Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County

A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle

By: Kristen Green

Narrated by: Karen White

In the wake of the Supreme Court's unanimous Brown v. Board of Education decision, Virginia's Prince Edward County refused to obey the law. Rather than desegregate, the county closed its public schools, locking and chaining the doors. The community's White leaders quickly established a private academy, commandeering supplies from the shuttered public schools to use in their all-White classrooms. Meanwhile, Black parents had few options: keep their kids at home, move across county lines, or send them to live with relatives in other states. For five years, the schools remained closed.

Kristen Green, a longtime newspaper reporter, grew up in Farmville and attended Prince Edward Academy, which did not admit Black students until 1986. In her journey to uncover what happened in her hometown before she was born, Green tells the stories of families divided by the school closures and of 1,700 Black children denied an education. As she peels back the layers of this haunting period in our nation's past, her own family's role - no less complex and painful - comes to light.

At once gripping, enlightening, and deeply moving, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County is a dramatic chronicle that explores our troubled racial past and its reverberations today, and it is a timeless story about compassion, forgiveness, and the meaning of home.

©2015 Kristen Green (P)2020 Tantor

Powerful Read

Fascinating, heart-wrenching, and captivating—Kristen Green bravely confronts her own family’s role in the school closures in Prince Edward County. I was engaged from start to finish, and my heart still aches for the families who were denied an education. A powerful and necessary read. Highly recommend!

The timeline was remarkable! I learned so much!

I liked learning the history regarding segregation. The author was authentic and honest. I was engaged and couldn’t wait to see what happened in the end.

Performance was well done and delivered clearly

Story just was not of interest to me. I also feel that the way the story was structured could have been more engaging than it was