The Educational Lockout of African Americans in Prince Edward County, Virginia (1959-1964)

Book excerpt: The Educational Lockout of African Americans in Prince Edward County, Virginia (1959-1964): Personal Accounts and Reflections provides ground-breaking research on the historical events surrounding the Prince Edward County's school closings. For five years (1959-1964), the families of 1,700 African American students were forced to cope with the absence of public schooling in the county. Their efforts led to the case Davis v. the County School Board of Prince Edward County, which was one of the cases that were consolidated with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The book offers the reader two exciting sections. In the first section, the contributing authors provide interesting findings on Grassroots schools, the Kennedy administration, and an African American movement during the Prince Edward County school closings. In the second section, the authors provide the reader with personal reflections and a lecture from four professors whose parents were affected by the Prince Edward County lockout. Three of the four professors were graduates of the Prince Edward County school system.