Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle by Kristen Green

Author:Kristen Green [Green, Kristen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Civil Rights, History, Nonfiction, Retail, United States
ISBN: 9780062268679
Amazon: 0062268678
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2015-06-09T04:00:00+00:00

FIRST, THE YOUNG PEOPLE NEEDED to be trained in nonviolent demonstration tactics.

A pair of SNCC officers led the two-week training. Betty Jean Ward, who had lived with her grandparents for four years in neighboring Nottoway County, wanted to participate. She drove her dad’s new ’57 Plymouth to and from Vernon Johns’s farm for the training sessions, piling in a bunch of her friends.

On the farm, the trainers taught Betty Jean and the other teenagers how to protect themselves if the police intervened during the demonstrations. If officers approach you, the trainers told them, drop down and don’t move. If they are wielding water hoses, curl into a ball to protect your face. If they have dogs, grab something to shield yourself. After the training, the students practiced the new tactics, getting into each other’s faces and shouting “Nigger!” The trainers doused them with ketchup and mustard. They were being prepared for the hatred they might encounter on the picket line.

One July night after the training, the students decided they wanted to start demonstrating right then. “Let’s see if the College Shoppe on the corner is open,” one of them suggested. Blacks were allowed to enter the College Shoppe and make purchases, but then they were expected to leave. On this night, a dozen young people walked through the front doors and sat down at the counter.

“What are y’all doing?” a white man behind the counter asked them. “Get out of here. I’m going to call the cops.”

When the police arrived, they talked with Douglas, who had accompanied the students, and then called Griffin, who rushed to the store. “We’ll leave tonight, but we’ll be back in the morning,” Griffin informed the manager. The next day, Griffin told the students he would support them as long as they followed the law.

Everett Berryman, the fifteen-year-old who had been attending school in Appomattox County for two years, borrowed his father’s ’55 Chevrolet each day and trucked seven students from Prospect and other far western reaches of the county into Farmville to demonstrate. One day, Williams sent Everett and several others into J. J. Newberry’s, a five and dime store chain, which had a long counter—maybe fifteen to twenty seats—and instructed them to sit down.

Everett was served a cup of coffee filled with salt. He and the others left after twenty minutes. When they came back the next day, the stools were gone.

“They took their stools up and never put them back,” Betty Jean remembered.

The students demonstrated in front of other businesses that didn’t employ blacks. By late July, they had become a permanent fixture downtown, carrying signs that read, “I Have Lost Four Years of ‘Education.’ WHY FIVE?” and “While the 4th Circuit Court Continues to Wait, Education for Negro Children Suffocates.” The young people gathered every morning at First Baptist Church, where Williams assigned them each a location for the day. The demonstrators broke at lunchtime, often gathering on Williams’s front lawn, where he and his wife served hot dogs and hamburgers. After the students ate, many of them returned downtown to demonstrate.

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