Summer Book Study: The Emancipation of Evan Walls

My mother was born in 1935 in Philadelphia, Mississippi and she lived under the Jim Crow laws. She often told me stories of how they had to use string to measure themselves because they (meaning Black people) weren't allowed to try on clothes. She once told me a story about when she was too young to know how to read, she drank out of a "Whites Only" water fountain. Her mother grabbed her right before a white man was about to slap her off of the water fountain.

Reading chapter one of this book gave me a glimpse into the life my mother was forced to live. Also hearing about how the Walls farm was taken over reminded me of how the same thing happened to my grandmother and my mother's siblings. Their dad was given land but when he died, my grandmother and my aunts were forced to leave the land, so they migrated to Washington, DC. Despite my mother's challenging upbringing under the Jim Crow laws, she never taught us to hate others that looked different from us. She taught my five siblings and me to do our best and be our best. She wanted us to have more opportunities to excel. I can't wait to see how this story continues to unfold.