Brown's battleground: students, segregationists, and the struggle for justice in Prince Edward County, Virginia

When the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, Prince Edward County, Virginia 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.

When the public schools finally reopened after five years of struggle county authorities employed every weapon in their arsenal to ensure that the newly reopened system remained segregated impoverished, and academically substandard.