Prince Edward County in Virginia played a notable, if shameful, role in the desegregation of schools in the 1960s: after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the county opted to close its public schools rather than integrate them. The schools remained closed for five years. While white parents founded the Prince Edward Academy for white students, black parents were left with few, if any, educational opportunities for their own children.
Kristen Green, a journalist, was born and raised in Prince Edward County, and attended Prince Edward Academy, which didn't accept black students until 1986. Reflecting on her all-white education and the lack of conversation about Prince Edward County's questionable place in the civil rights movement, Green started to dig into her hometown's history--and was shocked to learn of her own family's involvement in the closing of the public schools.
Because of Green's personal connection with the subject, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County is part memoir, part history. It is strongest when dealing with the latter, as she explores the political motivations, legal loopholes and emotional impact of closing the schools. "Progress," she writes, "is revisiting what happened here in a public way." Something Must Be Done about Prince Edward County, then, is the very definition of progress, offering an important and intimate look at a small town's history of injustice and how that has affected the community to this day. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm