THOSE WHO SAW THE SUN

Jim Crow comes alive in oral histories.

“So when you were a kid, Black people couldn’t vote at all?” Avery asks Clotie Graves, daughter of a Mississippi farmer. “Oh no, no. My goodness!” is the answer, prefacing a description of voting restrictions that leads to the ferocious reminder that “people died for us to have just the right to vote.” Now in her 70s and the operator of an African American history tour company, Graves is profiled alongside nine others, including a dentist, a bank examiner, a music teacher, and a cartoonist. Their upbringings were equally varied: one the son of a North Carolina sharecropper, another the daughter of a San Francisco pastor. They testify to both the diversity of African American experiences and cruel universalities as well as the nurturing of children and teens within caring Black communities. The Rev. John Kennard, the first Black tax assessor in his Alabama county, reminisces, “Growing up going to totally Black schools was the best thing that ever happened to me, and then to go to basically a totally white institution was the next best thing. Because I found out I could excel in either.” Avery asks each of her subjects whether they believe that Dr. King’s dream can be realized in America. The answers differ; what doesn’t is the wisdom and experience that inform them. An extensive appendix to this invaluable work serves as a microencyclopedia of the era.

These elders’ voices are a collective treasure.