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

by Kristen Green

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062268686
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/26/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	522,579
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Kristen Green has worked as a reporter for the Boston Globe, San Diego Union-Tribune, and Richmond Times-Dispatch. She holds a master’s degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School. This is her first book. She lives in Richmond, Virginia.

Table of Contents

A Note to the Reader ix

Prologue 1

Part I Separate But Not Equal

1 A Perfectly Charming Southern Town 7

2 Homecoming in Black and White 23

3 Prince Edward Joins Brown v. Board of Education 37

4 My Family's Part 57

5 Locked Out 73

Part II The Lost Generation

6 The Segregation Academy 89

7 Waiting and Seeing 101

8 Nigger Lovers 115

9 "You Go Where Your Parents Tell You To" 121

10 Elsie's Other Life 133

11 The Hour Is Late 139

12 A Bus Ticket and a World Away 147

13 Then and Now 159

14 Brown Stokes the Flames 163

15 Two Steps Forward, One Step Back 177

16 Building a Life Without a Foundation 199

Part III Integration

17 "We Are All God's Children" 207

18 The Schools Today 221

19 "We All Wish It Hadn't Happened" 237

20 A Healing Place for the Community 245

21 The New Normal 259

Epilogue 267

Acknowledgments 273

Notes 277

Recommended Reading 303

Index 305

Editorial Reviews

Both intimate and ambitious, this is a far-reaching account of the political and social history of segregation and desegregation in Virginia that also reveals the very real human costs of this history. Moving and clear-eyed, damning and hopeful: this is an essential read.” — Jesmyn Ward, author of Men We Reaped

“In an intimate memoir, a journalist explores 1950s school segregation in a small Virginia town, its effects on the children there, and her family’s own connection to the racial divide.” — Entertainment Weekly

“An engaging and well-written book on the impact of school closures, told from a unique biographical perspective. Green delivers a deeply moving portrayal of one of the very sad histories in American race relations. Difficult to put down and a must-read.” — William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University

“Mystery wrapped in history with a touch of suspense and personal horror: Kristen Green’s stunner of a book is a ride back into a past you’ll wish had never happened. This is historical sleuthing at its finest.” — Chris McDougall, author of Born to Run

“The story of integrating American public schools has gotten drowned out by that of the Civil Rights movement. Return with Kristen Green to her hometown in Virginia to find out how people she loved and admired could have supported such injustice against children. You’ll be wiser if you do.” — Charles J. Shields, author of Mockingbird: A Life of Harper Lee

“Absorbing. . . . A merger of history both lived and studied, Green’s book looks beyond the publicized exploits of community leaders to reveal the everyday people who took great risks and often suffered significant loss during the struggle against change in one ‘quaint, damaged community.’” — Publishers Weekly

“Powerful. . . . The author movingly chronicles her discovery of the truth about her background and her efforts to promote reconciliation and atonement. 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)

“What makes Ms. Green’s book essential reading is that Prince Edward illuminates two instructive story lines that can become lost today amid the stirring commemorations of famous civil rights battles and the growing fury over the killing of unarmed African-Americans…. This is not just a work of history but also a story of how resistance to integration still shapes American life.” — New York Times

“Kristen Green was born to write this book…..[She] deftly interweaves the personal and the historical into a compelling narrative that leaves no stone unturned….[N]ot only fascinating but cinematic…[A]n award-worthy book.” — Booklist

“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

From the Publisher

Kristen Green was born to write this book…..[She] deftly interweaves the personal and the historical into a compelling narrative that leaves no stone unturned….[N]ot only fascinating but cinematic…[A]n award-worthy book.

Booklist

What makes Ms. Green’s book essential reading is that Prince Edward illuminates two instructive story lines that can become lost today amid the stirring commemorations of famous civil rights battles and the growing fury over the killing of unarmed African-Americans…. This is not just a work of history but also a story of how resistance to integration still shapes American life.

New York Times

In an intimate memoir, a journalist explores 1950s school segregation in a small Virginia town, its effects on the children there, and her family’s own connection to the racial divide.

Entertainment Weekly

Mystery wrapped in history with a touch of suspense and personal horror: Kristen Green’s stunner of a book is a ride back into a past you’ll wish had never happened. This is historical sleuthing at its finest.

Chris McDougall

Both intimate and ambitious, this is a far-reaching account of the political and social history of segregation and desegregation in Virginia that also reveals the very real human costs of this history. Moving and clear-eyed, damning and hopeful: this is an essential read.

Jesmyn Ward

The story of integrating American public schools has gotten drowned out by that of the Civil Rights movement. Return with Kristen Green to her hometown in Virginia to find out how people she loved and admired could have supported such injustice against children. You’ll be wiser if you do.

Charles J. Shields

An engaging and well-written book on the impact of school closures, told from a unique biographical perspective. Green delivers a deeply moving portrayal of one of the very sad histories in American race relations. Difficult to put down and a must-read.

William Julius Wilson

Kristen Green was born to write this book…..[She] deftly interweaves the personal and the historical into a compelling narrative that leaves no stone unturned….[N]ot only fascinating but cinematic…[A]n award-worthy book.

Booklist

Kristen Green was born to write this book…..[She] deftly interweaves the personal and the historical into a compelling narrative that leaves no stone unturned….[N]ot only fascinating but cinematic…[A]n award-worthy book.

Booklist (Top Pick)

…an affecting history of one community's struggles with race…Ms. Green…knows this past and present very well…It is this personal story that makes her mix of memoir and history…so absorbing as she returns home to interview family and friends about a past that many would rather leave there…Yet it is not just [the] vignettes showing the ways segregation was peacefully fought, defended and perpetuated that make Ms. Green's book so valuable. It is also the difficult questions she asks about Prince Edward County and Farmville, its seat and largest town, today. This is not just a work of history but also a story of how resistance to integration still shapes American life.

The New York Times - Jonathan Martin

03/16/2015
Green’s absorbing first book follows the town of Farmville, Va., focusing on its bifurcated school system (black and white, public and private) and evolving racial culture over six decades, from the massive resistance to school integration in the 1950s and 1960s to the Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors 2008 resolution that “the closing of public schools in our county from 1959 to 1964 was wrong.” Farmville was Green’s hometown; she, her siblings, her parents, and other relatives attended the all-white Prince Edward Academy. She uncovers a “painful history hidden in plain sight,” learning that her grandfather was not “some anonymous member” of the white-supremacist Defenders but one of its founders, and exploring the other life of the family’s black longtime housekeeper (“As a child I never imagined that Elsie had a life before us”). Green interviews extensively (family, old friends, administrators, teachers) and scours contemporaneous media coverage. The remarks she elicits from African-Americans who were denied public schooling by Prince Edward County are particularly affecting. A merger of history both lived and studied, Green’s book looks beyond the publicized exploits of community leaders to reveal the everyday people who took great risks and often suffered significant loss during the struggle against change in one “quaint, damaged community.” Agent: Laurie Abkemeier, DeFiore and Company. (June)

Publishers Weekly

04/15/2015
In what she calls a hybrid of nonfiction and memoir, newspaper reporter Green revisits the history and memories of her hometown, Farmville, in Virginia's Prince Edward County to recollect how its people experienced the battle over desegregating public schools after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education declared separate educational facilities to be unequal. After sketching the culture of Farmville in the advent of Brown, Green probes the decision's aftermath as the all-white school board stigmatized Prince Edward County by closing its public schools from 1959 to 1964 rather than integrating them. She traces the opening of Prince Edward Academy in 1960 (from which her parents and she would later graduate), as local white leaders established "whites only" private schools while essentially locking African Americans out of school. Mixing family, local, and oral history with personal realizations and reminiscences fitted into a national backdrop, Green describes the pains and hopes of people in one Southern town as they struggled with desegregation from the 1950s into the 21st century. VERDICT 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—particularly from the perspective of white communities—for general readers and scholars of the late 20th-century civil rights movement.—Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

Library Journal

Karen White's direct, serious narration fits the tone of Green's vital work on the multigenerational impact of racist policies. In 1951, a Black high school student in Virginia led a protest against school segregation. This action established the momentum that led to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling that desegregated U.S. schools. Yet in Prince Edward County, rather than integrate, the public schools were closed, and an all-white private school opened, a school that exists to this day despite recent efforts to integrate. Green's work clearly illustrates the harm of systemic racism and how lives continue to be impacted today by decisions of the past. White’s crisp first-person reporting deftly reflects Green's research and argument. S.P.C. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2021 - AudioFile

Karen White's direct, serious narration fits the tone of Green's vital work on the multigenerational impact of racist policies. In 1951, a Black high school student in Virginia led a protest against school segregation. This action established the momentum that led to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling that desegregated U.S. schools. Yet in Prince Edward County, rather than integrate, the public schools were closed, and an all-white private school opened, a school that exists to this day despite recent efforts to integrate. Green's work clearly illustrates the harm of systemic racism and how lives continue to be impacted today by decisions of the past. White’s crisp first-person reporting deftly reflects Green's research and argument. S.P.C. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2021 - AudioFile

★ 2015-03-15
A powerful memoir of the civil rights movement, specifically the dramatic struggle to integrate the schools in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Little-remembered today is the story of the late-1950s closure of the Prince Edward public schools and the fate of its black children, who were either deprived of education or separated from their families and dispersed into other states. At a commemoration 50 years later, journalist Green and other participants were told how "the Prince Edward story is one of the most exciting pieces of American history, in part because the struggle of young people against discrimination resulted in a Supreme Court ruling." That ruling was Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (1964), which ordered the schools to integrate. Despite the ruling, however, another 22 years would pass before the county's all-white academy was integrated. While local black students had contributed to Brown with their 1951 school strike, which they named their "Manhattan Project," Green reminds us that their segregationist neighbors believed the integration would contribute to making "the people of America a mongrel nation." Well before integration became an order, they were ready to padlock the schools and divert resources to their race-based replacement. In 2008, Green, a graduate of the whites-only academy, discovered that her grandfather had taken a lead role in the project from the beginning, in order "to maintain the purity of the white race" and avoid the raising of "half-black, half-white babies…nobody wants." The author movingly chronicles her discovery of the truth about her background and her efforts to promote reconciliation and atonement. Her own experience in a racially mixed marriage provides a counterpoint. 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