Susan Banyas left Hillsboro, but Hillsboro never her—and with this beautifully written book, she has recovered a fascinating but forgotten chapter in the history of the civil rights movement. —Jon Weiner, historian, author and contributing editor, The Nation

Voices From the Book

People talk about the depression. I don’t remember much about it. We had everything we needed.

--Elsie Steward Young, Marching Mother

It’s hard to get a date if you’re a Communist. It’s tough. You walk up to a group of friends and they just disappear.  That was a big one. That was a biggie.

Tom Partridge, son of Philip Partridge 

Her cousin Junior Burns said,
“Imogene had the brain power.” 

Imogene Curtis, Leader of the Protest

I told the judge, ‘Just let me get my ironing done and I’ll go to jail.’ It was comical in a way and it was nerve wracking in a way. I didn’t care. I was thinking of the children.

-- Gertrude Clemons Hudson (center) with Merle Hudson and Joyce Clemons Kittrell, Plaintiff in Clemons v. Board of Education, Hillsboro, OH, 1956

How does a kid arrive at a resolution that shakes his world? Is there a sense of justice even in young children? I thought about things a great deal.

—Philip Partridge, county engineer

Constance Baker Motley. She was one of the preeminent civil rights lawyers all through the South. She was a very young lawyer at this time. I’ll get you her chambers number.

--The Honorable Judge Nathaniel Jones, formerly General Counsel, NAACP and federal judge, author of Answering the Call

There were two Ohio lawyers who worked with the NAACP. The Hillsboro story, true in a lot of northern cities. But unless Blacks opposed segregation, nothing was done.

 --The Honorable Constance Baker Motley, author of Equal Justice Under Law

Well, sure enough a big fine car drove up in front of Miss Kilgore’s and he came in and interviewed me and had a write up in Jet Magazine. 

– Mary Hackney, Quaker teacher and farming mother

A police officer approaches me while I am campaigning, slows down and I think, “Uh oh, what did I do?” He rolls the window down and gestures for me to come over.
“I’m voting for you,” he whispers.

 – Pam Limes, civic leader

Friendship, it’s perfect. Just write The End.

– David Ornette Cherry, 1958-2022

BUY The Hillsboro Story soundtrack

Mr. Music/Remembering David Ornette Cherry a multimedia essay

Coda from 2011 theatre production of The Hillsboro Story, music by David Ornette Cherry, 3.5 min.

Like a great epic filmmaker, Susan Banyas moves fluidly between the personal and the historical, the particular and the archetypal, the internal and external…read more