
We Are Your Children Too
Black Students, White Supremacists, and the Battle for America's Schools in Prince Edward County, Virginia
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $14.24
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Kevin R. Free
About this listen
This “detailed, fascinating” (Booklist, starred review) nonfiction middle grade book explores a deeply troubling chapter in American history that is still playing out today: the strange case of Prince Edward County, Virginia, the only place in the United States to ever formally deny its citizens a public education, and the students who pushed back.
In 1954, after the passing of Brown v. the Board of Education, the all-White school board of one county in south central Virginia made the decision to close its public schools rather than integrate. Those schools stayed closed for five years.
While the affluent White population of Prince Edward County built a private school—for White children only—Black children and their families had to find other ways to learn. Some Black children were home schooled by unemployed Black teachers. Some traveled thousands of miles away to live with relatives, friends, or even strangers. Some didn’t go to school at all.
But many stood up and became young activists, fighting for one of the rights America claims belongs to all: the right to learn.
©2022 P. O’Connell Pearson (P)2022 Simon & Schuster, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Legacy: Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance
- By: Nikki Grimes
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin, Karole Foreman, Zakiya Young, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Children's Literature Legacy Award-winning author Nikki Grimes comes a feminist-forward new collection of poetry celebrating the little-known women poets of the Harlem Renaissance. For centuries, accomplished women - of all races - have fallen out of the historical records. The same is true for gifted, prolific women poets of the Harlem Renaissance who are little known, especially as compared to their male counterparts.
-
-
Thoroughly enjoyed
- By SoJourner on 11-17-23
By: Nikki Grimes
-
Down Along with That Devil's Bones
- A Reckoning with Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy of White Supremacy
- By: Connor Towne O'Neill
- Narrated by: Geoffrey Cantor
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Connor Towne O’Neill’s journey onto the battlefield of white supremacy began with a visit to Selma, Alabama, in 2015. There he had a chance encounter with a group of people preparing to erect a statue to celebrate the memory of Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the most notorious Confederate generals, a man whom Union general William Tecumseh Sherman referred to as “that devil.” After that day in Selma, O’Neill, a white Northerner transplanted to the South, decided to dig deeply into the history of Forrest and other monuments to him throughout the South.
-
Necessary Trouble
- Growing Up at Midcentury
- By: Drew Gilpin Faust
- Narrated by: Drew Gilpin Faust
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To grow up in the 1950s was to enter a world of polarized national alliances, nuclear threat, and destabilized social hierarchies. To be a privileged white girl in conservative, segregated Virginia was to be expected to adopt a willful blindness to the inequities of race and the constraints of gender. For young Drew Gilpin Faust, the acceptance of both female subordination and racial privilege proved intolerable and galvanizing. Urged to become “well adjusted" and to fill the role of a poised young lady that her upbringing imposed, she found resistance was the necessary price of survival.
-
-
My Life written by Her.
- By Jacqueline L Larner on 09-03-23
-
My Vanishing Country
- A Memoir
- By: Bakari Sellers
- Narrated by: Bakari Sellers
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What J. D. Vance did for Appalachia with Hillbilly Elegy, CNN analyst and one of the youngest state representatives in South Carolina history Bakari Sellers does for the rural South, in this important book that illuminates the lives of America’s forgotten Black working-class men and women. Part memoir, part historical and cultural analysis, My Vanishing Country is an eye-opening journey through the South's past, present, and future.
-
-
What America Needs NOW!!!
- By Unknown on 05-22-20
By: Bakari Sellers
-
The Book of Gutsy Women
- By: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chelsea Clinton
- Narrated by: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chelsea Clinton
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, share the stories of the gutsy women who have inspired them - women with the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done.
-
-
More encyclopedia than book
- By Fountain of Chris on 10-09-19
By: Hillary Rodham Clinton, and others
-
King: A Life
- By: Jonathan Eig
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 20 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.
-
-
My Time
- By Susan on 06-18-23
By: Jonathan Eig
-
Legacy: Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance
- By: Nikki Grimes
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin, Karole Foreman, Zakiya Young, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Children's Literature Legacy Award-winning author Nikki Grimes comes a feminist-forward new collection of poetry celebrating the little-known women poets of the Harlem Renaissance. For centuries, accomplished women - of all races - have fallen out of the historical records. The same is true for gifted, prolific women poets of the Harlem Renaissance who are little known, especially as compared to their male counterparts.
-
-
Thoroughly enjoyed
- By SoJourner on 11-17-23
By: Nikki Grimes
-
Down Along with That Devil's Bones
- A Reckoning with Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy of White Supremacy
- By: Connor Towne O'Neill
- Narrated by: Geoffrey Cantor
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Connor Towne O’Neill’s journey onto the battlefield of white supremacy began with a visit to Selma, Alabama, in 2015. There he had a chance encounter with a group of people preparing to erect a statue to celebrate the memory of Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the most notorious Confederate generals, a man whom Union general William Tecumseh Sherman referred to as “that devil.” After that day in Selma, O’Neill, a white Northerner transplanted to the South, decided to dig deeply into the history of Forrest and other monuments to him throughout the South.
-
Necessary Trouble
- Growing Up at Midcentury
- By: Drew Gilpin Faust
- Narrated by: Drew Gilpin Faust
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To grow up in the 1950s was to enter a world of polarized national alliances, nuclear threat, and destabilized social hierarchies. To be a privileged white girl in conservative, segregated Virginia was to be expected to adopt a willful blindness to the inequities of race and the constraints of gender. For young Drew Gilpin Faust, the acceptance of both female subordination and racial privilege proved intolerable and galvanizing. Urged to become “well adjusted" and to fill the role of a poised young lady that her upbringing imposed, she found resistance was the necessary price of survival.
-
-
My Life written by Her.
- By Jacqueline L Larner on 09-03-23
-
My Vanishing Country
- A Memoir
- By: Bakari Sellers
- Narrated by: Bakari Sellers
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What J. D. Vance did for Appalachia with Hillbilly Elegy, CNN analyst and one of the youngest state representatives in South Carolina history Bakari Sellers does for the rural South, in this important book that illuminates the lives of America’s forgotten Black working-class men and women. Part memoir, part historical and cultural analysis, My Vanishing Country is an eye-opening journey through the South's past, present, and future.
-
-
What America Needs NOW!!!
- By Unknown on 05-22-20
By: Bakari Sellers
-
The Book of Gutsy Women
- By: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chelsea Clinton
- Narrated by: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chelsea Clinton
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, share the stories of the gutsy women who have inspired them - women with the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done.
-
-
More encyclopedia than book
- By Fountain of Chris on 10-09-19
By: Hillary Rodham Clinton, and others
-
King: A Life
- By: Jonathan Eig
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 20 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.
-
-
My Time
- By Susan on 06-18-23
By: Jonathan Eig
-
Make Change
- How to Fight Injustice, Dismantle Systemic Oppression, and Own Our Future
- By: Shaun King
- Narrated by: Shaun King, Bernie Sanders
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a leader of the Black Lives Matter movement, Shaun King has become one of the most recognizable and powerful voices on the front lines of civil rights in our time. In Make Change, King offers an inspiring look at the moments that have shaped his life and considers the ways social movements can grow and evolve in this hyper-connected era. He shares stories from his efforts leading the Raise the Age campaign and his work fighting police brutality, while providing a road map for how to stay sane, safe, and motivated even in the worst of political climates.
-
-
Injustice is whatever you feel it should be
- By Nathan on 08-05-20
By: Shaun King
-
Let the Trumpet Sound
- A Life of Martin Luther King Jr.
- By: Stephen B. Oates
- Narrated by: Cary Hite
- Length: 22 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By the acclaimed biographer of Abraham Lincoln, Nat Turner, and John Brown, Stephen B. Oates' prizewinning Let the Trumpet Sound is the definitive one-volume life of Martin Luther King Jr. This brilliant examination of the great civil rights icon and the movement he led provides a lasting portrait of a man whose dream shaped American history.
-
-
Dated, but still worth reading.
- By Adam Shields on 11-03-21
By: Stephen B. Oates
-
We've Got to Try
- How the Fight for Voting Rights Makes Everything Else Possible
- By: Beto O'Rourke
- Narrated by: Beto O'Rourke
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In We’ve Got To Try, O’Rourke shines a spotlight on the heroic life and work of Dr. Lawrence Aaron Nixon and the west Texas town where he made his stand. The son of an enslaved man, Nixon grew up in the Confederate stronghold of Marshall, Texas before moving to El Paso, becoming a civil rights leader, and helping to win one of the most significant civil and voting rights victories in American history: the defeat of the all-white primary. His fight for the ballot spanned 20 years and twice took him to the U.S. Supreme Court.
-
-
Powerful, Sobering Raw Truth that inspires
- By Amazon Customer on 09-09-22
By: Beto O'Rourke
-
Vernon Can Read!
- A Memoir
- By: Vernon Jordan Jr, Annette Gordon-Reed - contributor
- Narrated by: Vernon Jordan Jr
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a young college student in Atlanta, Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. had a summer job driving a white banker around town. During the man’s post-luncheon siestas, Jordan passed the time reading books, a fact that astounded his boss. “Vernon can read!” the man exclaimed to his relatives. Nearly 50 years later, Vernon Jordan, now a senior executive at Lazard Freres, long-time civil rights leader, adviser and close friend to presidents and business leaders and one of the most charismatic figures in America, has written an unforgettable book about his life and times.
-
-
details
- By Beverleyann on 03-26-25
By: Vernon Jordan Jr, and others
-
My Grandfather's Son
- A Memoir
- By: Clarence Thomas
- Narrated by: Clarence Thomas
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, My Grandfather's Son is the story of one of America's most remarkable and controversial leaders, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told in his own words.
-
-
Wonderful read
- By Amazon Customer on 10-17-21
By: Clarence Thomas
-
The Children
- By: David Halberstam
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 32 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Children is David Halberstam's brilliant and moving evocation of the early days of the civil rights movement, as seen through the story of the young people - the children - who met in the 1960s and went on to lead the revolution.
-
-
awesome and inspiring
- By gsag on 03-26-20
By: David Halberstam
-
The Best of Enemies
- Race and Redemption in the New South
- By: Osha Gray Davidson
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
C. P. Ellis grew up in the poor white section of Durham, North Carolina, and as a young man joined the Ku Klux Klan. Ann Atwater, a single mother from the poor black part of town, quit her job as a household domestic to join the civil rights fight. During the 1960s, Atwater and Ellis met on opposite sides of the public school integration issue. Their encounters were charged with hatred and suspicion. In an amazing set of transformations, however, each of them came to see how the other had been exploited by the South's rigid power structure.
-
-
WOW!! NO other words are needed!!!!!!!!
- By M on 04-17-19
-
We're Better Than This
- My Fight for the Future of Our Democracy
- By: Elijah Cummings, James Dale
- Narrated by: Nancy Pelosi, Laurence Fishburne, Maya Rockeymoore Cummings
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Baltimore Congressman Elijah Cummings was known for saying, “We’re better than this.” He said it in Baltimore, a city on the verge of explosion over police treatment of citizens. He said it in Congress when microphones were shut down, barring free speech. He said it when the president flaunted his power and ignored the Constitution. He said it when the president resorted to bullying, name-calling, and feeding racial divisions. We are better than this. He continued to say it until his final days last October.
-
-
The most inspiring piece of work I’ve heard in my adult life.
- By Jaraun on 01-29-21
By: Elijah Cummings, and others
-
Heart of Fire
- An Immigrant Daughter's Story
- By: Mazie K. Hirono
- Narrated by: Mazie K. Hirono
- Length: 14 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mazie Hirono is one of the most fiercely outspoken Democrats in Congress, but her journey to the U.S. Senate was far from likely. Raised on a rice farm in rural Japan, she was seven years old when her mother, Laura, left her abusive husband and sailed with her two elder children to Hawaii, crossing the Pacific in steerage in search of a better life. Though the girl then known as "Keiko" did not speak or read English when she entered first grade, she would go on to serve as a state representative and as Hawaii's lieutenant governor before winning election to Congress in 2006.
-
-
Mahalo Maize
- By Kalani Costa on 05-03-21
By: Mazie K. Hirono
-
Michelle Obama
- A Life
- By: Peter Slevin
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 15 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An inspiring story of a modern American icon, here is the first comprehensive account of the life and times of Michelle Obama. With disciplined reporting and a storyteller’s eye for revealing detail, Peter Slevin follows Michelle to the White House from her working-class childhood on Chicago’s largely segregated South Side. He illuminates her tribulations at Princeton University and Harvard Law School during the racially charged 1980s and the dilemmas she faced in Chicago.
-
-
Inspiring life story
- By Lwazilwenkosi on 11-20-15
By: Peter Slevin
-
The Three Mothers
- How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation
- By: Anna Malaika Tubbs
- Narrated by: Anna Malaika Tubbs
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Much has been written about Berdis Baldwin's son James, about Alberta King's son Martin Luther, and Louise Little's son Malcolm. But virtually nothing has been said about the extraordinary women who raised them. In her groundbreaking and essential debut The Three Mothers, scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs celebrates Black motherhood by telling the story of the three women who raised and shaped some of America's most pivotal heroes.
-
-
Not what I hoped for
- By Renee L. Kim on 05-03-21
-
A Way Out of No Way
- A Memoir of Truth, Transformation, and the New American Story
- By: Raphael G. Warnock
- Narrated by: Raphael G. Warnock
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Senator Reverend Raphael G. Warnock occupies a singular place in American life. As senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, and now as a senator from Georgia, he is the rare voice who can call out the uncomfortable truths that shape contemporary American life and, at a time of division, summon us all to a higher moral ground.
-
-
Rev, Dr, Raphael Warnocke, An Outstanding Leader in Ministry, Civil Rights and Politics
- By Rev. Brenda H. Heffner on 03-10-25