The Hillsboro Story: A Kaleidoscope History of an Integration Battle in My Hometown

The Hillsboro Story is set in the writer’s hometown, near the Mason Dixon Line, during a powerful turning point in America, when the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 set the stage for school integration. A single childhood memory—a protest outside her classroom window—opens into a multi-voiced tale that brings to light the courageous people who fought for integration and equal protection in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, at a time when Cold War tensions were at their peak. Anchored by the wisdom of real people who lived through the experience, The Hillsboro Story reveals what hides in the shadows of the culture, then and now, and the deep nature of memory as a tool for empowerment and healing.Two months after the U.S. Supreme Court rendered its momentous Brown v. Board of Education decision, an eight-year-old girl named Susan Grace Banyas, living in the small town of Hillsboro, Ohio, bore witness to a community protest staged to support and hasten the integration of her town’s public schools, after the “colored school” was mysteriously set on fire. Five decades later, Banyas, now a notable storyteller and artist, returned to her hometown to re-engage the childhood memory and gather the memories of the people who participated in or witnessed what was a timely and courageous civil rights action. This stirring book deserves to be widely read as our American citizenry continues to reckon with our country’s long legacy of racial injustice. Congressman John R. Lewis, one of our longtime and finest civil rights leaders and public servants, always recommends to those attending his speeches and protests, that they “Be stirred by the spirit of history.” Susan Grace Banyas has taken his advice dearly to heart. Jock Reynolds, Yale University Art Gallery Read more