To the editor:

Thirty years ago, during the Blizzard of 1978, Nantucket teacher Barbara White made it to the Massachusetts State Archives, but the archivist didn't. White was told to just go in and look around for herself. What she found was a box of uncatalogued documents including petitions sent to the General Court of Massachusetts from Nantucket in the mid- 1840s. One petition was from black whaling captain and merchant, Edward J. Pompey, requesting legislation to racially integrate the Nantucket public schools. It was signed by over 100 members of Nantucket's black community. A second was a petition from 235 white Nantucketers supporting Pompey's petition. The third was written and signed by just one person, Eunice Ross. Ross had taken the entrance examination for Nantucket High School five years previously and, as she put it in her own words, "was found amply qualified for admission … and was refused admittance … on account of her color." In response, the General Court of Massachusetts passed House Bill 45, 1845, which afforded parents the legal right to bring suit against any city or town in the commonwealth that denied equal education to their children. This marked the beginning of the end of segregated schools on Nantucket.

White used these hitherto lost and forgotten documents to write a book, "The African School and the Integration of Nantucket Public Schools 1825-1847," which was published by the Afro-American Studies Program at Boston University. Nathaniel Philbrick has called it the most important publication on the topic. The book formed the basis of the PBS documentary film "Rock of Changes."

Thirty years have passed. The book went out of print and White retired from a long teaching career on Nantucket. One of the first things she undertook after leaving the classroom was a revision of her book, adding to it all the information she had gathered in the years since she first wrote it. Simultaneously, she was researching the teaching careers of two important Nantucket figures whose work in support of education for all extended far beyond Nantucket: Anna Gardner and Cyrus Peirce.

In the fall of 2007, White was happily writing their biographies when she was called back to serve as interim principal of the Cyrus Peirce Middle School. Selflessly setting aside her own work, she returned to help steer a course for the school to which she had dedicated so many years.

For some people reward can take the form of a trophy or a plaque or a name on a building. For White, the best thank you we can possibly give her is publication of the second edition of her book. Spinner Publications of New Bedford plans to include it in their series of beautifully illustrated books about the working people of southern New England. It's up to us, White's friends, former students and parents of her students to raise production funds to get this project off the ground so the book can become a reality in time for Black History Month 2009.

A kick-off fund-raising event will be dessert and coffee in the Nantucket High School cafeteria on May 19, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. It will be hosted by the Nantucket High School Class of 2008 and the NHS Diversity Club. Admission is free, and entertainment will be by NHS students. Donations will be most welcome.

For more information about how to support this project, please call Frances

Karttunen at 228-6267. I