Black Mama Magic: TV Movies Where Black Motherhood Shines
Miss Virginia, the movie based on Virginia Walden Ford’s memoir School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, was featured in Ebony’s Mother’s Day article “Black Mama Magic: TV Movies Where Black Motherhood Shines.”
To read the article, click here.
To learn more about School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, click here.
To learn more about Virginia Walden Ford, click here.
Virginia Walden Ford’s moving memoir named a 2020 Silver Nautilus Book Awards winner for the Memoir & Personal Journey category
Congratulations to Virginia Walden Ford! Her inspiring memoir, School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, won a Silver Award in the 2020 Nautilus Book Awards.
School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, tells the dramatic true story of how poor D.C. parents, with the support of unlikely allies, faced off against some of America’s most prominent politicians—and won a better future for children.
To see the full list of winners, click here.
To learn more about School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, click here.
To learn more about Virginia Walden Ford, click here.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Virginia Walden Ford
Virginia Walden Ford is one of the few people who actually knows the answer to the question, “What actress would play you in the Hollywood version of your life?”
Ford made national news in the 1990s as leader of a grassroots effort to broaden school choice for public school students in Washington DC. That struggle has now been featured in the film Miss Virginia, which was released in October 2019 and stars Uzo Aduba in the title role.
For those who want to know the full story with all the details and complexity that won’t fit in the two-hour film version, Ford has now released her memoir, School Choice: A Legacy to Keep. Most fascinating, especially for Arkansans, is the major role that Ford’s youth in Little Rock played in the formation of this strong woman’s character
Born in 1951 as Virginia Fowler, the real “Miss Virginia” grew up in the thick of the intense civil rights struggle that followed the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School. A cross burned on her family’s lawn in 1967 when her father, William Harry Fowler, was selected as the first black administrator for the Little Rock School District. Both Fowler and his wife, Marion Johnson Fowler, had graduated from Philander Smith College and earned masters’ degrees from the University of Arkansas. The Fowler family was deeply invested in education and in the Little Rock community, frequently hosting many of the people whose names have now gone down in history for civil rights activism such as Thurgood Marshall and Daisy Gatson Bates. But most importantly, as Ford now testifies, growing up in her family taught her to raise her voice on behalf of others.
Click here 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.
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.”
To read the rest of the article, click here.
To learn more about School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, click here.
To learn more about Virginia Walden Ford, click here.
The most wonderful time of the year is here once more! It’s around this time that we all begin rushing around town, shelling out too much money for gifts that will inevitably end up re-gifted. With all the decorating, shopping, and parties, the magic of the holidays gets lost behind sky-high price tags and busy schedules. This year, Beaufort wants to make your holidays a little more magical by recommending gifts for everyone on your list! Here you’ll find books that will satisfy even the most obscure tastes and interests. Not to mention, they’ll look stellar wrapped up under the tree or displayed on the shelf. Now order these finds online and get to sippin’ that eggnog by the fire!
The Lord is My Strength by Eric Kampmann
In his introduction to The Lord Is My Strength, Eric Kampmann places the Psalms at the epicenter of the biblical narrative. Implicitly, the psalms weave all the way back to the creation story, forward to the advent of Jesus, and beyond to the end of times. And within this epic scope, the psalms tell the story of each one of us, our hopes, our dreams, our fears and conflicts in a way that ignites our imagination, providing a full and deep picture of who we are as we live day to day in our own time and place. The Lord Is My Strength was originally envisioned as a book of morning prayers posted on social media sites. But it quickly became more than that when Kampmann began posting a photograph and a short commentary along with the passage from the psalms. The result is a new book that will speak through words and pictures of the beauty, harmony and mystery that has been gifted to everyone who has the desire to see where they stand in God’s story.
The Adventures of Bubba Jones Series by Jeff Alt
The Adventures of Bubba Jones: Time Traveling Through the Great Smoky Mountains is the first book in the series.
Tommy “Bubba Jones” and his sister Jenny “Hug-a-Bug” learn more about the Great Smoky Mountain National Park than they ever thought they would when Papa Lewis lets them in on a family secret: The family has legendary time traveling skills! With these abilities, Bubba Jones and Hug-a-Bug travel back in time and meet the park’s founders, its earliest settlers, native Cherokee Indians, wild animals, extinct creatures, and what the park was like millions of years ago.
With this time traveling ability also comes a family mystery, but the only person who can help solve the mystery is a long lost relative who lives somewhere in the park. Explore the Smokies with Bubba Jones and family in a whole new way.
The Woman in the Park by Teresa Sorkin and Tullan Holmqvist
When Manhattanite Sarah Rock meets a mysterious and handsome stranger in the park, she is drawn to him. Sarah wants to get away from her daily routine, her cheating husband and his crazy mistress, her frequent sessions with her heartless therapist, and her moody children.
But nothing is as it seems. Her life begins to unravel when a woman from the park goes missing and Sarah becomes the prime suspect in the woman’s disappearance. Her lover is nowhere to be found, her husband is suspicious of her, and her therapist is talking to the police.
With no one to trust, Sarah must face her inner demons and uncover the truth to prove her innocence.
A thriller that questions what is real-with its shocking twists, secrets, and lies—The Woman in the Park will leave readers breathless.
The North of the Tension Line Series by J.F. Riordan
North of the Tension Line is the first book in the series
Fiona Campbell is a newcomer to tiny Ephraim, Wisconsin. Populated with artists and summer tourists, Ephraim has just enough going on to satisfy her city tastes. But she is fascinated and repelled by the furthest tip of Door County peninsula, Washington Island, utterly removed from the hubbub of modern life. Fiona’s visits there leave her refreshed in spirit, but convinced that only lunatics and hermits could survive a winter in its frigid isolation.
In a moment of weakness, Fiona is goaded into accepting a dare that she cannot survive the winter on the island in a decrepit, old house. Armed with some very fine single malt scotch and a copy of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Fiona sets out to win the dare, and discovers that small town life is not nearly as dull as she had foreseen. Abandoning the things she has always thought important, she encounters the vicious politics of small town life, a ruthless neighbor, persistent animals, a haunted ferry captain, and the peculiar spiritual renewal of life “north of the tension line.”
The Jack Patterson Series by Webb Hubbell
When Men Betray is the first book in the series.
Why would Woody Cole, a peaceful, caring man, shoot a US Senator in cold blood on live television? That’s the mystery facing attorney Jack Patterson as he returns to Little Rock, Arkansas, a town he swore he would never step foot in again.
When Men Betray is the first book of fiction from author, lecturer, and political insider Webb Hubbell. A departure from his previous book, Friends in High Places, an account of his rise and fall in Little Rock, Hubbell crafts a deft narrative of mystery and political intrigue. Set in a fictionalized version of his home town of Little Rock, Arkansas, readers will be immersed into the steamy world behind the southern BBQ and antebellum facade—a seedy underbelly of secrets and betrayals. Clever readers may recognize the colorful personalities and locales of the Arkansas political scene.
Jack is supported by a motley but able crew; loyal assistant Maggie, college-aged daughter Beth, feisty lawyer Micki, and his bodyguard Clovis. Together, Jack and his rag-tag team are in a race against time to discover Woody’s hidden motive. All he has is a series of strange clues, hired thugs gunning for him, and the one man who knows everything isn’t talking. Alliances are tested, buried tensions surface, and painful memories are relived as he tries to clear the name of his old college friend. Jack Patterson will find that even the oldest friendships can be quickly destroyed when men betray.
School Choice: A Legacy to Keep by Virginia Walden Ford
On a cold winter night in February of 1967, a large rock shattered a bedroom window in Virginia Walden Ford’s home in Little Rock, Arkansas, landing in her baby sister’s crib. Outside, members of the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on her family’s lawn. Faceless bigots were terrorizing Virginia, her parents, and her sisters–all because her father, Harry Fowler, dared to take a job as the assistant superintendent of personnel for the Little Rock School District. He was more than qualified, but he was black.
In her searing new memoir, legendary school choice advocate Virginia Walden Ford recounts the lessons she learned as a child in the segregated south. She drew on those experiences—and the legacies handed to her by her parents and ancestors—thirty years later, when she built an army of parents to fight for school choice in our nation’s capital. School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, tells the dramatic true story of how poor D.C. parents, with the support of unlikely allies, faced off against some of America’s most prominent politicians—and won a better future for children.
Success Freak by Bruno Gralpois
Are you ready to get INSANELY MORE out of life? Success is acquired, not inherited. Take control of your destiny and join the “Success Freak 7-Day Challenge”: master 7 essential skills and transform your life in only one week. Combining helpful exercises and set-by-steps activities,Success Freak is a self-help book by French-American Entrepreneur Bruno Gralpois, that will show you how to unleash the amazing potential that, yes, already lies within you. You are about to become an unstoppable force of resolve and determination. Nothing short of the Success (Freak) you were always meant to be.
Occam’s Razor by T.R. Ryden
When ancient artifacts discovered in the Great Pyramid of Giza shed new light on a DNA pattern identified by a world-renowned molecular biologist, venture capitalist, James Anderson, is thrust into an action-packed road of scientific exploration and discovery. An unlikely participant in the events that begin to unfold, Anderson and his team, pursued by those who don’t want this new information out, realize they have stumbled upon the greatest and most terrifying cover-up in the history of the human race.
Occam’s Razor is a chilling speculative fiction thriller which ties together several well-known, and some not so famous controversial theories concerning alien visitation, human evolution, ancient legends, and the cosmos. The novel explains how it could be very plausible to imagine that the powers that be may already know about an impending disaster and caught between all this are the novel’s unfortunate characters as they struggle to figure out what to do in the face of unstoppable catastrophe.
Happy Holidays! May all your shopping be done early!
-Captain Beaumerica
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.
To read the rest of the article, click here.
To read more about School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, click here.
To read more about Virginia Walden Ford, click here.
VIRGINIA WALDEN FORD WRITES ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF SCHOOL CHOICE IN WASHINGTON EXAMINER OP-ED
If anyone needed a wake-up call about the urgent need to expand school choice, last week’s release of student achievement data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress is the loudest alarm clock we have heard in years. It should jolt every family, every school, and every elected official into action.
The numbers are sobering: only 41% of our nation’s fourth graders are proficient in math and only 35% are proficient in reading. As students get older, the outlook looks even bleaker: only 34% of eighth graders are proficient in reading and math.
What’s worse is that across almost every metric, with the exception of fourth grade math, student achievement is at lower levels today than it was two years ago.
To read the rest of the article, click here.
To learn more about School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, click here.
FEATURE: VIRGINIA WALDEN FORD INTERVIEWED BY THE LOS ANGELES SENTINEL
Virginia Walden Ford is not afraid of a fight especially not when the welfare of African American children is on the line. Then she is “fearless” and “relentless” and where superheroines are drawn for comic book mythology, here, we have a real-life warrior who battled over school vouchers in the nation’s capital.
Ford knew that her son deserved better and fought to get her son into a private school — with the government footing the bill.
Virginia Walden Ford is known as a dedicated and effective Black D.C. activist who shook it up in the late 1990s and 2000s pushing for vouchers despite the opposition by many Democratic leaders in the District.
It didn’t stop her, in fact, the obstacles motivated her more.
In the movie version of her life — “Miss Virginia” — Virginia Walden Ford is played by Uzo Aduba (“Orange is the New Black”). The release of the film seems to be fitting perfectly to reflect our current political climate. If you follow education news then you know that the Trump administration is pushing for an expansion of vouchers and as Democratic presidential candidates debate school choice.
To read the rest of the article, click here.
To learn more about School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, click here.
UZO ADUBA SAYS ‘MISS VIRGINIA’ CHARACTER SHOWS THE POWER WE ALL HAVE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
The depths of a mother’s love is on full display in the new movie “Miss Virginia,” based on the true-life story of Virginia Walden Ford who successfully fought the system to create a private school voucher program for low-income children in Washington, D.C.
Orange is the New Black’s Uzo Aduba, who plays Virginia in the film and delivers a passionate performance, says this is what drew her to the role – the unrelenting love a mother has for her child. In an interview with EURweb’s Lee Bailey, Aduba said she saw examples of this type of love with her own mom and knew this was the role she wanted to play.
“It felt to me like such a love story in a sense when I was reading it,” Aduba explained. “The mother went pretty far for the love of her child and gave everything she had for the love of her child and that’s a story I’m familiar with. I’m a product of immigrants and I had a front row seat to my own mother doing the same for myself and my siblings, pouring all of her love and hope into us so that we could have as many different exposures as we possibly could.”
“I could connect to that idea and that story,” Aduba added.
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.
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.
Hi readers! Mia ThermoBEAUlis here. We’ve had a busy fall here at Beaufort Books and Spencer Hill Press as we prepare to go to press for five separate titles.
Out of these titles, two have been making some major headlines as of late. The first title, School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, is the new memoir from Virginia Walden Ford, a courageous trailblazer who paved the way for a complete overhaul of the education system in her local community. What began as a grassroots movement has since turned into a national organization. The Opportunity Scholarship Program now provides “scholarships for low-income children to attend private schools, while boosting federal funding for traditional public schools and public charter schools.”
Virginia didn’t always have the influence she maintains now, however. Her movement began as an act of desperation, as she worked three jobs so she could afford a private education for her son who was failing out of a deteriorating public school in the suburbs of Washington D.C. School Choice: A Legacy to Keep is Virginia’s retelling of the years she spent fighting corrupt politicians in Congress and how she and other dedicated parents changed the face of the American education system forever.
We were thrilled when we found out the Moving Picture Institute was planning to produce a film based on Virginia’s story. “Miss Virginia,” starring Uzo Aduba and Matthew Modine, is an inspiring drama that retells the true story of Virginia’s fight for educational rights. The film hits theaters this Friday, October 18th, but we were honored to be invited to attend the world premiere for the movie here in New York City.
Several members of our team were present at the premiere and had the opportunity to hear from Virginia herself, as well as Modine, director R.J. Daniel Hanna, and other panelists related to the school choice cause. Nick Reid, executive producer and senior vice president of the Moving Picture Institute, moderated the panel and lead the discussion about the making of the film and the impact the school choice movement has had on families around the country.
Also present at the premiere was another Beaufort author, Andrew Campanella. As the president of National School Choice Week, Andrew has worked closely with Virginia through the years to empower parents and educate them about the different types of education available. Andrew’s new book, The School Choice Roadmap, is another upcoming Beaufort title. It serves as a guide for parents looking to find the best learning environment for their children.
Both School Choice: A Legacy to Keep and The School Choice Roadmap are available for pre-order now. School Choice: A Legacy to Keep will hit shelves on November 21st of this year, while The School Choice Roadmap will be available on January 21st, 2020.
We’re so excited to be publishing both titles. If you’d like to support these incredible authors and changemakers, you can pre-order a copy of both books from Indiebound or Barnes & Noble.
Until next time,
Mia ThermoBEAUlis
Winner of the 2020 Silver Nautilus Book Award
On a cold winter night in February of 1967, a large rock shattered a bedroom window in Virginia Walden Ford’s home in Little Rock, Arkansas, landing in her baby sister’s crib. Outside, members of the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on her family’s lawn. Faceless bigots were terrorizing Virginia, her parents, and her sisters–all because her father, Harry Fowler, dared to take a job as the assistant superintendent of personnel for the Little Rock School District. He was more than qualified, but he was black.
In her searing new memoir, legendary school choice advocate Virginia Walden Ford recounts the lessons she learned as a child in the segregated south. She drew on those experiences—and the legacies handed to her by her parents and ancestors—thirty years later, when she built an army of parents to fight for school choice in our nation’s capital. School Choice: A Legacy to Keep, tells the dramatic true story of how poor D.C. parents, with the support of unlikely allies, faced off against some of America’s most prominent politicians—and won a better future for children.
About: Virginia Walden Ford
Paperback: $14.95 (ISBN: 9780825309397)
E-Book: $5.99 (ISBN: 9780825308215)
Nonfiction/Memoirs/Education
192 pages
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