Thomas Jefferson grappled with profound contradictions in regards to race and freedom. The man who drafted the Declaration of Independence was also the man who enslaved hundreds of people at Monticello. Though he publicly worried that slavery was wrong—indeed, an existential threat to the nation itself—he also publicly asserted the inferiority of people of African descent.
Just over an hour south of Jefferson’s beloved Monticello, the citizens of Prince Edward County dealt with similar contradictions nearly two hundred years later. Elon’s 2018-19 common reading, Kristin Green’s "Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County," chronicles attempts to deny public education to African American students, thereby defying the mandate outlined by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education.
Keeping Jefferson’s famous words that “all men are created equal” in mind, assess how much progress the United States has made in its public education system since those early days of desegregation.