jessica Williams makes points that her white colleague only acknowledges after Jon Stewart repeats them. Black people regularly tell these stories of racism, fear mongering, and hate, but many people will not really get it until a white person tells them. Such is the insidiousness of unconscious racial bias.

I’m thankful for Green and others who are bold enough to tell the truth about America’s racial hierarchy. I hope her work resonates widely. “Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County” could actually serve as a primer for people who want to acknowledge and dismantle the racist systems they are complicit in. Her diligent efforts to ferret out the truth, correct her mistaken assumptions and educate others is instructive and worthy of wide emulation.

In particular, Green’s writing offers a couple of crucial lessons:

Go deep. When we’re honest–and informed–about our complicity with racist systems, we have a chance at redeeming ourselves. Green interviewed an array of people in the town, spent hours in dusty libraries and read book after book on the subject to grasp the complexity of the issue. She simply refused to accept surface explanations and pushed past personal discomfort to faithfully engage with the subject. She kept asking questions and cataloging responses to make personal sense of the sordid history. She pursued the truth even when it made her friends, family and herself look bad.

“It has become a painful topic for me, a source of shame and guilt,” she writes. “I feel torn between my love for my grandparents and embarrassed by their prejudice. I want to be loyal to them and protective of their legacy. Yet I believe that this story is worth exploring. My discomfort, and others’ discomfort, is all the evidence I need.”

Digging deep is the only antidote to ignorance and oversimplification. A strength of Green’s account is its depiction of a range of complicity in and reactions to the county’s turmoil. We hear from the staunch segregationists but also from the poor white farmers who couldn’t afford private school fees and the college professors who thought everyone deserved an education.

We’re not all professional journalists, so the depths of our investigations will vary. You don’t have to write a book about your discoveries, but the nation needs you to engage your critical thinking skills, weigh the evidence and come to your own conclusions–and actions.

Challenge yourself to view events from the perspective of “the other.” Green frequently uses her family’s housekeeper as the lens through which to view 60 years of Prince Edward County history. Known just as “Elsie,” she was the only black person Green knew until high school. For years, Green gave no thought to Elsie’s own family and life outside of cleaning Green’s parents’ and grandparents’ homes. Eventually, she reckoned with the incompatibility of her mom calling Elsie “part of the family” while her grandfather helped tear Elsie’s own family apart.

When the county’s public schools closed, Elsie sent her 12-year-old daughter Gwen to live with relatives in Massachusetts to get an education. Gwen stayed there for decades and Elsie, missing those formative years, never again got to be Gwen’s mother in the way she longed to be. “The separation of children from their parents echoed the indignities of slavery and the irreparable harm done when the closest of relationships were suddenly severed,” Green writes.

When taken to heart, books like this one allow empathy and action to bloom. Those who are sensitive to the suffering of others are more likely to address it.

Yes, something must be done about Prince Edward County and the rest of this nation. And, as the book reminds us, it’s up to us to do it.

[Jason Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

It takes the rare privileged white woman to make the story of the civil rights movement all about her.

Civil rights battles over desegregation must be told to children nowadays as these lessons are of the utmost importance and should not be forgotten. However, this wasn't the book for me.

The author is a privileged white woman with white guilt because her grandfather supported an all white school and (by default) the closing of schools to prevent desegregation in a small Virginia town.

While there is some nice research and new facts, the author spends far too much time seeking an apology from dead loved ones and living ones (her parents) to make her feel better about their decision to send her to private school. She travels back home there and battles over whether she will send her kids to the best available school because of their mixed heritage, treating them as pawns in her moments of self-actualization.

This book did however make me want to read more about Prince Edwards County, a story I knew too little about.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-written, well-researched history of a civil rights event in Virginia. The author grew up in the small town, Farmville, where it took place. Her Virginia small town sounds much like the Virginia small town where I grew up a few years before the author. I like her overview of the other civil rights history. She also discusses her personal and professional life which adds an appeal.

[Paul Haspel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Something about the story of Prince Edward County, Virginia, has caused it to be overlooked among the landmark events of the Civil Rights Era. Perhaps it was the lack of overt, physical violence. When that small, rural county of Southside Virginia responded to the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954 by closing all of its public schools for five years rather than integrate them, there was none of the brutal violence that characterized places like Birmingham in 1963 or Selma in 1965; there were no police dogs, no fire hoses, no state troopers with billy clubs. But make no mistake: there was violence in Prince Edward County from 1959 to 1964. It was slow-motion violence – social, psychological, and economic violence – and its effects are still felt to this day, by thousands of Americans.

In Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County, author Kristen Green – a Prince Edward County native who grew up in the county seat of Farmville and attended the whites-only private academy that Prince Edward authorities founded after they had closed the public schools – confronts these difficult aspects of her legacy. Green’s life experiences, after she graduated from Prince Edward Academy, differed from those of many of her old schoolmates: she became a journalist, left Virginia for far-off postings in Boston and San Diego, and married a man of multi-racial heritage. All of this life experience, once she returned to Virginia and settled with her family in Richmond, may have made her especially well-suited to write this story of A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle (the book’s subtitle).

Green, whose family ties to Prince Edward County go back to the antebellum era, takes pains to emphasize the genteel, civilized qualities of life in her beautiful, rural, agricultural county. But all of that beauty and gentility, all of those Virginian good manners, could not hide the fact that the county’s white leaders were just as determined to maintain a system of racial segregation as the openly racist demagogues of the Deep South. At one point, a fellow journalist and friend of Green reminds her that “Virginians are allergic to the truth”, and Green finds herself reflecting that her home state, like so much of the American South, is a place “where uncomfortable subjects are shelved” (p. 35).

Green, who already knows these facts in the abstract, learns to her sorrow the concrete realities of life in Prince Edward County. Her beloved grandfather, she finds, was a loyal member of “the Defenders,” the white Prince Edward leaders who designed and implemented the plan to close the county’s public schools and open the whites-only private academy. A telling moment of confrontation occurs when Green interviews Robert Redd, the longtime headmaster of Prince Edward Academy. Expressing no regrets for his role in the closing of the schools, Redd tells Green, “People say, ‘Oh, look what they did down there….The reason they did is because they loved their children as your grandfather did you.” Redd insists that “You would have voted for it, too”, and Green is left to reflect: “I can’t help but wonder if what he says is true” (p. 99).

Words like Redd’s in defense of their segregationist ways are counterpointed against descriptions of the real-life impact of the school closures upon Prince Edward County’s African-American population, as when a research team from Michigan State University came to Prince Edward, hoping to ascertain the impact of the school closures upon the county’s black children:

“They would soon learn that the illiteracy rate of black students ages five to twenty-two had jumped from 3 percent when the schools were closed to a staggering 23 percent. They found seven-year-old children who couldn’t hold a pencil or make an X. Some didn’t know how old they were; others couldn’t communicate.” (p. 168)

One of the things that Green finds, over the course of her time in Prince Edward County, is that many of the county’s residents do not want to talk about what happened there between 1959 and 1964. Her former history teacher, Peggy Cave, dismisses Green’s attempts to unearth the truth of the county’s past by saying, “Some people just want to keep on and on….It’s been said a million times” – this in spite of Green asking in disbelief, “Weren’t you a history teacher?...How can it be wrong to discuss history?” (p. 197).

These stories of some Prince Edward residents’ eagerness to forget the past are counterpointed with other stories of the county’s African-American residents who experienced the consequences of the school closures – people like Ricky Brown, who overcame the deficiencies of his education, worked his way up through the Virginia corrections system, and eventually became a school resource officer. His achievements are considerable; and yet “He still thinks every day about what he might have accomplished if he had started school when he should have. ‘Where would I have been,’ he wonders, ‘if my foundations had been built?’” (p. 201)

Times have changed, of course: the whites-only Prince Edward Academy changed its name, and now admits students of all races. In 2008, the county lit a Light of Reconciliation, and the county board of supervisors passed a resolution stating that “the closing of public schools in our county was wrong; and we grieve for the way lives were forever changed, for the pain that was caused, and for how those locked doors shuttered opportunities and barricaded the dreams our children had for their own lifetimes”. Those are fine gestures and noble words, to be sure.

At the same time, however, Green observes that the racism that had prompted the school closings in Prince Edward County is “still there, just not out in the open the way it was in the 1950’s….Now people reveal their racist beliefs in Farmville the same way they do in towns across America: when they are comfortable, when they think they are among like-minded people, particularly when they have a glass of alcohol in hand” (p. 119). Distressed at the ongoing existence of racism in ostensibly “post-racial” America, trying to understand how her sweet and beloved grandfather could have fought for segregation, wondering about the future of her county, Green asks, “The question is, can anything ever be enough?” (p. 251)

Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County is a tough-minded combination of history and journalism, by a writer particularly well-suited to tell the story of her beautiful, genteel, troubled little county.

[Elizabeth Magill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kristen Green’s Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County is compelling, timely, brave, and so deeply necessary that its presence next to me, its pages still warm from my hand and its messages stoking the fires of change in my belly, is palpable. This book is personal, in more ways than one. It is political, in more ways than one. I hope it tops the best-seller lists for months to come, for it is a book we desperately need to read as a nation.

Perhaps you have already read some reviews of this book, and seen that others find it compelling because it weaves together memoir and history so well, telling a story few outside the small community of Prince Edward County know by heart. These things are all true. The book is a well-told narrative, the author’s personal experience and family history—her grandfather helped to found an all-white private school during segregation, contributing to the closure of public schools in Prince Edward County and locking black children out of an education for five years—providing the backdrop for a history that needs to be shared before it can be transcended.

While the book is a quick and fascinating read that gives readers both personal and political perspective, it is more than that. It is a history told by a white person who is aware of her whiteness, and speaking the truth of white middle-class experience—the guilt, shame, and isolation that come with being born on the privileged side of an unjust system. White Americans have a tendency to think of discussions about race as centering only on people of color, as if whiteness is not a race. In these pages, we hear the truth of race and class, simply as story. We see white supremacists trying desperately to hang onto a fragile and false sense of superiority through any means necessary, and we see the quieter kind of racism, which tends to be unconscious, programmed into us as a series of assumptions. To awaken from the myths surrounding whiteness is to begin to question these assumptions, and to acknowledge our own isolation. In exposing this isolation and the heartbreak it can bring in both white and black people, Ms. Green’s book is doing some powerful work indeed.

This is a brave book, braver perhaps than evident at first glance. We all know that it takes bravery to speak the truth. We know that there is more bravery still in speaking truth to power. And we know, somewhere in a rarely explored part of ourselves, that the bravest thing a person could ever do is speak truth to power when those who hold power have built the very ground you stand on—cooked your meals, bought your books, played with you, taught you history and told you not to question it. This is the kind of bravery that Ms. Green demonstrates in her book—she is speaking truth to power in her hometown. In the final chapters of the book, Ms. Green connects the past and the present, exposing the racism, conscious and unconscious, that shapes our present even as we try to pretend it is in our long-distant past. It is deeply evident that Ms. Green speaks this truth out of love. The love lifts from these pages—love of her family, love of her community, love of black people, love of white people. Love of justice.

To read this book as a resident of Farmville, with children in Prince Edward County schools, is a unique experience. Not only because I recognize place descriptions (all of them spot-on) and names of friends and acquaintances, but because the heartache Ms. Green describes—the sense that the town is keeping a secret, and that there is pain here yet to be released, apologies waiting to be spoken and forgiveness holding its breath—so perfectly encapsulates the experience of living here. Some healing has begun, but there is much more to do—and for those of us who live in Prince Edward County, raising children in a school system that still struggles with issues connected to poverty and racism, it is obvious that something must be done, indeed.

I am grateful to Ms. Green for her eloquence, her bravery, and her insight—and I am sure you will be too, after spending a few hours with the history of her hometown. For her history is our collective history—and acknowledging that at this historical moment, as black churches burn throughout the South and we continue to speak about racism as if it is both debatable and long gone, is a vital step in our journey toward a future that doesn't repeat our past.

[Andre(Read-A-Lot) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is unremarkable and seems heavily burdened by Ms. Green's desperate attempt to illustrate how different she is from her racist grandparents and her somewhat less racist parents. She let's us know she married a Native American and her children by this union are multi-racial. She even claims her children have been subject to slight micro aggressions based on their skin color, but if you examine the picture in the book, they certainly look like common white Americans to these eyes. And their skin color is little different from Ms. Green, although she describes her children as brown skinned.

The author, Kristen Green is a product of the "segregation" academy that she returns to years later to write about. We all are familiar with Brown v. Board of Education. What may be less familiar are the details of that court case, which people and school systems were involved in that initial court lawsuit. In April 1951, student leaders led by Barbara Johns - a niece of legendary Reverend Vernon Johns, who preceded Martin Luther King, Jr. - walked out of Moton High School (Farmville, Va in PEC) in protest of the miserable conditions that existed in that school. The NAACP took up the cause and expanded the students demand for a new school, to a petition for desegregation of the existing schools in Prince Edward County, Virginia.

The Prince Edward County case was combined with 4 other cases under the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Well PEC, Virgina vowed to never intergrate their schools, no matter what. After the verdict came down, PEC decided to close all public schools, rather than integrate, "with all deliberate speed." The county formed a group known as the Defenders to open a private school for whites only, the Prince Edward Academy. There were several of these types of schools popping up in the South to circumvent Brown v. Board of Education. They became popularly known as segregation academies.

The author's grandfather was instrumental in forming the Prince Edward Academy, and was a leading segregationist much to the dismay of Ms. Green. I imagine it is hard to reconcile the love you have for family, and their history of hate towards other humans. One thing I fail to understand is this notion that the times dictate behavior. And if white people were transported back to PEC, circa 1954, they would have been against educating their children with the Blacks of the county. After all, according to her grandparents contemporaries they were just doing what was best for "their" children.

"As much as Mimi's and Papa's (her grandmother and grandfather) rejection of desegregation frustrated me, I accepted on some level that they were products of their time. But when it came to my parents, I had a harder time understanding their decision to return to Farmville and to send my brothers and me to the segregation academy they had attended.

The segregation academy took flight with support from the community and donations from local businesses and civic groups all dedicated and committed to seeing "their" children educated. The academy made some allowances for those who couldn't afford the tuition. The only requirement was whiteness. The black students had to scramble, some being sent to live with relatives in other parts of the country, some being sent to Kittrell college in NC, who generously agreed to accept seniors and juniors who could find their way there.

The schools stayed closed almost six years and had an obvious debilitating effect on the black community of Farmville, Va and PEC county in general. The authors parents attended the academy and the author also attended the private academy, although by the time she went to school the public schools were fully operational, though clearly not up to the standard of the private academy. The author states she never had a black classmate until her eighth grade year in 1987. 1987, unbelievable!

The book was prompted by the author's wish to "come to terms with my upbringing-and to accept that I can never leave Prince Edward County behind... I am the segregation academy. I am the grandchild of prejudiced but loving grandparents."

I submit that her grandparents went far beyond prejudiced, and the authors moral gymnastics notwithstanding doesn't make them any less of the racist scoundrels they clearly were by the writer's own telling.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll give it two stars because of the historically important episode that's described. But the writing was uninteresting, and way too much self-indulgence and hand-wringing by the author about her grandfather's culpability and her own completely unrelated angst about having married a non-white. For the record, marrying an American Indian in the 21st century is NOT a parallel with the outright bigotry against Blacks in 1959 Virginia.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will admit some bias, as I consider Farmville, VA (the setting of this book) to be my hometown, and therefore I feel this story is more important than some readers probably would. But it was a personal story for me, in many ways, as I have much in common with the author, who is only a little older than I am. I attended the same school, I had some of the same teachers, I have walked that same Main Street many times. It is surreal to read a book and know several of the people mentioned in it. My family didn't begin living in the Farmville area until the mid-1970s, so I don't share her family history role in the closing of the schools. But like the author, I did have all of the same gaps in knowledge. As a child, I didn't have any idea the schools had closed. As I grew, I became somewhat aware that Brown v. Board had impacted Farmville. It was only as an adult that I began to really understand what had happened and why Farmville's battle was unique. But I didn't know the details. That's why I was so excited to read this book.

The author has created a very unique book, in my opinion, in that it is both a memoir and the story of a town's painful past. At first, I thought it might not work, but soon realized I had nothing to fear. She managed to weave both stories together in a logical and cohesive way. Her personal story actually brings greater depth to what would otherwise have been another Civil Rights non-fiction work -- still of great importance, but not nearly as moving. I commend her bravery in her determination to tell the truth, even if it meant learning and sharing anecdotes which were personally painful and disappointing. I can guess how this has impacted her relationships and her family's social life in Farmville, and this just makes me admire her all that much more. I also appreciate her level of research (extensive in both original and secondary documents), her clear writing, and her insightful commentary.

I know not everyone in Farmville appreciates this book as much as I do, but I am very grateful to Ms. Green for telling the story no one ever wants to tell. Like her, I too have wondered what really happened in Farmville during the Civil Rights Movement, and thanks to her, now I know. A lot of people in the book don't want to talk about any of this, because they feel it's time to move on and not live in the past. However, in my experience, when it comes to painful experiences, burying them in silence never makes them go away. It just delays the conversation. This book kickstarts that conversation.

It took me a little longer to finish this book, because I kept going back to re-read portions of it. I would also read sections to my husband and discuss the passages with him. I have been trying to explain to him what growing up in and around Farmville is like, and this book helped me paint a more complete picture for him. I have talked about it with my siblings, and have had interesting conversations with them, too.

Thank you for your bravery, honesty, and integrity, Ms. Green. Thank you for telling a story most people in Farmville would never have dared to put down on paper. Thank you for being an agent of change in Farmville. I hope you will write many more books.

P. S. The final cherry-on-top of my review is this: Not only did I read all the endnotes and make a list of books I want to read to further my knowledge on this topic, I plan on purchasing a copy of this book so I may reference it as needed. Anyone reading this who knows me well understands this as highly unusual for me to do. I rarely buy books (I'm a librarian who promotes and enjoys free books at public libraries) and I never keep copies of books I have read. This book is compelling, inspirational, and important. I must have a copy for myself always.

[Carin · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I first heard about this book, I was utterly shocked, even as a native Southerner who has done a little bit of reading on the Civil Rights movement. How could this be true? How could this have been legal? How did this go on for so long? After Brown V. Board of Education, as the rest of the South either prepared to integrate or to fight directly, Prince Edward County in rural Virginia instead decided to close all their schools. Just close them. Seriously. Then the white families opened a private school just for whites. They took some equipment from the closed public schools. But mostly the funded the new schools themselves, but with some "grants" from the state and region. Yep, they used public funds for these private white-only schools. Minds blown yet?

The author, Kristen Green, grew up on Prince Edward County. And she went to that white-only school. In the 1980s. Yes, the public schools had reopened by then, but the private school, which most of the white attended, was still white-only. She hadn't thought much about it as a child, but when she grew up and went away to college, she was fascinated by fellow students of other backgrounds. Eventually her best friends were a mix of many colors, and she married a mixed-race man, and now has two mixed-race children. And while working as a journalist in Boston, she thought about how her grandparents probably wouldn't have liked her own children very much. Which was a sad realization. And it made her think more about her hometown. And how she was raised. And how her family would be received there.

She began looking into the history of the school system and was horrified to discover that her grandfather had been instrumental in starting the whites-only school. She'd thought her family had just gone along with it--not actually helped to create the situation. After all they had a beloved African-American cleaning lady whose own daughter had had to move away to go to school during that era. How could they have seen the impact on their own employee's family and not cared?

From there, she started doing a vast amount of research and interviews, eventually even moving back to the town, living only a block away from her parents' house, and volunteering at the local civil rights museum. This book is an interesting mix of memoir and history. It isn't often than a journalist has such an inside track like this on her subject. And Ms. Green melds the two genres beautifully. I wasn't sure they'd hold together so well but it's just great. She's obviously done a vast amount of background and research, and while some on the town were reluctant to speak with her, as a local, she surely got more people to speak with her then an outsider would have. It's amazing that more than 50 years after this, people still are proud of the decision, ashamed of their town's history, and sometimes even did refuse to talk to Ms. Green. This region still has to come to terms with what they did. This book is an excellent start.

[Mikey B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This tells the narrative of a region (Prince Edward County) in the state of Virginia where white supremacists decided to close the schools when the Supreme Court passed Brown vs Board of Education that essentially made segregation of schools illegal. Prince Edward County was one of five school boards involved in Brown vs Board of Education. The five school boards were used as prime examples that separate but equal (in this case education) was anything but equal.

The whites started to organize immediately after this legislation was passed in 1952. Even though schools did not have to be integrated immediately - preparations were made – donations collected for private schools and buildings were selected to be used as surrogate schools. When integration became the reality in 1959 the municipal government closed the public schools – and white children went to the private schools. The black children either left Prince Edward to live with friends or relatives in order to attend school – or those that didn’t leave simply had no school to attend.

The author, a white woman, grew up in Prince Edward County and brings us an intimate and close-up view of the racial divide. She spoke with several of the people involved in closing the public schools and who set-up the private white schools. She spoke too with the blacks who were excluded – and who missed out on their education at a critical stage of their young lives. This book is personal – as we witness how the now adult blacks still struggle with the education they were denied. Whites who opposed the public school closings were ostracized by their neighbors. The wounds and resentment reside to this day.

By the end of the 1960’s public schools had been established for black children, initially by the federal government. Even though the name of the private white school has been changed there are relatively few black children attending.

There is a poignant chapter describing the author’s mother, who as a child played with the daughter of the black house maid. Then this child, of the house-maid, was sent away to live with relatives in order to attend school. One day the author’s mother asked the house-maid why her daughter was no longer living with her – she received no answer.

There are some indications of healing. A museum has been created to illustrate the reality of segregated schools - and importantly the impact of closing the public schools. Nevertheless the author points out that there continues to be a racial divide.

This is a very readable book written at a human level and it presents this very sad era and its continuing significance today.

[Melinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting companion to Go Set a Watchman as Green's grandfather, a Virginia dentist, was a member of the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties, a white segregationist society brought to life by changes during the Civil Rights era. After Brown v Board of Education, whites in Prince Edward County closed and refused to fund the public school system rather than integrate. For ten years, black students were locked out. This made me think of several parallels to slavery when blacks were not allowed to be educated and when black families were torn apart at human auctions as many parents in Prince Edward County had to make the painful choice to send their children away to school. Green tells one story about a family that rented a run down house in a neighboring county, fixed up the yard, and made curtains for the windows -- but the family never moved in. Each day, the children were dropped off at the back of the house and walked through the empty shell to the front door, stepping out to meet the school bus. Eventually, other children used the same address -- 21 children boarding the bus at one "residence." I like the way Green summarizes other important events of the Civil Rights era in order to set the closure in Prince Edward County in context, although the causality between events is not always clear. The author also does a good job of following up on what happened to some of the students who were locked out and robbed of an education. This account helped me understand the value of education and how white segregationists continued to exert power in some (mostly Southern) communities more than 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. If a citizen can't read, he or she probably won't vote or have a voice. This is a heartbreaking and important story. I would have awarded more stars, but felt the author's personal narrative detracted from the historical account.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm very familiar with the Farmville, VA area. Although I've never lived there, I go there plenty to shop for furniture at Green Front and have enjoyed several meals at Charley's Waterfront Restaurant (both mentioned in the book). It is with this passing familiarity with the place that caught my attention when I saw this book.

Green does a great job laying out the history of the battle over segregation/desegregation that took place in Farmville during the Civil Right's movement. When Prince Edward Co, VA chose to close all public schools instead of desegregate, leaving them closed for 5 years (the longest public school closure in the country), they established a whites only private academy leaving all black students and many poor white students without educational access. This book lays out the history of what happened, its place in the larger nationwide desegregation movement, and an examination of the people involved - including the author's own grandfather who served on the private academy's school board for decades.

For those with only a passing knowledge of the Civil Right's movement, I would declare this a must read. It lays out most of the basics, with Farmville used as the prime example, and does and excellent job detailing the years of frustration and slow change that occurred. For those with an already broader knowledge of the movement, it is almost too basic even as I found the story of Farmville, specifically, fascinating. I liked that the author gives her personal reasons for wanting to write the story (her family's involvement), but as other reviewers have pointed out, I did get pretty tired of the constant "I'm not a racist because I have black friends and my husband is brown (Native American)" repeat in every chapter. There would be many pages of great historical writing then at least a page of the author again telling us she isn't racist and why. Repeat, and repeat, and repeat for the whole book. It got to be a bit much.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this is an important and worthy topic, about which I knew little before I read the book. It's also good in that the author looks not only at what happened back in the 50s and 60s, but what is still happening in small southern towns today. That said, it would have been so much better if the author, who is white and whose grandparents were involved in the movement to keep schools segregated, didn't spend so much time trying to convince the reader that she's much more evolved than her grandparents. I never questioned that she wasn't--the whole tone of the book makes clear that she thinks what happened to black students in this county is abominable. After a while it starts to feel like she's trying to apologize for her grandparents, who are no longer around to question or apologize themselves (assuming they would have). More time on topic, less time on memoir, would have been better.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very authentic and well researched non-fiction book and personal memoir by Green who was born and raised in Farmville, VA in Prince Edward County. Green takes a hard look at racism, discrimination, decision making from 1950-2013 by white community leaders and residents, and the impact on blacks in Prince Edwards County. With the recent 2015 events in the South with the Charleston, South Carolina AME church assassinations and the outcry by whites in the South to retain flying the confederate flag, this book is timely to remind readers of our nation's troubled and dark racist history. I confess this book made my blood boil for all the reasons I find the South to be such a mean and dysfunctional place. I am a strong advocate for education and its ability to raise people out of poverty. Closing the public schools for over four years to rebel against integration was irresponsible and excessively mean spirited.
In 1951 a very feisty, courageous and intelligent black child, Barbara Rose Johns, led a student strike at Moton High School protesting the substandard conditions of her school versus the white high school. The student protest sparked decisions and actions by whites in the community to close the public schools rather than integrate. This was in defiance of federal law. The whites opened a private school in Prince Edward County and pilfered the closed public school for resources, supplies, and equipment. The black and poor white children were left without a school to attend. As a result, families were torn apart because children were either sent to live with other relatives so they could attend public school in other counties or states or the children simply no longer attended school. Green predominately focused on the impact on blacks because at the root of this issue was blatant racism and discrimination. It is important to remember poor white children were also left out.
Green's maternal grandfather, S.C. Patteson, was a Defender (i.e., leader) for the continued segregation of the schools in Prince Edward County. He voted to close the public schools. Green's mother and father both attended the private white school Prince Edward Academy. Green also attended Prince Edward Academy. Green's grandparents employed a black woman, Elsie Mary Anderson, whom Green has been in contact with through the writing of this book. Elsie's daughter, Gwen, was sent to live with relatives in Massachusetts so Gwen could receive an education. Elsie was never able to mother her only child as a result of the decisions made by a community of angry, bitter racists white people. Shameful.
Green marries Jason Hamilton a man of mixed races. "the judge who wed us would later tell Jason, at a Christmas Eve party in his home, to "ride that Indian pony," implying that Jason had been accepted to business school at MIT only because of his American Indian heritage."
The last third of the book was a bit long. The community has never fully healed from the events precipitated in the '50's and much of the blame remains on the shoulders of the whites.

"It is important for me to be honest and forthright as possible in the telling. This, of course, is taboo in the South, where uncomfortable subjects are shelved. "Virginians are allergic to the truth," a journalist friend gently informs me, pointing out that the state's history of slavery has never been adequately addressed."
"As I tried to understand what led to the school closings, I sat in Longwood University's Greenwood Library reading through dozens of the Farmville Herald's editorials from the 1950's, studying how the white publisher used his newspaper to advance his personal agenda-and the agenda of other powerful whites."
"The Defenders devised a drastic but simple plan: to withhold funds from public schools. Wall, the short, plump newspaper owner and founder of the Defenders, raised the idea of abandoning public education on the opinion page in November 1954. If Prince Edward's schools weren't open, they couldn't be desegregated."
"The Defenders wanted to keep segregation in place, but they didn't need to do it by killing, maiming, and burning. They relied instead on psychological tactics and economic repercussions, such as denying blacks credit at the grocery store without explanation."

[Jeanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Something Must Be Done about Prince Edward County is the story of Farmville’s refusal to integrate their public schools following the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Instead, the school board opened a white-only private academy, leaving black students – and poor white ones – without opportunities for an education. Kristen Green is the grandchild of a man who served on the academy’s board for 25 years. Her parents went to school at the academy, her father was president of the PTA, her mother the guidance counselor, and she attended school there. In this book Green, a journalist, comes to terms with her family’s legacy, intertwining Farmville’s history, her family’s story (past and present), and the experiences of both Whites and Blacks in that period.

Following the closings, some black children went to school out of state with family, others out of county, still others to the local college. When their children were sent away, families were broken up. The illiteracy rate of young blacks went from 3% when the public schools were closed to 23%. Many saw their opportunities for the future dry up.

Green approached this story in a nuanced way. She holds her maternal grandparents accountable for their involvement in closing the public schools and opening the all-white academy, but also clearly adored them both: “to my younger brothers and me, they were perfect” (p. 13). Her paternal grandmother “loved black people...She just thought she was better” (p. 124). A community member said, “The reason they [closed the schools and opened the academy] is because they loved their children as your grandfather did you. We’re not bad people....You would have voted for it too” (p. 100). And Green couldn’t help but wonder if he was right.

It is easy for people to put on Pretty Faces and deny problems, especially ugly ones. The people Green interviewed often wanted to excuse themselves and put this story in the past, but “every time we try to get beyond it, something stirs it up again. Why can’t we put it behind us?” (p. 242). Blacks, on the other hand, “kept quiet, the way [they] were expected to. Life was easier for them if they knew their place” (p. 159). Still, racist beliefs appeared “the same way they do in towns across America: when [people] are comfortable, when they think they are among like-minded people, particularly when they have a glass of alcohol in hand” (p. 119).

Sometimes Green seems self-righteous and heavy-handed in her story-telling. If she hadn’t, would we slip away from the problems of the past and instead note the few blacks – mostly athletes – at the present-day academy? Would that be enough to make us feel more comfortable, less culpable? One of Green’s journalism professors told her, “People will nice your story right out of your hands...Don’t be a sucker like that” (p. 90).

We can believe we would have stood up against the school closings – and maybe Green’s grandfather wanted to – as we are good people. In refusing to see Saints and Villains, in holding her family – and herself – responsible, Green tells a more powerful, more useful story.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the greatest compliments I have received is when my an old friend thanked me for being a strong ally of the LGBTQ community. I was touched by his words and my greatest hope is to be the same ally for anyone who is marginalized. Sadly, I don't think I am the same ally for the black community. I vote to support rights of all people, I give money to the right organizations, I have many black people in my life that I love with my whole heart. But I don't speak up the same way. I am white woman from Virginia and I am terrified that I am going to say the wrong thing. No more. I'd rather say the wrong thing than be silent. Silence only helps the oppressors. I wear my Black Lives Matter tee-shirt around town. I speak up. I am trying with all that I am to be better. I will say the wrong thing. I might offend or shock people that I love. But it will be clear that I support black people in my community and in the world. I will the do the best that I can. And, I hope one day, that I can articulate my thoughts without fear.
I felt that Kristen Green took this same journey. She is struggling to come to terms with the racism that was present in every part of her life, her family, her hometown, her school. How can she love those things that helped to make her when they are attached to such ugliness. I didn't grow up in Prince Edward County, but I did grow up in rural Virginia. Both sides of my family have been in the Commonwealth for over 300 years. I have a lot to confront about what and who I love and how it has contributed to racism.
Green weaves her own story with the history of integration in Prince Edward County. This combination works well but what Green does best is illustrate how the actions of Prince Edward County in 1954 affect the black community TODAY.

Read this book.

Speak up.

Rise up.

[Ellen Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many people have had the experience of returning to their childhood hometown as an adult and finding that their perspective and perception has changed. For the author, Kristen Green, leaving her hometown and becoming a journalist gave her a new perspective on diversity and race relations that she did not have as a child. In this book, she researches and uncovers the events that happened in her own hometown of Farmville, when the county closed the public schools rather than desegregating.

I think that the author did a masterful job of blending a journalistic take on the events that unfolded in Prince Edward County with her personal journey of coming to understand her town's past and her family's role in the school closings. I grew up in Virginia, and I had a similar experience in that disturbing or troubling events in the past were generally not talked about. I think that the author's approach to uncovering the story really showed how difficult it is to uncover the truth of events that a community typically does not discuss, and yet how important it is to have those discussions and find out those difficult facts.

The stories of children going without school broke my heart again and again. People are still living with these devastating repercussions. I think this book is a must-read.

[Candice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having lived for several years in Lynchburg, Virginia, about 50 miles west of Farmville, I had heard of the closing of the Prince Edward County schools as a way to avoid integrating them. While I can’t say that much in the book was a surprise to me, I did find the stories of the individual children and families absolutely heartbreaking. It took courage for Ms. Green to write this book, an account of a very sorry chapter of her hometown’s history and one in which her grandfather played a part. The repercussions of what I can only describe as a hateful act are being felt to this day as Prince Edward County’s literacy rate is below the state average.

Besides a narrative of the closing of the schools and its effect on the community, the book becomes personal, describing the author’s upbringing in Farmville years after the schools reopened. It is a tribute to her open-mindedness and courage that she has endeavored to understand people of different races and backgrounds in her college years and beyond.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting journalistic book about the segregation and shut down of public schools that still took place in Farmville, VA in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. Growing up in Virginia, this is a part of history I was never taught. Glad to have read about this important part of my state's roll in hampering racial equality, especially with respect to education. Kristen Green provides a very balanced look at the events that took place in Prince William County during the Civil Rights Movement through today. However, I found parts of her dialogue and personal anecdotes to be problematic, as they came across as apologist rather than merely informative. It gave the book a more personal focus on how she could "repent" for the role her family had in this period of Farmville's history, which in my opinion, detracts from thr raw stories from the Black residents who were drastically impacted by Farmville's decision to cut off education to Black children to fight desegregation.

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkably well-told account from exactly the right person to tell it. Kristen Green shares with readers the already riveting story of an important moment in Civil Rights and adds in a brutally honest look at the role of her loved ones, in that moment, creating a riveting narrative that explores long-term consequences, culture, and healing. Having heard so many people recently highlighted by the media fumbling with these challenging issues, I have even more respect for Kristen's elegant, earnest, and heartfelt approach to dealing with a difficult situation. The book should be required reading for all thoughtful citizens as current events lead the country to address the not-so-old wounds that haunt 21st century America.

[BJ Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

What should have be done was much more reporting on the lives of the black children locked out of Farmville's schools! Way too much memoir (that swings between self-congratulation and self-flagellation) and way too little of the voices of those most affected or of critical examination of the social context that allowed the school shutdown to drag on. This is an important chapter in US and Virginia history that needs to be better known and understood.

[Catherine Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about finding a way forward through reconciliation. Kristen Green writes a compelling book about a tragic and terrible part of Virginia's history. There are many Virginians who don't know the story of what happened in Prince Edward County or that plaintiffs from Moton High School were part of the Brown v. Board of Education case decided by the Supreme Court in 1954 that declared school segregation to be unconstitutional.

The author discovered that her grandfather was instrumental in the massive resistance movement that closed all the public schools and created a whites only private academy. Black school children were shut out of getting a public education from 1959 to 1964 while Green's own parents attended the private all white academy funded by "tuition grants" paid out of county tax money. Her own education and that of her brothers was also in that same private academy. Her sense of guilt and her search for meaning is palpable throughout the entire book. I believe that in researching and writing this book, she is engaging in an act of atonement.

For those who have seen the Civil Rights memorial at the Virginia State Capitol, just a short distance from the Governor's Mansion, you will recognize the name Barbara Johns who led a student walkout at Moton High School in 1951. The former Robert Russa Moton High School is now a Civil Rights Museum in Farmville - the only Civil Rights museum in Virginia. Quite ironically, the only Vice-Presidential debate between Tim Kaine and Mike Pence will be held at Longwood University on Oct. 4th, just down the street from the Moton Museum.

The additional twist? That Civil Rights monument at the state capitol honoring Barbara Johns and acknowledging what happened in Prince Edward County was unveiled in 2008 by then Governor Tim Kaine.

Virginians need to know their own history and to acknowledge the damage done. In 1965, thirteen private whites only schools attended by more than 5,600 white pupils were operating in Virginia. In some communities, the public schools have never quite recovered from the resistance to school desegregation. The author's own multi-racial children attend public schools in Richmond where she can see the effects of race, poverty and the lack of community investment in the school system.

I think the book is well written with great insights into a community where the author has deep roots and deep ties with the people still living there both white and black. This is a passage that really resonated with me:

While many of the people I've talked with are sorry the schools closed, I sense there is still a disconnect between regret about what happened and empathy for the people it happened to. I think of a story a friend shared about teaching her young son hot to apologize. After he knocked over a classmate on the playground, he mumbled "Sorry" under his breath. My friend pulled her son aside and told him the apology alone wasn't enough. He also needed to inquire about the other boy, listen to his response, and help him get up.

It's as if Farmville didn't get this lesson. The apologies to students shut out of school have never been adequate. Sometimes the community reminds me of a child who expects everything to return to normal once he says he is sorry. In this way, the town never grew up.

I agree it's not enough to simply move on without acknowledging the role our history has played in the reduced opportunities now faced by many African-Americans in communities throughout the Commonwealth. We have not resolved the issues of racism that impact our schools and detrimentally affect minority students. We need to more fully understand how we got here so we can create a better path forward.

This book is a gem and I highly recommend it.

[Kelsey Dangelo-Worth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kristen Green grew up in Prince Edward County, a small town where many happy and idyllic Southern memories were made. She also remembers her grandparents and her parents fondly. But Green returns with her half-American Indian husband and children in order to research the story of desegregating the schools of the country, and her own family’s role in—instead of desegregating—the town closed the public schools and opened a whites-only private academy, a school the author herself attended. Although the story is often bogged down with Green’s overly detailed story about her own life and family, her own realization of the need for diversity in our communities and lives, I think that this is also important to the story. She is not an outsider to this community, and she also refuses to ignore or forget what happened. She is also able to show the complexities of the problems of racism, of the people this situation impacted on both sides and for generations. Her struggle to understand (one that cannot be resolved) and to tell the personal stories and struggles brings an important dimension to the story.

The story encompasses the founding of the county, its role in the Civil War and an attempt to maintain slavery, and, afterwards, segregation. Green relates the intricacies of the Brown decision, and the heroic high school students in Prince Edward that were part of the case in trying to get a more quality education. After the decision, with the ambiguity of a timeline and without support from the president, the leaders (including Green’s beloved grandfather), decided to defund the public schools and to start a private whites-only academy, funded by tax grants and consisting of materials and teachers from the former school. The public schools were closed for years as battles waged in the courts. Some families were forever broken when children were sent to other counties or states. Some students never got an education and never recovered from the loss of those formative school years. Some amazingly fought back and survived. The community still suffers with an underfunded public school that perpetuates segregation (as the private academy still draws more supports). Green does well to show that the problem has changed, but still exists. Throughout the book, it is apparent how incredibly priceless education is, and how incredibly horrific racism is, and the cruelty of denying a people an education.

Green shows the complex problem of liking people, seeing the good in them, particularly when they are family, but also seeing the evil that they are capable of doing, the cruelty of “niceness”, the horrific and mistaken thinking of racism—that it is that nice people, the everyday person, who cannot understand the horrors that their own hatred does, how they can make themselves blind to the horror that they commit by telling themselves that it is the right thing to do. Power and control can come through nonviolent cruelty. The fear of mixing, a fear of someone we see as different or “less than”, is the worst fear a human is capable because it is self-perpetuating, and it hurts everyone, by increasing hatred and confusion over each other. In the case of education, it also prevents resources (monetary and human) from helping the whole of society through public schooling. The book highlights the incredibly importance of public schooling for a community, for a people, and the tragedy that happens when this is denied. And, the book doesn’t let us forget that it is still being denied, through underfunded, overly tested, undersupported schools, where tracking and districting still segregate children.

An amazing, fascinating, complex, powerful, well-researched, personal and tragic story. This is a must read. Grade: A

[Andy]

DNF. Very anecdotal, first-person approach to a Big Topic. Not my cup of tea.

[Patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Farmville is still the quiet community where I spent long summer afternoons floating in my parents’ pool. On the surface, it is a perfectly charming Southern place to grow up, a seemingly wholesome town to raise a family.

That is, until you dive in.”

I have lived in Virginia for more than 30 years and I am still learning the history of this state. A lot happened here. The War of Independence ended here, as did the Civil War. Eight American presidents were born here and the commonwealth claims many famous people. I knew much of that record before I came here.

However, there is a lot of Virginia history that didn’t make it into the history books I read. That included much of the racial history. I didn’t know about how integration affected this state. I certainly had no idea that a Virginia county was without public schools for five years.

Green who wrote this memoir/history grew up in Prince Edward County. Her parents both were in school when this county gave up public education. Their instruction changed a great deal. However, they still had school available – many students black and white did not.

If my family was in any way responsible for such political maneuvers as trying to thwart the federal government, I think I may have just shoved it under the rug. Green’s family did that for many years. However, Green had lived in other places and saw a different world than Farmville. She could not let this story rest.

I am glad that she wrote this story. Although this is history that no one should be proud of, we also shouldn’t forget. I recommend this book to anyone interested in American history, those who are still working for racial justice and readers who want to learn more about other lives.

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw this book profiled in "The Week" and thought it would be interesting to read. My family has been in Virginia for hundreds of years and I'm familiar with Longwood College, which is in Prince Edward County, I had never even heard of segregation academies until I read this book.
It is hard to believe that as recently as the late 1950s, people were so against integration that they would close the public schools in a county just to keep that from happening. And a county in the state I call home, no less. But that is what happened in Prince Edward County. After the Supreme Court ruled that schools must be integrated, the county voted to close the school and open a private school for whites only. The schools remained closed for five years. Families were ripped apart as children were sent out of the county (and sometimes out of the state) to live with other people and attend school. Many children, black and poorer white ones, stopped going to school altogether.
This book was a personal quest for answers for the author. Her grandfather was one of the founders of the private white school and she actually attended it herself. Many people that she interviewed told her that she should stop stirring up the past and that she should drop it. I am glad that she did not because as disgusting to me as this is, this is part of our history and it cannot be denied. We need to go forward and make sure things like this don't happen again.