| Abstrakt: |
I live on Richmond's Monument Avenue, but Monument Avenue wasn't meant for me. My grandmother was born in this city and so was my father, when Jim Crow was king. Reminded of the laws and customs of his youth, my father recounted his personal acts of protest. When working, he wouldn't enter homes in the tonier sections of the city through the back door, nor would he stand in the "colored only" lines to pick up lunch. "I understood the rules," he told me. "I just didn't internalize them." To do so would have meant embracing a caricature of himself crafted by those who couldn't imagine him as five-fifths of a person. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER] |
