Voices of America

By the early 1900s, virtually all of the rich plantation land in the Red Hills between Thomasville, Georgia, and Tallahassee, Florida, had been converted to quail-hunting land for the pleasure of Northern owners and their guests. To operate these large specialized plantations, a skilled management and talented and industrious work force was needed. Within these pages are the stories of fifteen African Americans who were closely involved in plantation life in the first half of the century. Explored are the unique relationships between the plantation owners and their employees, and between families black and white. Vintage images depict the various tasks performed by the African Americans on the plantation, as well as the recreational activities they enjoyed. Told in the voices of those who lived and worked on the plantations, this unique collection of oral histories will serve as a valuable educational tool for generations to come.

The honesty of the voices within this illuminating oral history will draw you into the Grant County of yesteryear, and leave you feeling as if you were really there.

""There's a story that goes like this . . ."" So begins Delores Betts, one of the dozens of people whose memories and recollections of African-American life in Grant County over the past century and a half are preserved within what may well be the most intriguing and inspiring history you will ever read. We invite you to join Barbara Stevenson and the dozens of others in this delightful journey back in time. It is an experience that we promise you will never forget.

In this valuable volume of oral history, the recorded childhood memories of African Americans--from family rituals to first jobs, neighborhood games to school--are illustrated with vintage photographs culled from family albums and archives.

Chronicling the period from 1900 to the 1950s, Growing Up Black in New Castle County, Delaware brings together the touching stories of African Americans in northern Delaware who grew up during an era of both hardship and happiness. In a time when racial segregation was law and the nation faced such challenges as war and economic depression, African-American children in New Castle County and around the country were busy exploring the world around them-playing with friends, celebrating holidays, attending school, and learning the important life lessons that would carry them through the rest of the twentieth century.

And I'm Glad: An Oral History of Edisto Island explores the island's history through the eyes and in the voices of two Edisto farmers, Sam Gadsden and Bubberson Brown, who grew up, labored, raised families, and made their lives on the island. These narratives, tracing the arrival of the first black pioneers, the subsequent slave culture during the 1800s, the difficulties of Reconstruction, to the Edisto of the twentieth century, document both the African-American legacy of the island and the personal struggles of two black men. Overcoming the unpredictability of the Lowcountry's weather, such as the historic Hurricane of 1893 and subsequent storms, the hardships of Depression-era America, and the double standards of a pre-Civil Rights South, Gadsden and Brown detail triumphant lives full of service, hard work, good humor, and faith.