|
Showing 1 - 1 of
1 matches in All Departments
Prince Edward County, Virginia closed its public school system in
1959 in "massive resistance" to the U.S. Supreme Court's historic
Brown v. Board decision of 1954. The editorial pages of the local
family-owned newspaper, The Farmville Herald, led the fight to lock
classrooms rather than integrate them. The school system remained
closed until the fall of 1964, when the County was forced by
federal courts to comply with the school integration ordered by
Brown. The vast majority of white children had continued their
education in a private, whites-only academy. But more than 2,000
black students were left without a formal education by the
five-year closure. Their lives were forever changed. A Civil Rights
Reparations Story: The Road to Healing in Prince Edward County,
Virginia, by Ken Woodley, is his first-person account of the steps
taken in recent years to redress the wound. The book's centerpiece
is the 18-month fight to create what legendary civil rights
activist Julian Bond told the author would become the first Civil
Rights-era reparation in United States history; it was led by
Woodley, then editor of The Farmville Herald, still owned by the
original family. If the 2003-04 struggle to win passage of a
state-funded scholarship program for the casualties of massive
resistance had been a roller coaster, it wouldn't have passed the
safety inspection for reasons of too many unsafe political twists
and turns. But it did. The narrative unfolds in Virginia, but it is
a deeply American story. Prince Edward County's ongoing journey of
racial reconciliation blazes a hopeful and redemptive trail through
difficult human terrain, but the signs are clear enough for a
divided nation to follow. The history is as important for its
insights about the past as it it about what it has to share about a
way into our future.
|
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.