S2, Summer Short 4: Writer Kristen Green

In the wake of the Supreme Courtâ??s unanimous decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, Virginiaâ??s Prince Edward County refused to obey the law. Rather than desegregate, the county closed its public schools, locking and chaining the doors. The communityâ??s white leaders quickly established a private academy, commandeering supplies from the shuttered public schools to use for their all-white classrooms, while black parents scrambled to find alternative education for their children. For five years, the schools remained closed in Prince Edward County. Author and journalist Kristen Green grew up in Farmville and attended Prince Edward Academy, which didnâ??t open its doors to black students until 1986. Thirty four years after the Supreme Court ended school segregation, Green first began to learn the truth about her hometownâ??s shameful history. As a wife and mother in her own multiracial family, the revelations of the haunting period in our nationâ??s past become more complex and painful as she discovers the role her own grandparents played. Combining hard-hitting investigative journalism and a sweeping family narrative, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County by Kristen Green is a provocative true story that reveals a little-known chapter of American history.