0062268678 _N_ (32 page)

When she broke her thumb in 2012, she quit working for my parents. I stopped by her house more often to drop off meals or small gifts. She invited me inside her home for the first time, and, one day, she asked me to crack a bowl of nuts for her. I offered to wash her dishes, but she wouldn’t allow me into her kitchen. She thanked me for visiting and placed a roll of dimes into my hand as I left, telling me she wished she was rich so that she could give me more money. When I called her after several weeks without contact, she told me she hoped I wouldn’t dial her up one day only to learn she was already dead and buried.

One day during the summer I spent in Farmville, Elsie and I went to lunch at Ruby Tuesday, her favorite spot, and then she accompanied me to pick up my daughters from day care. As we drove to her home, the girls sang from the backseat, and when we got there, they hopped out of the car and ran around her front yard. She was surprised by how comfortable they acted around her. When they were toddlers, they would cry when she held them, and she would respond, “They aren’t used to being around people like me.” The comment stung even though it wasn’t true. But during this visit, they hugged Elsie and posed for photographs with her. They told her they loved her.

One Sunday, I put them in flowery dresses, and we drove to Elsie’s church to hear her sing. Later that afternoon, Gwen, who had moved back to Farmville, mentioned to Elsie that she had seen my daughters in church. Gwen remarked how beautiful they looked. “Thank you,” Elsie responded to her daughter.

Retelling the story to me the following week, Elsie laughed, saying she’d acted as if Amaya and Selma were her own children. It reminded me of the way she told me she felt being around my mom and Beverley Anne after sending Gwen to Massachusetts. Elsie was devastated by her daughter’s absence but comforted by the company of other children.

Months later, when I visited Elsie at her home, we sat on the couch, flipping through her old photo albums. I came across a picture of Elsie and Gwen from the 1950s. Gwen looked to be eight or nine years old, wearing a dress and a bright smile. Pretty curls framed Elsie’s young face as she smiled down at her daughter, full of love.

I was struck, suddenly, by the irreparable loss they both had endured. “I’m so sorry for what happened to your family,” I told her, my eyes wet with tears. “I’m sorry white leaders closed the schools, and I’m sorry my family didn’t treat you better when it happened.”

She averted her eyes and didn’t respond.

Now, therefore be it resolved, that we, the undersigned members of the Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors, believe that the closing of public schools in our county from 1959 to 1964 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; and for all those wounds known and unknown; we regret those past actions.

—EXCERPT OF A RESOLUTION PASSED BY THE PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS, JULY 8, 2008

Photograph Section

Students walked out of the black Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville on April 23, 1951, to protest the conditions of the school. Tar paper shack classrooms that had been added to relieve overcrowding looked like chicken coops, reeked of petroleum, and leaked when it rained. (Richmond Times-Dispatch, 1951)

This photograph of students seated around a potbelly stove in a Moton High School classroom was a defense exhibit in the case Dorothy Davis
et al.
v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, filed in May 1951. (National Archives, 1951)

Attorney Oliver W. Hill Sr. His Richmond law firm filed the suit against the Prince Edward school board that would later become one of five cases in the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. (Courtesy of Oliver Hill family, circa 1950)

The new Moton High School for black students, which was hurriedly constructed and opened in 1953 after NAACP attorneys filed the Davis lawsuit, shut down six years later when the county board of supervisors voted not to fund public education rather than desegregate the schools. The building, now called Prince Edward County High School, is the county’s sole public high school. (Richmond Times-Dispatch, 1959)

The Reverend L. Francis Griffin visited the training center he helped establish for black children in the basement of his First Baptist Church in February 1960. The training centers were not designed as schools, but instead were intended to keep up morale and reinforce basic skills while the public schools were closed. (Richmond Times-Dispatch, 1960)

Farmville High School, the public school for white students in Prince Edward County, never reopened after the schools were closed in 1959. In 1993, the colonial revival building on First Avenue was demolished after Longwood College purchased it. (Richmond Times-Dispatch, 1979)

The September 1961 dedication of the new Prince Edward Academy building, held two years after the white school was founded, was attended by 1,500 people. (Richmond Times-Dispatch, 1961)

Young people protested the school closures in front of the shops on Main Street in downtown Farmville during the summer of 1963. (Richmond Times-Dispatch, 1963)

Youth from Prince Edward County traveled by bus to Washington, DC, to attend the March on Washington in August 1963 and carried a Prince Edward sign. (Library of Congress, 1963)

In September 1963, after the public schools had been closed for four years, Prince Edward County students entered the Free Schools, private schools for white and black children with integrated teaching staffs. The schools were located in public school buildings, including the former Moton High School, which is now home to the Moton Museum. (Library of Congress, 1963)

Teacher Sheila Hartman of New York joined teachers from around the country in instructing students at the Free Schools, which existed for one academic year. The county was ordered by a federal court to reopen its public schools in 1964. (Richmond Times-Dispatch, 1963)

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy visited Prince Edward County in May 1964, going to the Free Schools to talk with parents and students. He got out of his car to address students at the all-female Longwood College who blocked his motorcade on the streets of Farmville. (Richmond Times-Dispatch, 1964)

Author Kristen Green and her husband, Jason Hamilton, with their daughter Amaya, one, and their newborn daughter, Selma. (Crissy Pascual, 2009)

Elsie Lancaster, the longtime housekeeper for author Kristen Green’s grandparents and parents, visits with the author’s children, Selma, four (left), and Amaya, five (right), outside her Prince Edward County home in 2013. (Kristen Green, 2013)

Acknowledgments

There are so many people without whom this book would not have been possible, most important, those who entrusted me with their stories. Thank you, Elsie Lancaster, for the important role you played in my life, and for telling me the story of yours. I also want to thank Betty Jean Ward Berryman, Everett Berryman, Shirby Scott Brown, Warren Ricky Brown, Mickie Pride Carrington, Eunice Ward Carwile, Peggy Cave, Joan Johns Cobbs, Dickie Cralle, the Reverend Goodwin Douglas, Russell Dove, McCarthy Eanes, Heather Edwards, James R. Ennis, James W. Garnett Jr., James E. Ghee Jr., Skip Griffin, Robert Hamlin, Oliver Hill Jr., Beverly Bass Hines, John Hines, Dorothy Lockett Holcomb, Christopher B. Howard, Marie Walton Jackson, Rebecca Butcher Kelly, Heather Lettner-Rust, Henry L. Marsh, Phyllistine Ward Mosley, Dickie Moss, Ruth Murphy, Sunny Pairet, Robert T. Redd, Craig B. Reed, Howard F. Simpson, Joy Cabarrus Speakes, Kathleen Smith, K. David Smith, Diane Stubbins, Bob Taylor, Charles Taylor, Doug Vaughan, JoAnn Vaughan, Ronnie Ward, John Watson, Charlie Williams, the Reverend J. Samuel Williams, and Ken Woodley. I am grateful to the late Robert E. Taylor for talking with me. I appreciate the people who shared their stories with me whose names do not appear in the pages of this book.

I am so appreciative of the experts who kindly shared their research and expertise with me, including J. Michael Utzinger, Brian E. Lee, Edward H. Peeples, Chris Calkins, and Edward Ayers. I want to extend a huge thank-you to the Moton Museum, especially Lacy Ward Jr. and Justin Reid, who connected me with key people and did their best to answer every question. I couldn’t have done this without the two of you.

This book wouldn’t be half the book it is without my generous and whip-smart readers. Thank you to Melissa Barber, an amazing line editor from start to finish who always lifts me up; Rachel Machacek, who kept me calm with her yogi ways and shared her hard-won book wisdom; Rachel Beanland, who read more versions of this than anyone should have had to; Steve Watkins, who taught me to question authority and provided wonderful guidance through the book-writing process; Larissa Smith Fergeson, who shared her research and served as a fact-checker; Skip Griffin, who answered texts and e-mails at all hours of the day; Missy Ryan, who gave the manuscript her editor’s eagle eye; Mia Zuckerkandel, who believed in this project before I did; and Michael Paul Williams, who shared numerous insights and was always willing to meet for coffee.

Thanks to all the folks who have supported my writing in ways big and small: Eve Bridburg and my classmates at Grub Street Writers in Boston; to James River Writers, the fabulously supportive writing community in Richmond, especially founder Dean King; and to my writer friends Caitlin Rother, Samuel Autman, and Mary Allen, for sharing insider tips. Thank you to Alan Gustafson, Susan White, Gerry Braun, and all the editors I’ve had over the years who’ve helped improve my writing and reporting.

A big thank-you to my friends at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, particularly Paige Mudd, Zach Reid, Heather Moon, and Dean Hoffmeyer. Thanks to Danielle Cervantes for her research assistance and to all the other librarians who helped. Thanks to Blaire and George Jackson for giving me shelter in Farmville, and to the lovely Trudy Hale at the Porches.

Thank you especially to the people who made this dream a reality: Laurie Abkemeier, for believing that the story of Prince Edward needed to be told and that I was the one to tell it; Gail Winston, for seeing something not only in Prince Edward’s story, but in my own, and for her guidance in helping that story to emerge; Maya Ziv and Emily Cunningham for shepherding this book to publication.

Thank you to my supportive network of friends in California, particularly Crissy Pascual, for teaching me a million things, and for the beautiful video she made with her husband, Brett Millar; Cristina and Kevin Byvik for the stylish stationery; and Jenn Davies for keeping me sane with her regular check ins. Thank you to my Mary Washington crew—Kristen Barnes, Anne Chi, Flavia Jimenez, Deb Totten, and Jane Archer, who also designed the amazing book cover. Thank you to my PEA classmates and friends, particularly Hollace Dowdy, Kathy Rhodes, Jennifer Johnson, and Rene Clark.

I want to extend a huge thank-you to my family: my parents, for sharing their stories and for supporting me, even when they weren’t sure what the book would say; my aunt, Beverley Anne Klein, and my uncles Steve Green, Mike Green, and Doug Green for telling me about their youth; my brothers Chaz, Ben, and Aaron, for our amazing shared childhood; my sisters-in-law Jillian and Erinn, my gorgeous nephews Myles, Jack, Tanner, and Conner, and my in-laws Ginny and Noel, John and Terri, and JB, for making my life so rich.

Lastly, I want to thank my husband Jason Hamilton for his constant faith that I could write this book, even when I lost my way, and for the many ways he ensured that I was able to complete it. Thank you to Amaya and Selma for serving as my inspiration. I’m sorry this project took so much time away from all three of you.

Notes

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was made. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature on your e-book reader.

I conducted the first interview for this book in 2006 with Robert E. Taylor, just weeks before he died. In the subsequent years of research, I interviewed dozens of people, among them community leaders, private school officials, and students shut out of school. I went to the library of my alma mater with the longtime headmaster, Robert T. Redd, the first time he had returned to the campus; I sat in a truck cab to conduct an interview with a former Moton student.

I attended dozens of events at the Moton Museum, including the anniversaries of the school closing, the walkout, and the kneelin. I also went to a reunion of Moton High School students in 2013. I spent time on the campuses of Fuqua School and Prince Edward County High School. I attended football games at both schools and a basketball game at which the two schools’ teams met during season play. I attended meetings of the Prince Edward County School Board and Board of Supervisors.

To research the county’s Civil War history, I visited the Sailor’s Creek Battlefield State Park and its new visitors’ center, and I interviewed the historian Chris Calkins, who manages the park. I also visited High Bridge Trail State Park. To describe Prince Edward, I drove the back roads of the county, visiting the places mentioned in the book. I walked along Main Street through historic downtown, as I had done so many times as a child, and I visited Green Front’s renovated warehouses.

I pored over the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s clip files, which also includes articles from the Richmond News Leader. I reviewed Farmville Herald stories from the era at Longwood University’s Greenwood Library and perused papers at the Library of Virginia. I spent time in the Virginia Historical Society, looking at pamphlets for the Defenders, and I researched records of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. I combed through Edward H. Peeples’s reports and photographs in the Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries Digital Collection.

I read books about Prince Edward’s decision to close the schools, as well as dozens of books about the Brown decision and its aftermath, segregation, and the civil rights era. They Closed Their Schools: Prince Edward County, Virginia, 1951–1964, written by the journalist Bob Smith, was on my bedside table for years and was most influential.