My name is robert i am a Council Member here in gaithersburg. Welcome to the 7th annual book festival and thank you for coming out on his wet morning. The weather should be breaking soon. I would like to put it out there that gaithersburg is a wonderful city and supports arts and humanities. We are pleased to bring you this fabulous event and thank our generous supporters and volunteers. When you see them, play a hearty thank you for the consideration of everyone here, please silence all devices. If you are tweeting today you can use the g bshbf. Complete a survey for a chance to win a 100 visa gift card. Kristen green is our author today and she will be signing books after the presentation. Copies of the book are on sale in the politics and pros tent. A great partner for us this your. This is a free event but it helps us sell books. Purchasing backs from our par inter, politics and pros benefits the local economy, supports local jobs and the book festival. If you enjoy the program and are in a position to do so please consider buying kristens book and all the other authors books here today. Let me introduce kristen. Kristen green is an author who grew up in farmville, virginia and that is important because it is important to the story. Gradup graduated from the university of mary and washington and the Harvard School of government. She is a journalist and worked at the Richmond Times dispatch and prior to that worked at the boston globe and san diego t tribune. She has a husband and two daughters who you will become familiar with when you read the bo book. Let me tell you about something must be done about Prince Edward county. For those that want to support kristen it is up for library of individuals People Choice award and you can dwi the library of individual website to get this voted as a peoples choice award. It is an interesting book and an interesting book for me not only because i am a lawyer and love race relation topics. Brown versus board of education is something i studied in depth and law school but gaithersburg was voted the most diverse city in america. Those of us here today who live in gaithersburg may not fully appreciate Race Relations are not always what they have been. Those that dont know, in the wake of the brown versus board of education, which ruled segregation in schools was unconstitutional, Prince Edward county was the only school in the county to close schools rather than desegregate schools. This book is an interesting introspective where christen goes back to look at her family and communitys involvement with this troubling time in our nations history. The book goes back and forth from the history. I encourage you to listen to kristen today, go to the politics and pros tent, considering purchasing this book or i went on amazon and purchased the book as well. Without further ado, i would like to bring kristen up to the stage and lets welcome here. [applause] hi, everybody. Thank you so much for that kind introduction and thank you to gaithersburg for having me here today for this event. I am glad so many of you came out, rain or shine. And i am just thrilled to be here and to be able to share my story with you. I grew up in Prince Edward county virginia which is the only community in the nation to close its schools for five years rather than desegregate. It was a story that i didnt know growing up. I only knew little bits and pieces of what happened in my hometown well before i was born. And i became a journalist and was working on the west coast when i started to develop an interest in learning more about what had actually happened in my hometown. It took a long time for nee develop a curiosity about what happened because the story wasnt really talked about where i came from. It was kind of pushed under the rug. And i think the way the story was shared was over simplified. I became a journalist and moved to the west coast and became a more curious person. I developed an interest in writing about people that newspapers dont do a great job writing about and that is people of color, immigrants, people who live in poverty and i was working on that and moving to san diego where i became i had friends for the first time who were people of color, i met my future husband, a multi racial man, and became more engaged in learning about this this history. At the same time the Washington Post magazine did a great piece about what happened in Prince Edward and it was the first time someone who wasnt connected to me in Prince Edward was telling a full story of what happened there and reading that made me realize i need to read the story and maybe it would make a good book. That was ten years ago. So you can get an idea of how long it takes to accept you will do the project and then take it on. Let me go back to the beginning about when i set out to write what happened. In 195 is, a 16yearold black girl walked out of her black high school in farmville, virginia to protest the conditions of that school. In 1951 schools were segregated so there was a black high school and White High School. She could see the White High School down the street and anyhow how much better the facilities were at the White High School. She led a protest with fellow students to walk out and protest the condition of the school. The protest attracted the attention of the naacp in Richmond Virginia who wasnt interested initially in taking on her case buchlt they did agree to come to farmville and meet with students and parents there. After seeing how dedicated these parents and students were to their cause they told them they would be willing to take on their case. But it was on one condition and that condition was they would seek integration rather than equal facility. In 1950, the naacp changed direction and decided equal facilities were never going to be enough and they knew to speak desegregation in schools and all facets of public life. Students who had this Core Committee who had planned this walk out for months had to take a vote on rather they would agree to go on with what the naacp was asking. According to students there, their decision to go along with this only won by one vote. This case ended up becoming one of five cases in brown versus board of education. Brown is an umbrella case which i didnt realize until i started recording this. Prince edward was the only case of the five that was studentled. So i think that the bad case emerging is what set the stage for what happened many years later when the schools were closed. White leaders were embarrassed this case was filled against them and they suggested they would replace a high school that was requested of them for many years if only black students and their parents dropped this suit. But at that point, they wanted to move forward. So white leaders built a New High School in 1953 anyway. As you know the brown decision was handed down a year later. I think the white leaders response to the brown decision had a lot to do with embarrassment. They were and also fear. They were afraid their community would be held up as an mafrm to the rest of the nation and require them to desegregate their schools as an example. Senator harry bird led a push back to brown versus board of education that came to be known as massive resistance. He believed the community should push back for the requirement to desegregate schools. If the south refused to desegregate schools the rest of the country would realize they would never get on board and i dont know what his logic was there but that was his thinking. So a lot of people didnt know where the county was located and not many supported that logic. They formed these groups called the defenders of state sovereignty and individual liberties and in farmville that dproup suggested, just six months after the brown decision, that perhaps closing the school is something they should do to avoid desegregation and if push came to shove they would do that. And i found in the local newspaper they suggested doing this too. The pages said we will refuse to desegregate schools and if we have to we will close the schools rather than do to so. They put this idea out there earlier after the brown decision. I think working on research was a turning point and realizing the court did not require Prince Edward to desegregate schools until 1959. The Brown Commission came on the back of black faplies because of the way the decision was written and even a followup decision didnt make it clear how desegregation was supposed to happen and on what timeline. Black families were forced to go to court and ask schools and School Districts to admit their children; right . I think Prince Edward was out ahead of the game and figure they would be forced to desegregate took this action, took this stance, that they were going to close their schools if they had to. Realizing they had taken that position so early. Right . They had so much time to come up with better options, to come up with ideas that wouldnt have affected so many children, that was a real turning point in my research. At the same time, i realized my own grand father was a founder member and officer of the defenders organization and for Prince George county. That changed how i approached this book. I could no longer blame my town for what happened but my family was also at fault. At that point the book became more real. I married a biracial man and i was going to have children and i realized this was their biggest fear. That was the thing they most wanted to avoid. And when it became more of a personal book that allowed me to kind of explore. I was able to look deeper into what happened in my hometown. Fast forward to 1959 when the court did finally say they had to desegregate schools. Prince edward had been prepared for that day. I said they mentioned the ideas of closing the school. They didnt just mention t. They raised money for that five year period to try to start a private academy should the need arrive. They had been fundraising or had people promising funds for that period of time. In addition, the governing body went to a month to month financing model so that they could just close the schools at any time. You know . They would be ready to immediately close the schools. So, when the Court Finally did require in 1959 they desegregate they did as they had threatened to do and voted not to fund the schools. And by not funding the schools they shutdown all Public Education in Prince Edward county. The moment that state departments decision was made these people that had been planning for years to start a White Academy went ahead and launched one. They did so by calling all of the white researches in town, the white volunteer groups, and specific organizations and asking if they could use basements of their churches, and their rotary hall in order to hold classes for the white children. Their plan was to have a school up and running come fall of 1959 so that white children would have somewhere to go. Black students did not have this opportunity. I mean for them to have started at a private academy would have gone against what they were trying to accomplish; right . And i think nobody really knew how long schools would be closed. Even oliver hill, the naacp attorney from richmond, couldnt believe they were going to go through with this. They would really close all Public Schools. They thought this was a threat. And even though, you know, the doors had been locked already, he was convinced the schools would still reopen that fall. Some families were worried their kids wouldnt be able to graduate went ahead and made plans for their children. Particularly the kids who were older, juniors and seniors in high school. Everybody realized how important it was for those kids to get a diploma. If you ink about how important a High School Diploma was at that ti time. They worked hard and were trying to find ways so their kids could graduate. Some students were dont live with family members. Older sisters or aunts in the north in particularly. Some students went and lived at a college in north carolina. An a and e related church agreed to take in about 60 students from pen pinto county. They were not considered schools or taught by official teachers but they were meant to engage Young Students so they could have some involvement with schooling even though they would not be going to school that day. So they send their kids to those Training Centers but i have to tell you the vast majority of black children did not geographic to school that year, did not go to school in subsiquent years. Children who were old enough went to work in the fields with their parents. That extra income most people in Prince Edward were tobacco farmers so the extra income from the extra hands meant something to those families. It was a positive in that way but meant when the schools reopened many years later the students were lost. They had been working all those years. They were not going to go back to school. So this generation of children came to be known as the lost generation because so many of them were denied an education. I just want to point out there were many families who make huge sacrifices to get their children educated. I really wanted to write this book because i wanted to tell the stories of those children who were denied an education and explain what their lives look like. There were so many different trajecto trajectory of what their lives looked like. One thing i never considered was the way families were torn apart once the decision was made. Because families wanted their children to be educated. I write about the ward family where they had a rising senior and junior and those children were sent to the a e school in north carolina. And another girl entering ninth grade lived with her grandparents during the week and on the weekend come home to mom and dad but dad was working second and third jobs in order to provide the money the kids needed to be at grandmas house and a school in north carolina. They told me it ripped their family apart. They went from being a happy joyful family where friends were going all the time to it being she and her mom on the weekend at the dinner table and they would never be a family like that again except christmas time. They would never sleep under the same roof again like they did then. And i came to find that ripping apart of families really echoed the indignity of slavery. I never thought going into the project about what that would look like having your children ripped away from you. Those stories were the most meaningful part. There is one student who is a really good student and she was nine years old when the schools closed and her dad promised no matter what you will get an education and he was going to see to that. She and her brother walked three miles each way to a training center. Her Neighborhood School was only a mile away. The students, the white students, would pass by on the bus and spit out the window as she is walking to this Church Training center. They did that for two years and on and off she would ask her dad when are you going to go to a real school and he said you are, i will make sure. And finally after two years and no Movement Toward reopening the school he decided he had enough. He worked at the railroad and some of his white peers at the railroad helped him rent a house in another county. It was a run down house that really wasnt habitable and they set out to make that house appear habitable. He worked on the front yard cleaning it up, repaired broken windows, his wife sewed burgandy curtains. But soon she realized they would not live in the had yous in the house. They were going to be dropped off in the back of the house and then when they heard the bus they were to go through the back of the house, to the front of the house, through the yard and to the steps of the bus and they were never to tell anyone they didnt live there because if they did their education could be at stake. That story gives me shivers even today every time i think about what she had to endure to get an education and what her parents were willing it sacrifice to make sure that happened. Years later, that woman, dorothy holcolm became a peb of the school board county and the kids she went to school with, kids from her neighborhood would come in seeking Unemployment Benefits or looking for jobs and she would have to go to the other side of her desk and help them fill out the form because they were illiterate. So this five year period of not having school not only affected those kids and their parents but generations of children in Prince Edward county. Right . Because the literacy of those parents has resulted in their children not being as literate as they would have been otherwise; right . I think about a myriad of other effects of not having an education. You not only didnt get to achieve your dreams but the Economic Situation they are in would be different with a High School Diploma or getting to go to college. It might have meant they could leave the town and get better jobs or it might have meant they could buy a house. So the impact on that generation and following generations has been large. I wanted to look at the Public Schools after they reopened. That White Academy they grandmother and other white leaders helped found that year both of my parents attended that school and later returned to Prince Edward county and enrolled my brothers and me in that school and i was a student there in 1986 when Prince Edward academy finally admitted black students. I found in my research that the only reason it did so was in order to have a 501c3 nonprofit status restored which had been taken away for discrimination. When i interviewed the master of the school while i was there i said when you integrated Prince Edward academy and he said no, why admitted black students. That told me what the thinking was foresee many years about Race Relations in that town and where the academy stood in relationship to the Public Schools. I found in my research, my belief is that the town would be better off if there were only Public School systems because such a Small Community in rural virginia is unable to really fully support two School Systems. And without the support those families who have supported the private school the Public Schools are not able to prosper like they need to. I find the School System is underfunded and inadequately supported by the whole community. It is not embraced as the whole community Public School system. I want to wrap up and take a few questions. If anybody has a question i am glad to take it. Yes, maam . What type of Public Schools reopened is the question. Good question. It required another Supreme Court decision actually in order to reopen the schools and that was 1964. A lot of people had hopes the Kennedy Administration would be able to do something and reopen them sooner but they had as much trouble as other leaders. It required another Supreme Court decision and it was a full five years. What do you think there was about the mind of those who lived in farmville that said that apart from the rest of the south where they said we will not combine, we will close. The only thing i can come up with they were embarrassed of being one of the five cases in the Supreme Court decision. I think that made them want to do something to push back and i think senator bird was meeting with prominent leaders there. They may have used themselves as a test case. There is evidence to support some parts of that. Like the white leaders who created that academy i attended created a booklet explaining how to do this. They suggested to atlanta and new orleans those communities were capable of doing what this county had done. I dont know that they had a particular viewpoint that was different than the south maybe just more will because of the back history. I can take maybe one more question if anybody has one. Yes, sir . How difficult was it to find the students and what kind of interviews did you conduct . I have been a reporter for 20 years and never covered a story that was so rich with people i could interview. I had to stop at one point. I have to give a plug for the school the students walked out to protest is now an amazing civil rights museum. If you are every in virginia i encourage you to go to mote museum. Blacks can come in and tell stories of what happened and whites can come in and learn about the history they were never taught. I went to every event over the summer there and went to week leo vents there for a couple years. There are so many students who were affected that i could walk into a Grocery Store and find like five. It was rich with students who lived that experience and from various perspectives. The thing i realized is there were so many different perspectives. I never thought about what life might look like for a kid when was five when the school closed. When i met that experience i was like i have to cast a wilder net. It was amazing meeting someone who wasnt able to start their education until they were ten years old and pushed through school in seven years and frustrated many teachers. That is a totally different experience from the kids who quit school at 13 and 14 through no fault of their own. I did my best to cast a wide n