becoming the award-winning author so many have come to love. How did she go from the carefree little girl listening to her family’s stories to the amazing writer she was? What obstacles did she face along the way?
As grandfather Levi Perry would say, just sit down and let me tell you a story.
Virginia’s story.
SLAVE PEN IN THE NATIONAL UNDERGROUND RAILROAD FREEDOM CENTER
From the Collection of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
DID YOU KNOW?
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center opened in Cincinnati in 2004. Visitors can learn the stories about freedom’s heroes, from the time of the Underground Railroad to the modern day. A “slave pen,” a 21-foot by 30-foot, two-story building that had originally served as a holding pen for slaves until they were sold at auction, is found on the second floor of the museum.
CHAPTER TWO
SETTING
My subject matter is derived from the intimate and shared place of the hometown and the hometown’s people.*
IF VIRGINIA’S family provided the foundation for storytelling she became known for, Yellow Springs provided the backdrop for her tales.
Yellow Springs was the place where little Virginia ran home on the last day of the school year, very excited. In her small hands was a prized possession, a book. It was bright and shiny, with three cute yellow ducks on the cover. She’d won it as a result of having read the most books in her class.
It was Virginia’s first award, and treasured. New books were hard to come by in her family.1
Virginia loved to read.
Yellow Springs was the place with the quaint library that nurtured Virginia’s passion. “It was a lovely little cottage,” Virginia recalled, “shaped like a gingerbread house and made of gray fieldstone, with a red tile roof.”2
YELLOW SPRINGS LIBRARY DURING VIRGINIA’S CHILDHOOD
Photo courtesy of Antiochiana, Antioch College
Her love for the Yellow Springs Library began with a quest to find out more about an exotic breed of chicken her mother had sent away for.
Virginia’s mother encouraged her to “look at the rainbow layers” of the eggs from their Araucanas chickens. While the chickens roamed about in the yard, Virginia explored the henhouse.
She discovered the nests held eggs of a variety of colors. Her mother’s exotic chickens laid eggs that were turquoise, pink, olive green, and various shades of brown.
“When I told my class at school about my job as colored-egg gatherer, some of the town kids snickered, ‘Both you and the eggs are colored!’”
“I told Mama and she said, ‘Go take a look in the library.’”
“‘For what?’” I wanted to know,” Virginia said.
“‘For the rainbow layers,’ Mama said. ‘There’s more than one kind of chick with color. More than Araucanas.’ And then she gave me what I thought of as a secret smile.”3
And so it was that Virginia became a regular visitor to the local library.
She even thought the “spritely, bright-eyed” Story Lady lived at the library. Once a week the Story Lady visited Virginia and her classmates in elementary school. She walked them across the street and introduced the children to her world of books.
“I’d get side-swiped every time by all those straight-back sentinels in long still rows,” said Virginia. “Short books and tall books, blue books and green books. What’s in them? I would wonder. They had more colors than the rainbow-egg layers ever thought of. And a greater supply of subjects. Today I realize that was my mother’s point. Get Virginia to the library and she will find out many things.”4
Yellow Springs was the place where Virginia roamed freely and played in the surrounding fields and farms owned by her family. She ventured beyond her family’s lands and on to the other side of town and the glen, now known as Glen Helen, a thousand-acre preserve.
“In the glen I discovered deer, the sweet and yellow freshwater springs, an immense, condemned pavilion once a grand hotel and marvelous old vines strong enough to swing on.”5
The images stuck in Virginia’s mind and came out in two of her works. The House of Dies Drear features an old, spooky house, and the swinging vines appear in M. C. Higgins, the Great.
Through the same lands that Virginia ran as a child, Native American children had run years before. The Native Americans laughed and played as she did, chasing shadows in the woods, and picking wildflowers to take home to their mothers.
These same lands were where white settlers hunted and welcomed Ohio into the Union in 1803.
Ohio outlawed slavery in its 1803 Constitution.
However, the legislature passed “Black Laws” that discouraged migration to the state.6 The laws were intended to make life so miserable for African Americans that they would not use the new free state as a refuge from slavery. Blacks coming into Ohio were required to show a certificate of freedom. Those who already lived in the state had to register with a county clerk. African Americans living in Ohio could not work in the state unless they possessed the freedom certificate. There was also a state fugitive law that allowed slave owners from other states to come into Ohio and capture their former slaves without interference.7
But, despite the restrictions, many slaves found freedom traveling via the Ohio River and settling in the area.8 Yellow Springs was the place where many African American families bought property and built their homes.
Early residents of color may have been encouraged by the fact that Horace Mann, Antioch College’s first president, was in favor of eliminating slavery.
So it came to be that Virginia’s relatives, the Perrys and the Hamiltons, established their farms here.
Yellow Springs was the place where Virginia first experienced racism.
Virginia grew up surrounded by her extended family, comfortable in their presence, unaware of the division that existed.
Along with playing all day in summer, Virginia and her cousin Marlene became young entrepreneurs. They picked berries in the morning and sold them along the roadside, earning money to catch a movie at the Little Theatre.
The Little Theatre, now known as the Little Art Theatre, sits on Xenia Avenue, just a hop, skip, and a jump from the library. Marlene and Virginia rode their bikes the five-minute trip up to the theater, the smell of popcorn luring them in. Imagine their excitement at seeing movies on the theater’s big screen. When Virginia first started going to the theater as a younger child, she and Marlene were not free to choose just any seat. They had to sit in the back two rows of the theater.
Only whites were allowed in the front.
In 1942, when Virginia was eight years old, that changed.
THE LITTLE THEATRE IN YELLOW SPRINGS
Photo courtesy of Antiochiana, Antioch College
The new owners of the town newspaper, the Yellow Springs News, Ernest and Elizabeth Morgan, ran an editorial about the separation of blacks and whites in the town. “We all know that much discrimination is practiced in Yellow Springs. The theatre, restaurants, even the Churches, find themselves doing it.”9
The