Concept Development

     During my graduate work at the University of Hartford, I looked for a story that exemplified an ordinary person who accomplished the extraordinary.  When I found a few paragraphs about Barbara Rose Johns on a civil rights website, I knew I had something that needed to be shared with a larger audience. To prepare my manuscript, I studied the court cases that became Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

     While in New York at the Society of Illustrators, I met Burton Silverman who had documented the Mississippi Bus Boycott through his drawings.  After viewing these images, it became clear that I needed to visit Farmville, Virginia to bring a spirit of place into my illustrations.

Research Trip

     My initial interview was with Dr. Peeples in Richmond, Virginia. Attorney General Robert Kennedy used Peeples’ thesis on the school closing in 1963 to address the Congress about the crisis in Prince Edward County.  Peeples is a white boy from the Deep South and a descendent of slave owners.  He knew the lay of the land and prepared me for the initial cold reception that I may receive. 

     My first night in Farmville was spent at a local N.A.A.C.P. meeting in the same basement of the First Baptist Church where the student strike leaders and their parents met with Spotswood Robinson and Oliver Hill (attorneys from the N.A.A.C.P) to discuss filing a suit for integration.  I arranged face-to-face interviews with students involved in the school walkout and white journalists who have written about the anniversary of the school strike. I interviewed Mr. John A. Stokes and Ms. Joy Cabarras-Speaks who were both plaintiffs in the case Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County.  Because Barbara Johns died in 1991 of cancer, the opportunity to speak with other former students who were close to the event gave me insights that I could not find through my readings.  I finished my interviews with the R.R. Moton High School Museum director to get a broader vision of what occurred over 50 years ago.

     I shot many reference pictures so that my illustrations would hold true to the period.  I studied the U.S. Government’s archives containing artifacts from the Davis case.  I drew inspiration from the individuals who generously gave me their stories.