A Thumping From Within Unanswered By Any Beckoning From Without: Resilience Among African American Women, Farmville, Virginia 1951-1963

Abstract

In 1959, as a reaction to the 1954 Supreme Court's Brown vs Board of Education desegregation decision all public schools in Prince Edward County, Virginia were closed. This dissertation explores one group's response to the schools closings by examining the patterns of resilience that emerged among a group of African American women in Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia. Using a multi-disciplinary synthesis of research in education, history, geography, sociology, social movements, personal interviews and questionnaires this dissertation investigated the development of resilience at the grassroots level. African American women are taught early in their socialization process the value of independence, mutual aid, religiosity, community stability, and respect for elders. The school closings didn't just affect the children of Farmville, it changed families and communities, but most particularly it changed the lives of Farmville's women. Much of the research demonstrates that resilience and activism in oppressed communities has a dual nature that surfaces when those communities are under stress. Resilience among this group of African American women emerged both organically and as a result of their religious and community involvements. ii African American women experienced the cultural, educational, contextual, social, behavioral, and political worlds in Farmville, Virginia, from an "outsider within" perspective. When they stepped outside their socially and psychologically constricted lives they developed resilience fortified with both historic and personal commitment. In examining broadly the history of education in Virginia, the historic allegiances of African American women to community, religion, identity, education, and place a fuller understanding of the processes of the development of resilience emerges. This examination moved Black women from the margins to the center of the debate on resilience. The development of personal agency in Farmville was courageous and could have been physically dangerous. However, as the civil rights movement captured the American consciousness, the women of Farmville engaged in a unique social movement that would sustain a campaign for education parity.