Town Talk: A conversation with Betty Kilby Fisher Baldwin

In this Town Talk, our publisher Mike McCool has a conversation with Betty Kilby Fisher Baldwin. In an earlier Town Talk, we spoke with her brother James M. Kilby.

Betty is the author of the book “Wit, Will & Walls”,  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 Rappahannock County. Like his father, he had worked at the owner’s beck and call essentially for a 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, with many frank forays into such areas as the “kitchen babies,” sired by her families white bosses, right up to the heartbreak of her daughters’ addiction to crack cocaine.

Her book is available on Amazon.

Town Talk is a series on the Royal Examiner where we will introduce you to local entrepreneurs, businesses, non-profit leaders, and political figures who influence Warren County. Topics will be varied but hopefully interesting. If you have an idea, topic, or want to hear from someone in our community, let us know. Send your request to news@RoyalExaminer.com