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Something Must
Be Done about Prince Edward County
by Kristen Green
c.2015, Harper
$25.99 / $31.99 Canada
321 pages
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Truth Contributor
The color pencils are sharp, lined up like fence posts in
their unscuffed box.
So are the crayons, the pens all wear caps and notebook
covers are free of doodling. The backpack seems as though
it’s been starched, but give it a month: after your child
goes back to school, it’ll be a different story – one unlike
that in the new book Something Must Be Done about
Prince Edward County by Kristen Green.
Not until she went away to college did Kristen Green ever
think about how she was raised.
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Hers was a relatively privileged upbringing: as white
children, she and her brothers spent summers eating ice
cream, riding bikes, sitting on the porch of their home in
Farmville, Virginia, and visiting their grandparents, who
lived just down the block. They attended a private school
(their parents’ alma mater), and they enjoyed the labors of
a housekeeper who came ever Wednesday to clean.
That housekeeper, Elsie Lancaster, whom Green considered as
“part of our family,” was the first black person Green ever
knew – or, at least figured she did.
But she really didn’t think about it until after college,
after she’d gotten a job as a reporter focusing on poverty
and race issues, after she’d married a Native American man,
and after she realized how much her grandmother disapproved
of her mixed-race marriage. Mixed-race great-grandchildren
would’ve greatly upset Mimi but nobody in the family would
discuss it, so Green became determined find out why.
Before Brown vs. the Board of Education, Farmville
schools were segregated – separate, but unequal. The white
school boasted amenities; the black school was overcrowded
and underfunded. The Supreme Court’s decision set
Farmville’s white residents back on their heels, vowing that
desegregation was never going to happen in their town;
separation, they said, was “just the way things were.” So
when the Supreme Court pressed the issue years after Brown
v. Board, white residents closed the county’s schools,
greatly harming poor whites, black families, and black
students.
And Green’s beloved grandfather – a man she adored – helped
it happen…
As I was reading Something Must Be Done about Prince
Edward County, I have to admit that I was a bit baffled.
Author Kristen Green admits that she “came to the story from
a place of privilege.” So what about it?
Plenty, as it turns out.
Although she says that the town’s elders seem to want this
historical event to disappear, Green doesn’t let that
happen: she digs and digs, uncovering the whole of an
outrageous story that would be front-page news these days.
She even finds some of the kids-now-adults that were most
affected by school closures, then she throws readers a bone
of goodness amid the shame. Finally, although in this case
what’s done can’t be undone, Green shows that amend-making
has to start somewhere.
Sharp-eyed readers may notice some resemblance to The
Help here, but Something Must Be Done about Prince
Edward County is no novel. Nope, this is a feat of
journalistic reporting with a personal twist, and it’s
pretty sharp. |
