Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County

Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County PDF Author: Kristen Green
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062268694
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
The provocative true story of one Virginia school system’s refusal to integrate after the US Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional. A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year 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. Praise for Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County “[Green’s] thoughtful book is a gift to a new generation of readers who need to know this story.” —Washington Post “A gripping narrative. . . . [Green’s] writing is powerful and persuasive.” —New York Times Book Review “Intimate and candid.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch “Not easily forgotten.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County

Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County PDF Author: Kristen Green
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062268694
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Get Book Here

Book Description
The provocative true story of one Virginia school system’s refusal to integrate after the US Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional. A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year 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. Praise for Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County “[Green’s] thoughtful book is a gift to a new generation of readers who need to know this story.” —Washington Post “A gripping narrative. . . . [Green’s] writing is powerful and persuasive.” —New York Times Book Review “Intimate and candid.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch “Not easily forgotten.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

Brown's Battleground

Brown's Battleground PDF Author: Jill Ogline Titus
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807869368
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
When the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, Prince Edward County, Virginia, home to one of the five cases combined by the Court under Brown, abolished its public school system rather than integrate. Jill Titus situates the crisis in Prince Edward County within the seismic changes brought by Brown and Virginia's decision to resist desegregation. While school districts across the South temporarily closed a building here or there to block a specific desegregation order, only in Prince Edward did local authorities abandon public education entirely--and with every intention of permanence. When the public schools finally reopened after five years of struggle--under direct order of the Supreme Court--county authorities employed every weapon in their arsenal to ensure that the newly reopened system remained segregated, impoverished, and academically substandard. Intertwining educational and children's history with the history of the black freedom struggle, Titus draws on little-known archival sources and new interviews to reveal the ways that ordinary people, black and white, battled, and continue to battle, over the role of public education in the United States.

Resisting Brown

Resisting Brown PDF Author: Candace Epps-Robertson
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822986450
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Many localities in America resisted integration in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education rulings (1954, 1955). Virginia’s Prince Edward County stands as perhaps the most extreme. Rather than fund integrated schools, the county’s board of supervisors closed public schools from 1959 until 1964. The only formal education available for those locked out of school came in 1963 when the combined efforts of Prince Edward’s African American community and aides from President John F. Kennedy’s administration established the Prince Edward County Free School Association (Free School). This temporary school system would serve just over 1,500 students, both black and white, aged 6 through 23. Drawing upon extensive archival research, Resisting Brown presents the Free School as a site in which important rhetorical work took place. Candace Epps-Robertson analyzes public discourse that supported the school closures as an effort and manifestation of citizenship and demonstrates how the establishment of the Free School can be seen as a rhetorical response to white supremacist ideologies. The school’s mission statements, philosophies, and commitment to literacy served as arguments against racialized constructions of citizenship. Prince Edward County stands as a microcosm of America’s struggle with race, literacy, and citizenship.

The Devil's Half Acre

The Devil's Half Acre PDF Author: Kristen Green
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1541675622
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
The inspiring true story of an enslaved woman who liberated an infamous slave jail and transformed it into one of the nation’s first HBCUs In The Devil’s Half Acre, New York Times bestselling author Kristen Green draws on years of research to tell the extraordinary and little-known story of young Mary Lumpkin, an enslaved woman who blazed a path of liberation for thousands. She was forced to have the children of a brutal slave trader and live on the premises of his slave jail, known as the “Devil’s Half Acre.” When she inherited the jail after the death of her slaveholder, she transformed it into “God’s Half Acre,” a school where Black men could fulfill their dreams. It still exists today as Virginia Union University, one of America’s first Historically Black Colleges and Universities. A sweeping narrative of a life in the margins of the American slave trade, The Devil’s Half Acre brings Mary Lumpkin into the light. This is the story of the resilience of a woman on the path to freedom, her historic contributions, and her enduring legacy.

Southern Stalemate

Southern Stalemate PDF Author: Christopher Bonastia
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226063917
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
In 1959, Virginia’s Prince Edward County closed its public schools rather than obey a court order to desegregate. For five years, black children were left to fend for themselves while the courts decided if the county could continue to deny its citizens public education. Investigating this remarkable and nearly forgotten story of local, state, and federal political confrontation, Christopher Bonastia recounts the test of wills that pitted resolute African Americans against equally steadfast white segregationists in a battle over the future of public education in America. Beginning in 1951 when black high school students protested unequal facilities and continuing through the return of whites to public schools in the 1970s and 1980s, Bonastia describes the struggle over education during the civil rights era and the human suffering that came with it, as well as the inspiring determination of black residents to see justice served. Artfully exploring the lessons of the Prince Edward saga, Southern Stalemate unearths new insights about the evolution of modern conservatism and the politics of race in America.

Prince Edward

Prince Edward PDF Author: Dennis McFarland
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312421229
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Prince Edward is the profound story of Benjamin Rome, a ten-year-old boy living through the summer and fall of 1959 in Prince Edward County, Virginia. The stage for the massive resistance of local whites against nationwide desegregation, the county is a frightening and passionate place of shifting loyalties and ardent belief. It is here that Ben must learn to navigate not only his adolescence, but the politics of the time through his powerful family. A brilliant melding of historical record and personal experience, Dennis McFarland’s fifth novel is an affirmation of his devastating emotional insight and graceful narrative gifts.

Law and Development of Middle-Income Countries

Law and Development of Middle-Income Countries PDF Author: Randall Peerenboom
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107028159
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
This interdisciplinary volume addresses the special challenges that middle-income countries confront from both a theoretical and a practical perspective.

Pay Any Price

Pay Any Price PDF Author: James Risen
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544341414
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
War corrupts. Endless war corrupts absolutely. Ever since 9/11 America has fought an endless war on terror, seeking enemies everywhere and never promising peace. In Pay Any Price, James Risen reveals an extraordinary litany of the hidden costs of that war: from squandered and stolen dollars, to outrageous abuses of power, to wars on normalcy, decency, and truth. In the name of fighting terrorism, our government has done things every bit as shameful as its historic wartime abuses -- and until this book, it has worked very hard to cover them up. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. FDR authorized the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans. Presidents Bush and Obama now must face their own reckoning. Power corrupts, but it is endless war that corrupts absolutely.

The Girl from the Tar Paper School

The Girl from the Tar Paper School PDF Author: Teri Kanefield
Publisher: ABRAMS
ISBN: 1613125178
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Book Description
Before the Little Rock Nine, before Rosa Parks, before Martin Luther King Jr. and his March on Washington, there was Barbara Rose Johns, a teenager who used nonviolent civil disobedience to draw attention to her cause. In 1951, witnessing the unfair conditions in her racially segregated high school, Barbara Johns led a walkout—the first public protest of its kind demanding racial equality in the U.S.—jumpstarting the American civil rights movement. Ridiculed by the white superintendent and school board, local newspapers, and others, and even after a cross was burned on the school grounds, Barbara and her classmates held firm and did not give up. Her school’s case went all the way to the Supreme Court and helped end segregation as part of Brown v. Board of Education. Barbara Johns grew up to become a librarian in the Philadelphia school system. The Girl from the Tar Paper School mixes biography with social history and is illustrated with family photos, images of the school and town, and archival documents from classmates and local and national news media. The book includes a civil rights timeline, bibliography, and index.

We Are Your Children Too

We Are Your Children Too PDF Author: P. O’Connell Pearson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 166590139X
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
"In 1954, after the passing of Brown v Board, one county in southern Virginia chose to close its public schools rather than integrate. Those public schools stayed closed for five years. This was the reality of the people of Prince Edward County. When the affluent white population of Prince Edward County built a private school-for white children only-they left Black children and their families with very few options. Some Black children were home schooled by unemployed Black teachers. Some traveled thousands of miles to live with relatives, friends, or even strangers. Some didn't go to school at all. But many stood up and became young activists, fighting for one of the rights America claims belongs to all: the right to learn. Revelatory and timely, noted nonfiction author and former educator P. O'Connell Pearson shines a light on this disturbing and important chapter of America's history, with ripple effects that still impact the country to this day"--