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Green grapples with her parents’ decision to send her and her brothers to Prince Edward Academy. She writes that she can better understand her grandparents’ decision to send their children to the school, as “they were products of their time” (207). But her parents’ background and evolving beliefs about race were different from her grandparents’.
As a young man, Chuck Green was eager to escape Farmville and his grandmother’s strict religiousness. He went to the University of Virginia and then to Virginia Medical College to become a dentist. While at the latter, he met Green’s mother, a student at the University of Richmond. They married in 1971, and both got jobs that increased their interactions with black people. Green’s father worked in a public housing complex, coaching mostly black kids in sports. He became fond of them and began to lose some of his prejudices. Her mother taught briefly at a school that was predominantly black. The couple then moved to Kentucky where Chuck Green served as an army dentist at Fort Campbell. It was there that he finally realized “that race and intelligence were not connected” (209). This came from working closely with an extremely capable black dentist. When that stint ended, Green’s parents chose to settle in Farmville. Being close to friends and family appealed to them, and it made sense for Green’s father to open a dental practice in a place where he already had connections. As their family grew to four kids, they bought a house and put down roots. The author describes her upbringing as an idyllic small-town childhood.
Chuck Green says he and his wife debated about where to send their children to school. Tuition for four kids at Prince Edward Academy would not be cheap, but, after touring the public school, they were not enthusiastic about its environment. In the end, they chose the private school for a number of reasons; for one, it seemed more academically rigorous as roughly 80 percent of its graduates went on to college.
Green describes the Academy as a “cocoon, protecting and sheltering us” (212). It certainly was a familiar environment, as many of her family members had gone there and some of her teachers had also taught her parents. Her mother even became a guidance counselor there when Green was in middle school. The school remained all white until 1984, when it accepted five black students. The move was prompted by the fact that, in 1978, the Internal Revenue Service revoked the school’s tax-exempt status for failing to integrate. That, as well as other financial problems, convinced leaders that the school either had to accept black students or close altogether. Despite the school’s founding on the principle of segregation, Green reports that new integration policy went smoothly.
After Green graduated and left for college, the Academy once again suffered financial troubles that threatened its existence. Looking for help, Robert Taylor, the chairman of the board, approached a childhood friend who had gone on to great success in business and now lived in Georgia. In 1993, J. B. Fuqua, head of Fuqua Industries, donated $10 million, and the school was renamed for him. He was a staunch opponent of segregation, and, hoping to usher in a new chapter in Prince Edward County’s history, he stipulated that the school be open to all races and religions.
Green wonders, however, if change can be made that easily. The last section of the chapter details how she felt living in Farmville during the summer of 2013. She rents a house near her parents and spends those months researching and immersing herself in the community. She finds that much of the old racist feelings remain. White people glare at her when she interviews a black man at a restaurant, and some old friends avoid her questions about the past. While there is evidence of change for the better, she also sees many signs from the recent past where racism has reared its ugly head. For instance, when Barack Obama was re-elected president in 2012, dozens of students at Hampden-Sydney College “shouted racial slurs, threw bottles, and set off fireworks outside the Minority Student Union” (220). Green makes an effort to get to know black residents and expose her daughters to black history and culture, but still she wants more.
In present day, Prince Edward Public Schools are more than a third white and a little over half black, compared to virtually all black forty years earlier. Still, the share of black students is higher than the county’s population of blacks (one-third). Some attribute this to the chronic underfunding of the public schools. As one person told Green, “They still see the system as the black system, so they fund it as such” (221). Many people also do not recognize the damage the historical school closings had over generations. Students who never learned to read became parents unable to fully support their own children in their studies.
Green explains how James M. Anderson Jr. helped to integrate the schools after they were ordered to reopen. Anderson was superintendent of the county public schools for 25 years, starting in 1972. One challenge was that, for about a decade, Longwood College ran a publicly funded laboratory school for its teacher training that drew white students from the public system. But Anderson convinced the president of Longwood, as well as some professors, to send their children to the public schools, which influenced other families to do the same. By the time of the 40th anniversary of Brown in 1994, Prince Edward County was the only one of the five areas represented in the lawsuit with fully integrated public schools. The 1990s were a high point, however, as student performance and graduation rates fell after Anderson retired in 1997.
In 2009, the state took advantage of a new federal program for underperforming schools to increase funding and try to turn the schools around. By then, Prince Edward County’s high school was in the bottom five percent of schools in Virginia. Around the same time, Craig Reed took over as principal. Reed is a local success story. Black like most of the students, he is a native of Farmville and an alumnus of the high school he led. During his time there, he brought in an educational consulting company to help increase support for students and improve academic success, focusing on students most at-risk. Standardized test scores improved and three years after the turnaround program began, the graduation rate increased by 20 percentage points. However, Reed left that same year, and parents wondered if his replacement would be as effective.
Prince Edward Academy, now Fuqua School, also underwent great change over the intervening years. Ruth Murphy took over as headmaster in 1994 with the objective to address diversity and revamp the school’s curriculum and teaching methods. In response to falling enrollment in the 2000s, Murphy sought to attract students from surrounding counties and from China. Increasing the number of black students, however, was not easy. During the 2013-2014 school year, black students still made up only five percent of the student body.
Murphy instituted a scholarship program in 2008 to attract more black kids, hoping that they would, in turn, act as ambassadors to help recruit others. Most of the scholarship students were athletes, and Fuqua was accused of poaching the public high school’s most talented athletes. One outspoken critic of this practice has been Ricky Brown, the former sports star of Prince Edward County Public Schools. Brown, who “refuses to set foot on the campus” (228), thinks that Fuqua School should focus instead on recruitment of academically talented black students or those in financial need.
At an event to commemorate the 50th anniversary of black demonstrators’ attempts to integrate white churches, Green describes the scene and some of the participants. Reverend J. Samuel Williams, a leader of the 1963 demonstrations, speaks of change, noting that the church that once had him arrested had recently invited him to preach. A member of the police department addresses the crowd, though he doesn’t offer the apology that Green is waiting for. A white church member, however, does. The crowd sings “We Shall Overcome” before walking on to visit the many churches that were targeted by demonstrators that Sunday in 1963.
The next day, Green attends an event at the Robert Russa Moton Museum, formerly Moton High School and now Farmville’s civil rights museum. During a brown bag lunch, the group discusses the previous day’s anniversary event, and someone points out that more whites attended than blacks. A black woman says the community needs to do a better job of teaching children about Prince Edward County’s history, and others agree. But one of the attendees, who was affected by the school closings in her youth, argues that blacks are still angry and upset by the past and just want to put it behind them. Green reflects on how many whites have expressed that same sentiment. She writes, “For some, the memories are still vivid and difficult to face, even now” (240). Betty Jean Ward is one who continues to struggle with the past. She tells Green that she avoids the church where she was arrested 50 years ago; she was out of town for the anniversary ceremony but would not have attended even if she could have.
Later that summer, Green has lunch with her mother and is complaining about the attitudes of some of the white residents she has interviewed. At first her mother gets defensive, but then she says, “You know, Kristen, we all wish it hadn’t happened. I wish it hadn’t happened” (242).
Her mother’s words have a freeing effect on Green. A few days later, she’s talking to Robert Taylor’s son, who expresses the wish so many others have of just wanting to put the past behind them and move on. Green feels that it isn’t so easy; one can’t just say a rushed “sorry” and move on, expecting things to return to normal. Care and attention must be given to the harm done.
The Moton Museum, now a National Historical Landmark, serves a healing role in the community. It is housed in the original Moton High School, which became a primary school when the public schools reopened and was almost demolished after it ceased to function as a school. Some white people thought it would be better if the school were gone, no longer a reminder of the past, but many black residents wanted to keep it for exactly that purpose. The editor of the Farmville Herald, Ken Woodley—who had replaced the segregationist J. Barrye Wall—wrote forcefully for saving the building.
The Moton Museum opened in 2001, on the 50th anniversary of the student strike, but for many years it had few displays and needed repairs. Lacy Ward Jr. became the museum’s director in 2008 and set about trying to mold it into a museum for the whole community, telling its history of desegregation. Though not everyone agreed, he thought it was important to tell the stories of both blacks and whites in an effort to show that “race was a social construct” (248). The county declined to support the museum financially, offering no funding toward Ward’s planned renovation.
The state of Virginia, on the other hand, has worked to make amends for its role in desegregation fight. The general assembly issued a proclamation of “profound regret” about the school closings and established a scholarship and job training program for affected students (248). In 2008, a memorial featuring a sculpture of Barbara Johns and civil rights leaders opened on the grounds of the state capitol. In addition, Longwood College apologized for its role in the events.
Prince Edward County itself began to renounce its past as well. In 2003, it hosted a special event at the high school graduation, conferring honorary degrees on black students who had been denied an education. And when the state memorial opened in 2008, as a gesture of reconciliation, the county lit up the bell tower in the building where the decision not to fund the schools was made.
Today Moton Museum hosts a number of events to commemorate the past and bring together residents in hopes of uniting the community. People discuss their experiences, often gaining catharsis. Green, too, finds the museum to be a source of comfort; she conducts many research interviews there.
Green also speaks openly with others about her grandfather’s role as a Defender and supporter of the private school. Some of the black people console her, saying that her grandfather was a product of his era and may even have changed his thinking as time went on. One person reveals to Green that her grandfather tended to patients of the town’s black dentist at the local hospital because blacks were not allowed to practice there at the time. She is not sure whether to accept their explanations, however; some whites did speak up and paid the price of being ostracized, or worse. In the end, she decides to accept her family’s past, the good with the bad; what’s important, she writes, is making progress here in the present, and she can do that by telling the county history as fully as she can.
The final chapter opens with Green talking to a group of black men at their usual morning meeting over coffee. She notes that a group of white men and women regularly meet at the same restaurant, but on the other side. The two groups are friendly and interact, but mostly they sit apart, “segregated once more” (259).
Still, Farmville is a different place, as one black man tells her. He moved back after spending much of his adult life up north, and he has noticed the changes. He said he can go anywhere to shop or eat, unlike in the past; and when he was shopping for a home, the real estate agent showed him all the properties on the market (as opposed to using a past practice of “redlining” and offering black homebuyers properties in certain areas only). However, he thinks Farmville will only move on completely from its past when everyone involved in the desegregation fight has died.
Green then meets with the current chair of the public school board, Russell Dove, who says lack of support from parents and businesses is the main obstacle to improving the county’s public schools. Too many still have ties to Fuqua School, so that’s where they invest their time and money. Dove doesn’t go as far as to say that Fuqua School should be closed, but others have. Green writes that, based on her research, she doesn’t think Fuqua School can ever get beyond its legacy of segregation, no matter how many reforms it implements. What’s more, having “two school systems in a tiny county prevents either from reaching its potential” (261). Fuqua School is a symbol of segregation that will remain as long as the school is standing.
Green outlines how the demographics of both the county and the country have changed since the time of the school closings. When she moved back to Virginia with her husband, they were fearful that their daughters would stand out, but they ended up meeting multiracial children everywhere. According to the US Census, people of mixed race are the fastest growing group among young people. And polls show that Americans are overwhelmingly accepting of interracial marriages today. Green’s personal experience has largely been positive, and her young children are already showing signs of openness that surpasses her own level of awareness when she finished high school.
The chapter ends with Green thinking about the progress made from her grandparents’ generation to her daughters’. She wishes that her grandparents and her children had been able to know one another and wonders whether Mimi and Papa would have been able to move past their views on race and accept their multiracial great-grandchildren. Green writes that maybe love would have conquered all, writing: “It’s nice to think so” (266).
Green concludes the book by tying up Elsie Lancaster’s story. Lancaster and Mimi grew quite close to each other as Mimi aged. Lancaster still came to clean once a week, but the women’s relationship became more like a friendship. They would polish the silver together and then go out for lunch. Near the end of Mimi’s life in 2007, Green’s mother took Lancaster to the nursing home so she could say goodbye. Mimi had been turning away visitors, but she lit up when Lancaster arrived, addressing her as “my dear old friend” (267). Lancaster then continued working for Green’s parents until 2012, when she broke her thumb.
Likewise, the author’s relationship with Lancaster deepened over time. They spent time together when Green moved back to Virginia, especially the summer she lived in Farmville. Green brought her daughters to Lancaster’s church one Sunday to hear her sing. When Lancaster’s daughter, Gwen, sees the girls in church, she tells her mother she thought they were beautiful; Lancaster responds, “thank you,” as if the girls were hers. Later, when Green and Lancaster are looking at old photos together, they come across one of Lancaster and Gwen in the 1950s. Green is filled with remorse and tells Lancaster how sorry she is that everything happened as it did, apologizing for the role her family played in it. Lancaster looks away and does not reply.
This final section of the book, entitled “Integration,” describes present-day Farmville. Green sees much progress but also room for improvement. First, she takes a personal look at integration, explaining her parents’ decision to send her and her siblings to Prince Edward Academy rather than the public schools. She also describes her current experience living with her family in Farmville for a summer of research. Green examines the “new normal” of today and what lies ahead for the future. Despite vestiges of racism, almost everything in town has changed.
The greatest hope for change, however, lies with the future generation. Green explains that, at their young age, her daughters have already surpassed her own views on race. With time and changing demographics, views and tolerance levels are changing as well. That may be the final conclusion of the book. Several times, Green refers to the fact that, despite great efforts to make amends, the legacy of the school closings will only be fully overcome when everyone from that era has passed on. The Epilogue reflects this idea, ending the book as it began—with Elsie Lancaster. Green explains how her family’s connection (and her own) with Lancaster has deepened in recent years; as the final scene of poring over old photos shows, however, old wounds are not easily healed.
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