Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County

Green turns her attention to Prince Edward County’s black community, which was caught unprepared by the school closings primarily because they had considered the threat an empty one. Also, black parents and leaders found themselves in a difficult position: If they sought a solution for black children only, that would go against all the students had fought for.

Once it became clear that schools would in fact close in the fall of 1959, Reverend Griffin reached out to another minister, Alexander Dunlap, who taught part-time at Kittrell College just over the border in North Carolina. Kittrell ran a small program that enrolled high school students, and Griffin suggested sending students from Prince Edward County there. The college approved the plan and enrolled 61 county students that year. Other families sent their children north to live with relatives where they could attend school. For some who did not have that option, Griffin arranged for volunteers to offer reading and math tutoring. However, the majority of black students in Prince Edward County received no schooling at all when the schools closed: Older ones worked while younger ones stayed home.

Green details the experiences of two high school seniors, Marie Walton and Charlie Taylor, who attended Kittrell College in 1959. Walton tells Green that the experience was both exciting and daunting. The students missed home and their families a great deal. Taylor had spent the previous summer working at a restaurant in New Jersey and only learned last minute of the plan to attend Kittrell. He was disappointed that he could not participate in the sports he had been planning to, but he became trainer of the Kittrell basketball team and helped with practices.

In a final scene, Green describes her 2010 visit to Elsie Lancaster’s church to see Lancaster sing. It is clear that Lancaster is uncomfortable with Green’s presence. During the service, Green finds herself crying, and at first she doesn’t know why. Then she realizes that it’s the first time she’s been among Farmville’s black residents in their own space. She’s never really interacted with black people outside of her white context and has no black friends there. She writes, “I am mourning what could have been, not just for me, but for this community” (113).

This short chapter introduces B. Calvin Bass, a white college professor who advised both black parents and poor white parents about what to do in the crisis of the school closings. As school board chair, he had challenged the Defenders’ plan as early as 1955 and tried to find compromise (to no avail). Growing up, he had worked alongside blacks on his family’s farm, and he believed they deserved an education. Yet he was no liberal, according to his daughter Beverly. She tells Green that down deep her father was probably as conservative and prejudiced as most whites. Beverly ended up attending the Prince Edward Academy, despite her father’s opposition to it, because there was no alternative.

Green then explains that white Virginians saw themselves as a step above the whites living in the Deep South in terms of civility. While they strongly supported segregation, they were opposed to violence and “horrified” by racist acts that took place further south, such as lynchings (117). Green learns from Reverend Griffin’s son that the Farmville police chief had reached out to Griffin to establish mutual terms of nonviolence during the school crisis. While this was no doubt a good thing, Green writes, it also meant that the county did not get the media attention other places did, perhaps resulting in lengthening the crisis due to lack of outside pressure.

Green ends with an example of racism that persists in Farmville in the present day. In 2013, while she is interviewing a white shopkeeper on Main Street, a black child enters the store and asks to use the phone. After he leaves, the shopkeeper uses the N-word to describe him. Green says that such racism exists below the surface today, coming out only when whites think they are among the like-minded—or when they are drinking.

When Green’s parents attended Prince Edward Academy in 1959, neither of them understood why. Her father, Chuck Green, lived in the country with his three brothers, who were all raised by their widowed grandmother, Epsie Vale, a devout Christian. They didn’t have much money, but what little they did have they shared with those less fortunate—both black and white—in the form of donations. Green writes that Vale “loved blacks” and treated them with respect while at the same time thinking “she was better” (124). While she sent the boys to Prince Edward Academy, she felt bad for the black children who had nowhere to go. Chuck Green attended Academy classes held at Farmville’s Moose Lodge, one large hall divided by partitions through which he could hear neighboring classes; it smelled of beer and cigarettes, and had no playground.

Green’s mother lived in town and walked to the Farmville Women’s Club House, where her Academy classes took place. It was close quarters, with desks packed in so tight there was hardly room to walk among them. At the end of each day, the students moved the desks and chalkboards out so the club’s members could hold afternoon tea there. Students shared second-hand books because there weren’t enough to go around, and teachers assigned no homework for fear of losing any of the books. On the way home from school, Green’s mother would often stop at a grocery store for a soft drink. Black kids also bought candy and drinks there, but they had to wait in a corner for the owner to bring them their purchases, after which they had to leave.

The store owner’s daughter-in-law, Rebecca Butcher, was a Prince Edward Academy teacher. She tells Green she was unable to bring any supplies with her from her previous work in the public schools, so she started from scratch to prepare for her lessons at the new school. She brought newspaper, paper bags, and pieces of cardboard from home to use for various activities. She had a limited supply of books and no mimeograph machine, so she wrote out by hand all of her worksheets for the children. At the end of each week that first year, she packed up her classroom (which was in a church) and then reassembled it every Monday. In her second year of teaching, her class met in a damp basement of a local lodge, which was cold and had only one bathroom for all the students to share. Butcher tells Green, “We suffered, too,” but Green thinks that the black children’s situation was the real suffering (126).

The chapter ends with Green discussing her own decisions as a parent regarding schooling. At the time, her older daughter attends a private preschool in Richmond, Virginia, but she and her husband are considering sending her to a public one nearby. They like the idea that the school is 80 percent nonwhite, reflecting the actual makeup of the city. They also believe in public school education in principle. The problem is that Richmond’s schools are failing, and most middle-class whites send their children to private schools or move to the suburbs. When the time comes to choose, especially if her daughters are not getting the education she thinks they should, would she do the same? Yes, she thinks, “We want what’s best for our children, just as my grandfather did for his” (131).