Ann Thomas Memorial Lecture Series Featuring Dr. Betty Kilby Fisher Baldwin

February 18, 2025
12:00pm - 1:00pm

For the 2025 Ann Thomas Memorial Lecture, in a presentation called “Soldiers Without Uniforms, Miss Ann and me,” Dr. Betty Kilby Fisher Baldwin will talk about her role in integrating Warren County High School, comparing and contrasting her journey and Miss Ann Thomas’s journey in implementing Brown vs. Board of Education, and how their journeys as teenagers impacted them as women moving and navigating in their careers. Dr. Kilby Fisher sued the Warren County School Board implementing the Brown decision to get an education beyond the 7th grade. Today she has an AD in business management from Lord Fairfax Community College, BD in business administration from Shenandoah University, MBA from NOVA University and an Honorary Doctoral from Shenandoah University. She is a speaker and author featured in several documentaries, including, on Netflix, “Stories of a Generation with Pope Francis, Episode 2.”

Dr. Betty Kilby Fisher Baldwin fought to get an education. She sued the Warren County School Board implementing the Brown v. Board decision to get an education beyond the 7th grade. Today she has an associate’s degree in business management from Lord Fairfax Community College, bachelor’s degree in business administration from Shenandoah University, MBA from NOVA University and an Honorary Doctoral from Shenandoah University.

She is a speaker and Author of "Freedom Road", Warren County's History from 1836 to 1986 and "Wit, Will, and Walls", her historical autobiography where she shares her journey of fighting for an education as well as her climb up the corporate ladder and she Co-Authored with Phoebe Kilby “Cousins” the story of their journey of confronting the past to a path of reconciliation. Betty is featured in several documentaries, “Wit, Will and Walls, the Betty Kilby Story “and “Knocking Down Walls.”. Both documentaries can be seen on YouTube. She is featured in a Netflix Documentary “Stories of a Generation with Pope Francis “Episode 2. She appeared on GMA3: “A look at the 70th Anniversary of Brown V. Board which can also viewed on YouTube.”

Featured Book

Wit, Will & Walls - by Betty Kilby Baldwin

 “Wit, Will & Walls" is a powerful epic of an African American family’s struggle for equality.

Betty Kilby was an "infant plaintiff" in the Betty Ann Kilby v. Warren County Board of Education, which followed the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. 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 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 of Kilbys, with many frank forays into such areas as the "kitchen babies," sired by her family’s white bosses, right up to the heartbreak of her daughter’s addiction to crack cocaine.

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"Lunch With Books" is the library’s flagship program for adult patrons. These lunchtime programs feature authors, poets, musicians, historians, and more every Tuesday at noon. Bring lunch (to the Library Auditorium or your computer), feed your brain!