0062268678 _N_ (33 page)

To supplement my memories of the sixteen years I lived in Farmville as a child, including the thirteen years I spent as a student at Prince Edward Academy, I interviewed my parents and talked with my brothers and classmates. I used photographs, yearbooks, and other records to fill in gaps.

For two years, I made the seventy-five-minute journey to Farmville nearly every week, sometimes multiple times each week, to conduct interviews, drive around the county, and attend events. And for two months in the summer of 2013, I moved to Farmville with my daughters to research, report, and experience life there firsthand.

This section is based on my own memories, as well as interviews with my mother, Faye Patteson Green, and Elsie Lancaster.

CHAPTER 1: A PERFECTLY CHARMING SOUTHERN TOWN

The section on Robert Taylor is based on two interviews I conducted with him in 2006. I also used “Robert Edward Taylor, 87, Farmville, Dies on Thursday,” Farmville Herald (January 12, 2007).

I attended my grandmother’s funeral in 2007. I also relied on notes from my uncle, David Klein, who spoke about her life. To write about my grandfather’s roots, I turned to a family genealogy, The Holmans of Virginia by Harry Stuart Holman (2012). My mother told me the story of her parents’ childhoods and early married life. To describe the kneelin, I used “Protests Threaten Prince Edward Study,” Richmond News Leader (July 29, 1963), and I relied on interviews with, or talks by, participants, including Betty Jean Ward Berryman, Ernestine “Tina” Land Harris, and the Reverend J. Samuel Williams. Gwendolyn Lancaster’s arrest was documented in a Farmville Police Department arrest record, courtesy of Brian E. Lee.

For the section describing the town of Farmville, population estimates were provided by Gerry Spates, the Farmville town manager. I also used US Census Bureau QuickFact numbers for 2013. To describe the Black Belt, I used They Closed Their Schools by Bob Smith (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965). The background on Green Front Furniture came from a 2013 interview with Dickie Cralle and his company’s website. Information about High Bridge came from the Virginia Department of Recreation and Conservation. The reference to stills of moonshine comes from “Alleged Still Seized in PE,” Farmville Herald (February 26, 2014). Longwood University’s history comes from the college’s website. For the reference to churches that attempted to combine, I interviewed Beverly Bass Hines and James W. Garnett Jr. For the reference to a black family that felt accepted on First Avenue, I relied on an interview with Craig Reed. The poverty rate came from the US Census QuickFacts on Prince Edward County.

CHAPTER 2: HOMECOMING IN BLACK AND WHITE

To write about the wedding photos, I relied on an interview with my mother. Ken Woodley, the editor of the Farmville Herald, confirmed the former policy not to run photographs of couples in its free wedding announcements. To write about “the Indian pony,” I relied on my husband Jason Hamilton’s recollections of the incident, which my father, Charles Randall Green, also witnessed.

To write the section about Loving v. Virginia, I used Douglas Martin, “Mildred Loving, Who Battled Ban on Mixed-Race Marriage, Dies at 68,” New York Times (May 6, 2008). I also used “Justices Upset All Bans on Interracial Marriage,” New York Times (June 13, 1967) and Michele Norris, “Loving Decision: 40 Years of Legal Interracial Unions,” National Public Radio (June 11, 2007). I also used an undated ACLU report, Loving v. Virginia: The Case Over Interracial Marriage.

I also viewed The Loving Story, a 2011 HBO film directed by Nancy Buirski. I read other media reports about the case, including Brent Staples, “Loving v. Virginia and the Secret History of Race,” New York Times (May 14, 2008); Isabel Wilkerson, “Black-White Marriages Rise, But Couples Still Face Scorn,” New York Times (December 2, 1991); Jackie Gardina, “A Gay-Marriage Ban with Limits,” Washington Post (July 25, 2013).

For the section on moving to Richmond, I used a television report on the city’s history with crack cocaine and as a murder capital, see Mark Holmberg, “25 Years after the Deadliest Invasion since the Civil War,” WVTR (May 24, 2012) and Scott Bass, “Body Count: A Spike in Homicide Leaves Richmond on Edge,” Style Weekly (October 9, 2012).

To describe the opposition to the Arthur Ashe statue, I used “Storm of Opposition Postpones Groundbreaking for Ashe Memorial in Va.,” Baltimore Sun (July 9, 1995). Also instructive were Gordon Hickey and Carrie Johnson, “David Duke Brings Campaign to Area,” Richmond Times-Dispatch (July 16, 1999) and Mike Allen, “Rebel Flag May Wave at Ceremony,” Richmond Times-Dispatch (August 14, 1995).

For information on the reconciliation statue, see Tammie Smith, “Benin Officials Visit Reconciliation Statue,” Richmond Times-Dispatch (June 18, 2012). For information on the slave trail and slave jail, see Karin Kapsidelis, “Slave Trail Markers Unveiled in Richmond,” Richmond Times-Dispatch (April 11, 2011).

CHAPTER 3: PRINCE EDWARD JOINS BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION

To write about the Moton and Tuskegee connection, I used Daniel L. Haulman, “Tuskegee Airmen Chronology,” Air Force Historical Research Agency (April 24, 2014). I also used information from the Tuskegee University website.

To describe the conditions of Prince Edward County’s black schools leading up to the walkout, I relied on interviews with the former and then-students Williams, John Watson, Joy Cabarrus Speakes, and Joan Johns Cobbs, Barbara Johns’s sister. I also spoke with John Stokes. I relied on They Closed Their Schools and the National Parks Service’s website. I also used Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality by Richard Kluger (New York: Vintage, 2004) and History of Prince Edward County, Virginia, by Herbert Clarence Bradshaw (Richmond: Dietz Press, 1955).

Also instructive were Finding a Way Out: An Autobiography: Moton, Robert Russa, 1867–1940, from the University of North Carolina digitization project Documenting the American South; or, The Southern Experience in 19th-Century America.

For information on Farmville High School, see History of Prince Edward County, They Closed Their Schools, and Simple Justice. I also used a registration form for the town’s application for a Farmville Historic District with the National Register of Historic Places.

For the section on Johns, I used her diary, provided by the Moton Museum. I conducted interviews with Watson, a strike leader, as well as the students Cabarrus Speakes, Williams, and Johns Cobbs. I also quoted from a speech Johns Cobbs gave in Farmville in 2014. I used They Closed Their Schools and Students on Strike: Jim Crow, Civil Rights, Brown, and Me, by John A. Stokes, Herman Viola, and Lois Wolfe (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2008).

For the section about the NAACP’s decision to get involved in Prince Edward, I interviewed Oliver Hill Sr.’s son, Oliver W. Hill Jr., and the senior Hill’s former law firm partner, Henry L. Marsh III, then a state senator. I used the senior Hill’s book, The Big Bang, Brown v. Board of Education and Beyond: The Autobiography of Oliver W. Hill, Sr., edited by Jonathan K. Stubbs (Winter Park: FOUR-G Publishers, Inc., 2000).

I used an interview with Hill: Ronald E. Carrington, “Interview with Oliver W. Hill, Sr.,” Special Collections and Archives, Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries, Voices of Freedom: Videotaped Oral Histories of Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in Virginia (November 13, 2002).

I also turned to Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy by James T. Patterson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) and Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary by Juan Williams (New York: Times Books, 1998).

I also used the Public Broadcasting Service’s website for its 2004 movie Beyond Brown: Pursuing the Promise (http://www.pbs.org/beyondbrown) and an obituary, “Oliver W. Hill, 100, Civil Rights Lawyer, Is Dead,” New York Times (August 6, 2007).

Also instructive were Renee Montagne and Juan Williams, “Civil Rights Lawyer Oliver Hill Dies at 100,” National Public Radio (August 6, 2007); Juan Williams, “Separate but Unequal: How a Student-Led Protest Helped Change the Nation,” National Public Radio (May 13, 2004); Kara Miles Turner, “Both Victors and Victims: Prince Edward County, Virginia, the NAACP, and ‘Brown,’” Virginia Law Review 90, no. 6 (October 2004): 1667–91.

For the NAACP’s new strategy, see Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy, They Closed Their Schools, Thurgood Marshall, The Big Bang, and PBS’s Beyond Brown.

For Gaines and Sweatt v. Painter, see Thurgood Marshall, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy, and The Big Bang. Also Andrea Hsu, “‘Sweatt V. Painter’: Nearly Forgotten, But Landmark Texas Integration Case,” National Public Radio (October 10, 2012) and Linda Greenhouse, “History Lessons,” New York Times (October 3, 2012). Also “Oliver W. Hill, 100, Civil Rights Lawyer, Is Dead.”

For Hill’s taking the Prince Edward case, I used The Big Bang and They Closed Their Schools. I also used my interview with Marsh and two other interviews: Julian Bond, “Interview with Oliver W. Hill,” Virginia Quarterly Review (Winter 2004) and George Gilliam and Mason Mills, “The Ground Beneath Our Feet: Virginia’s History Since the Civil War,” George H. Gilliam and the Central Virginia Educational Television Corporation, the Virginia Center for Digital History, University of Virginia, 2000.

For the suggestion that the state would intervene and use its resources to defend separate schools, I turned to They Closed Their Schools.

For a description of funding a new public high school for blacks, I relied on They Closed Their Schools and Simple Justice.

For Johns’s moving away after threats, see “Separate but Unequal.”

For the idea that some black parents thought a new black high school was enough, see Brian E. Lee and Brian J. Daugherity, “Program of Action: The Rev. L. Francis Griffin and the Struggle for Racial Equality in Farmville, 1963,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 121, no. 3 (2013): 250–87.

For the section on the Brown cases, I used Simple Justice, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy, All Deliberate Speed by Charles J. Ogletree Jr. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution by David A. Nichols (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), and Jim Crow’s Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown Decision by Peter Irons (New York: Penguin, 2004).

Also useful were Laura Randall, “When Schools Were Shacks,” New York Times (January 18, 2004); Wolfgang Saxon, “Judge Collins Seitz Dies at 84; Refuted Segregation in Schools,” New York Times (October 21, 1998); Todd S. Purdum, “Presidents, Picking Justices, Can Have Backfires,” New York Times (July 5, 2005).

CHAPTER 4: MY FAMILY’S PART

The stories I wrote for the Richmond Times-Dispatch both ran in April 2012. I also relied on an article by Karin Kapsidelis, “Governor Seeks Transfer of Slave Burial Ground to City,” Richmond Times-Dispatch (December 23, 2010).

For the section on the reaction to the Brown decision in Virginia and around the South, I relied on an interview with Marsh. I also used Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965 by Juan Williams (New York: Viking, 1987), The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff (New York: Vintage, 2007), and Virginia’s Massive Resistance by Benjamin Muse (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961). I also used Thurgood Marshall, Jim Crow’s Children, Simple Justice, Matter of Justice, and They Closed Their Schools.

In addition, I used a Library of Congress exhibit, “Brown v. Board at Fifty: With an Even Hand” and Encyclopedia Virginia.

For Stanley’s response, I also used Paul Duke, “If Only White Virginia Had Followed Its Better Instincts,” Washington Post (May 16, 2004) and Ira M. Lechner, “Massive Resistance: Virginia’s Great Leap Backward,” Virginia Quarterly Review (Autumn 1998). I also used Race, Reason, and Massive Resistance: The Diary of David J. Mays, 1954–1959 by David J. Mays, edited by James R. Sweeney (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008).

For the “state of shock,” see “Supreme Court Decision,” Farmville Herald (May 21, 1954).

For the history of Prince Edward, I utilized Simple Justice, History of Prince Edward County, and The Prince Edward County Virginia Story, by John C. Steck (Farmville: Farmville Herald, 1960). I also used Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s through the Civil War by Melvin Patrick Ely (New York: Knopf, 2004) and Ed Pompeian, “Interview with Bancroft Winner Melvin Patrick Ely,” History News Network (May 23, 2005).

I also used columns by the Reverend William E. Thompson in the Farmville Herald, “Two Invasions of Prince Edward Courthouse” (January 28, 2004) and “The Long Hot Summers of Prince Edward History” (August 11, 2004).

For the section on the Civil War, I visited the Sailor’s Creek Battlefield State Park and High Bridge. I interviewed Chris Calkins and used his books, The Appomattox Campaign (Lynchburg: Schroeder Publications, 2008) and Thirty-Six Hours Before Appomattox (Farmville: Farmville Herald, 2006). I also relied on Simple Justice and History of Prince Edward. Also useful was An End to Valor: The Last Days of the Civil War by Philip Van Doren Stern (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958).

For the section on the reaction to the Brown decision in Prince Edward, I used “If Only White Virginia Had Followed Its Better Instincts.”

I also relied on the following Farmville Herald op-eds: “Supreme Court Decision” (May 21, 1954); “Public Education and Public Schools” (November 9, 1954); “Majority Rights” (July 23, 1954); “Grass Roots Resistance” (September 17, 1954); “Integration and Sales Taxes” (February 5, 1960); “To Our People” (February 19, 1960).

For the section on newspaper editors and the Defenders, I read the Farmville Herald’s editorials after the decision was announced. I also relied on The Southern Case for School Segregation by James Jackson Kilpatrick (New York: Crowell-Collier Press, 1962); “The ‘Impossible’ Prince Edward Case: The Endurance of Resistance in a Southside County, 1959–64,” by Amy E. Murrell, from The Moderates’ Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation in Virginia, edited by Matthew D. Lassiter and Andrew B. Lewis (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998); They Closed Their Schools. I also used “Segregation Preserved,” Time (June 15, 1959); “If Only White Virginia Had Followed Its Better Instincts”; “The NAACP and the U.S. Courts Force Prince Edward Closings,” Richmond Times-Dispatch (June 4, 1959); “Prince Edward Holds Two Graduations,” Richmond News Leader (June 5, 1959).