This is the story of an extraordinary school in the piney woods of Mississippi and of the enduring people of Piney Woods Community who forged on against incredible odds to make a better world for themselves and their children. To these poor backwoods turn-of-the-century African Americans of Rankin County, Mississippi, Laurence C. Jones (1882-1975) brought the Booker T. Washington model of training African Americans to be good workers.

Because the school followed Jim Crow social codes and mirrored what were then expedient race relations in the South, Piney Woods School thrived without...