Virginia Walden Ford’s New Memoir, “School Choice: A Legacy to Keep,” Shares the True Story of a Courageous Education Reform Pioneer

Virginia Walden Ford, who was recently portrayed by Uzo Aduba in the film, “Miss Virginia,” tells the behind-the-scenes true story of her childhood in the segregated south and her fight to bring school choice to our nation’s capital, in her new memoir, “School Choice: A Legacy to Keep.”

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (PRWEB) November 21, 2019

Every child in the U.S. deserves the opportunity to receive a quality education, but those opportunities are not equally distributed among young people in our country. That inequality is something that Virginia Walden Ford discovered as a child growing up in the segregated south, and then spent most of her adult life trying to change. In School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, a memoir published today by Beaufort Books, Walden Ford shares the improbable true story of how her childhood experiences prepared her for a life of school choice advocacy.

A decade after the “Little Rock Nine” desegregated Little Rock Central High School, Walden Ford was part of the second wave of black students to enroll in the school. As a teenager, she watched in horror as faceless bigots burned a cross at her home, protesting her father’s appointment to serve as the first black administrator of Little Rock’s school system.

Then, years later, Walden Ford drew on those experiences –– along with the lessons taught to her by her parents and grandparents –– when she rallied parents to protest Washington, D.C.’s broken education system and demand greater school choices for their own children.

In the process, she and other low-income parents steadily built community support for their efforts but faced sustained criticism from school choice opponents. Aligned with an unlikely set of allies in the U.S. Congress, they eventually won the fight to create the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program in 2004. Since its inception, the program has provided scholarships so that more than 10,000 children could attend the private schools of their parents’ choice.

Earlier this year, Walden Ford’s story was told on the big screen in the feature film, Miss Virginia, in which Emmy-winning actress Uzo Aduba portrays Virginia. The film also stars Matthew Modine, Niles Fitch, and Vanessa Williams.

Walden Ford’s new memoir expands on the lessons instilled by her parents, who served as public school teachers and administrators. The book also explores how she learned the values of courage and tenacity by listening to stories of her ancestors, including her great-great grandfather, who was a slave.

“I was raised to believe that education is a right but one that we have to keep fighting for, even 60 years after desegregation,” Walden Ford said. “I will never stop fighting for children and to give them a better chance at life. This book is part of that legacy.”

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To learn more about School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, click here.

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Virginia Walden Ford’s is the Great American Story

Virginia Walden Ford’s is the great American story, she’s on the right side of it, and it’s dramatically well-told in the new movie Miss Virginia. In the movie, Emmy winner Uzo Aduba plays Ford as she—sick and tired of being treated as if she’s incompetent to choose her own child’s school—rises in righteous rebellion and seizes control of her own affairs again by fighting for school choice in Washington, D.C., in a grand renewal of the American ideal of citizenship.

As also told in her forthcoming autobiography School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, “Miss Virginia” was an already-struggling single mother from a low-income neighborhood who decided to take on yet another struggle—to seek another option for the education of her teen boy. She was highly dissatisfied with the public school he was assigned to attend. She very much feared that he might be on his way to a life of drug dealing and all of that which too often follows. She couldn’t afford the tuition at other, nearby private schools, however.

Overcoming several obstacles, including her own fear of public speaking and the powerful educational establishment, Ford and the D.C. Parents for School Choice group she formed in the late 1990s sought to secure educational opportunity for her child, at another school, of her choosing. It was a story known to Bradley, which supported similar groups in Milwaukee and elsewhere; it helped fund D.C. Parents for School Choice, too.

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To read more about School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, click here.

To read more about Virginia Walden Ford, click here.

THE MOVIE MISS VIRGINIA POWERFULLY DRAMATIZES THE URGENT NEED FOR SCHOOL CHOICE

What’s it like to have your life story told on the big screen?

The new movie Miss Virginia is based on the unlikely story of Virginia Walden Ford, who, as a single mother in Washington, D.C., in the early 2000s, fought to create a federally-funded private school voucher program that would allow poor kids—including her son—to escape failing public schools. Against long odds and institutional hostility, she succeeded and is played with fiery passion by Orange Is the New Black‘s Uzo Aduba. Matthew Modine, known for roles in Full Metal Jacket, Weeds, and Stranger Things, co-stars as a sympathetic congressman who helps win congressional authorization for the program.

The movie opens in select theaters and on streaming services on October 18. Go here for more information.

Walden Ford’s own backstory as a student is both harrowing and inspirational. She was among the early waves of black kids that integrated public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, an experience that informed her actions as a parent. Her memoir of growing up in the segregated South and becoming a major figure in education reform, School Choice: A Legacy To Keep, will be published on November 21.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

To learn more about Virginia Walden Ford, click here.

To learn more about School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, click here.