ABSTRACT
E-mail: lizfitzhow@aol.com
“There are so many wonderful, inspiring, funny, sad, heartwarming, heart-tickling, meaningful stories about Black families, waiting to be written down. Some of them are in my own family’s treasury, and there is still a shortage—a dearth—of children’s books about everyday Black families living ordinary lives during the early part of this century. I would like present-day children, Black and White, to know that Blacks have been a part of all of this country’s growth since the beginning. And that there were Black grocers and doctors and postmen and teachers and porters and lawyers who celebrated holidays and sat in the balcony at the opera and went to church and sent their children to college—and hoped that the American dream included them. And lived as though it did, in spite of everything that might or might not have gone wrong. Of course, Virginia Hamilton and Patricia McKissack and others are telling this story with depth and flair. I hope that I am able in some small measure to contribute to this.”
