Content area
Full Text
Southern Stalemate: Five Years without Public Education in Prince Edward County, Virginia * Christopher Bonastia * Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012 * xii, 338 pp. * $45.00
From 1959 to 1964, white citizens of Prince Edward County kept desegregation at bay by washing their hands of the responsibility to operate a public school system. While school districts across the South temporarily closed a building here or there to block a specific court order, only in Prince Edward did local authorities abandon public education entirely and with every intention of permanence. Christopher Bonastia's exhaustively researched study of the school closing crisis adds enormously to our understanding of the significance of the events in Prince Edward, posing a series of provocative questions that will capture the attention of readers from a wide variety of backgrounds.
Arguing that "one can scarcely comprehend the school closings outside the context of state and national politics," Bonastia smoothly carries...