Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County Quotes

“Separate but Not Equal The only places on earth not to provide free public education are communist China, North Vietnam, Sarawak, Singapore, British Honduras—and Prince Edward County, Virginia. —US ATTORNEY GENERAL ROBERT F. KENNEDY, MARCH 19, 1963, LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY”
― Kristen Green, Something Must Be Done about Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle

“The country was becoming increasingly disgusted by Prince Edward, which was making national headlines for its still-closed schools. Dr. Robert L. Green and a team of researchers from Michigan State University, funded by the US Office of Education, came to town, attempting to determine how black schoolchildren had been affected. They would soon learn that the illiteracy rate of black students ages five to twenty-two had jumped from 3 percent when the schools had closed to a staggering 23 percent. They found seven-year-old children who couldn't hold a pencil or make an X. Some didn't know how old they were; others couldn't communicate.”
― Kristen Green, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle

“Many white children in this city never set foot in a public school. They follow in the footsteps of their parents and grandparents, attending private schools from the moment they hit kindergarten. This private school pipeline contributes to the racial disparity of the public schools, the same way my alma mater does in Farmville. Richmonders, like many in Prince Edward and around the country, have effectively given up on public school education. And the abandonment of Richmond's public schools by white and middle-income parents creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of schools that continue to perform poorly.”
― Kristen Green, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle

“Many Southern communities developed two school systems: an underfunded public system mostly attended by black students, and private schools set up for white children. Within a decade, these segregation academies would be an accepted part of the Southern landscape. By 1969, three hundred thousand students were enrolled in all-white schools across eleven Southern states. And twenty years after Brown, in 1974, 10 percent of the South's white school-age children were attending private schools, only a fraction of which had been open before Brown. The region's 3,500 academies enrolled 750,000 white children,a number that reflected a migration from public to private schools that was linked to the movement of black children into formerly all-white public schools. In Jackson, Mississippi, white enrollment in the public schools fell by twelve thousand students, from more than half of the student body in 1969 to less than a third eight years later. The proliferation of segregation academies threatened to create all-black public school systems in the rural South, particularly in communities with majority black populations.

The effect of these private schools would be felt decades later.”
― Kristen Green, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle

“Farmville is still the quiet community where I spent long summer afternoons floating in my parents' pool. On the surface, it is a perfectly charming Southern place to grow up, a seemingly wholesome town to raise a family.

That is, until you dive in.”
― Kristen Green, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle

“My mom liked to say that Elsie was part of our family. My parents treated her better than other families who expected their housekeepers to eat separately. Mom bought Elsie birthday and Christmas presents, sent her home with vegetables from our garden, and, most important, treated her with kindness and respect. My grandmother prepared her lunch, instead of the other way around. Yet I didn't realize that Elsie's own family had been ripped apart two decades earlier, when she was working for my grandparents, and that my grandfather was partly to blame.”
― Kristen Green, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle

“I grew up thinking of her as our Elsie, not as someone else's mother. She was the black woman who had cleaned my parents' house once a week since 1975. She had worked for my grandparents for two decades before that. Until I was in high school, she was also the only black person I knew.”
― Kristen Green, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle

“Residents are arriving from other states, even other countries, to work for one of the universities, a downtown advertising agency, or Capital One, the region’s largest employer, bringing new energy and out-of-town perspectives.”
― Kristen Green, Something Must Be Done about Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle