By Ben Jealous

(Trice Edney Wire) – There’s a deep sense of despair settling over America. Families are working harder and falling further behind. The cost of raising children grows, while schools, housing, and healthcare remain out of reach for too many. It’s no wonder people across this country — rural and urban, Black and white — feel left behind and politically homeless.

But our past offers a powerful, largely forgotten story of how people once came together — across race and class — to put their children first. It happened in post–Civil War Virginia, through a political force called the Readjuster Party.

The Readjusters emerged in the late 1870s, when Virginia’s elites were insisting the state repay its massive pre-war debt in full — even if that meant closing schools and slashing

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