296 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 12 halftones, 2 maps, notes, bibl., index
Students, Segregationists, and the Struggle for Justice in Prince Edward County, Virginia
Finalist, 2012 Library of Virginia Literary Award in Nonfiction
When the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, Prince Edward County, Virginia, home to one of the five cases combined by the Court under Brown, abolished its public school system rather than integrate.
Jill Titus situates the crisis in Prince Edward County within the seismic changes brought by Brown and Virginia's decision to resist desegregation. While school districts across the South temporarily closed a building here or there to block a specific desegregation order, only in Prince Edward did local authorities abandon public education entirely--and with every intention of permanence. When the public schools finally reopened after five years of struggle--under direct order of the Supreme Court--county authorities employed every weapon in their arsenal to ensure that the newly reopened system remained segregated, impoverished, and academically substandard. Intertwining educational and children's history with the history of the black freedom struggle, Titus draws on little-known archival sources and new interviews to reveal the ways that ordinary people, black and white, battled, and continue to battle, over the role of public education in the United States.
“A welcome addition to the growing body of scholarship on school desegregation and the civil rights era in Virginia.”
"Titus effectively provides a comprehensive history of the darkest hour of massive resistance in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision."
--Journal of Southern History
“Brown’s Battleground examines the victors and the victims and describes the power of black high school students’ activism in confronting injustices in a so-called democratic society. It makes an invaluable contribution to scholarship on U.S. legal, educational, and African American history.”
--Journal of African American History
“A must-read for historians and for all educators wishing to engage contextually based historical studies rigorously. It is an excellent text for undergraduate and graduate seminars on race and education in the United States.”
--Oral History Review
“Has provided the definitive account of the Prince Edward story as well as a startling reminder that private schools and tuition grants can never perform the vital job that our nation’s public schools provide. In doing so she has allowed the Prince Edward story to speak again.”
"A wonderful addition to the civil rights historiography as well as the study of educational policy."
--The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth
© 2016 The University of North Carolina Press
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