Farmville, VA is one those places where a lot has happened in a very small geographic area. It is possible to see the direct reactive effects of these things: from slavery to The Civil War to Jim Crow to Brown v Board of Education to Massive Resistance to desegregation to now. I wonder how having so much happen in such a small area can affect the general psyche of a place.
Here’s what Martin Luther King, Jr. said when he visited Farmville in 1962
Things will get better. Do not despair, do not give up, but just stand firm for what you believe in, and people all over the United States will say there are black people in Prince Edward who have injected new meaning in the veins of civilization.
Although my favorite quote of the day is from my man Thurgood Marshall:
The Negro child is made to go to an inferior school; he is branded in his own mind as inferior… you can teach such a child the constitution, anthropology and citizenship but he knows it isn’t true.
Ironically, the art building at Longwood U., where I will be spending a lot of time, is on Race Street.
