Wit, Will & Walls (Betty Kilby Fisher)

"Wit, Will & Walls" is a powerful epic of an African American family's struggle for equality. Betty Kilby was an "infant plaintiff" in the, Betty Ann Kilby vs. Warren County Board of Education, which followed the landmark Supreme Court case Brown Vs. the Board of Education. The Kilby family struggle started long before, when her father, James Kilby, took on Old Virginia's deeply rooted apartheid system. James Kilby had been raised in what can only be called inter-generational semi-slavery on a farm in Rappahanock County. Like his father, he had worked at the owner's beck and call essentially for room, board and the occasional dollar. Ultimately, James Kilby stood up and led his family on their journey through terror, isolation and repeated defeats toward educational opportunity equal to that of white society. Sorrowing, yet often humorous, "Wit, Will and Walls" is more than just Betty's autobiography; This book is also a family epic, spanning generations of Kilbys, with many frank forays into such areas as the "kitchen babies," sired by her family's white bosses, right up to the heartbreak of her daughter's addiction to crack cocaine