Life on the Color Line - Hardcover

Williams, Gregory Howard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525938508 ISBN 13: 9780525938507

Publisher: Dutton Adult, 1995

Synopsis

The dean of the Ohio State University College of Law recounts his meeting of his father's people in Muncie, Indiana, the shock he experienced when he learned he was half black, and the prejudice that he and his brother endured from both sides. 25,000 first printing. Tour.

About this title

About the Author

Gregory Howard Williams is Dean of the Ohio State University College of Law.

Reviews

Williams, dean of the Ohio State University College of Law, tells the affecting and absorbing story of his most unusual youth. Born to a white mother and a black father who passed for white, Williams was raised as white in Virginia until he was 10, when his mother left. His father brought his two sons back home to Muncie, Ind., in 1954 and sank further into drink. The two boys were eventually taken in by Miss Dora, a poor black widow. Williams's many anecdotes are a mixture of pain, struggle and triumph: learning "hustles" from Dad, receiving guidance from a friend's mother, facing racism from teachers and classmates, beginning a clandestine romance with a white girl he eventually married. And while his scarred, grandiloquent father was never reliable, he did instill in young Greg-though not in Greg's brother-sustaining dreams of professional success. Along the way the author decided, despite his appearance, he would proudly claim the black identity that white Muncie wouldn't let him forget. Williams ends his narrative when he reaches college; in the epilogue, he regrets that "there were too many who were unable to break the mold Muncie cast." Photos not seen by PW. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The title sounds like tabloid sensationalism, but Williams' memoir is, in fact, a moving story of growing up on both sides of the nation's racial thicket. Williams' mother was white and his father was able to "pass," so their children, growing up in northern Virginia, thought they were Italian. The parents split up in the mid-1950s, and Buster Williams' alcoholism drove him into bankruptcy, so the charming ne'er-do-well took his two older boys to his darker-skinned family in Muncie, Indiana (just miles across town from their maternal relatives, most of whom no longer acknowledged their existence). Buster Williams encouraged Greg to study and aspire to great things and taught younger brother Mike to hustle, but he was unable to care for the boys and allowed a pious widow to take them in. In grade school and junior and senior high, Greg had to prove himself to both races over and over again: white girls were off-limits, of course, but the sight of him with African American girls of various shades also caused consternation. School records were marked to make sure teachers would realize he was "colored." Life on the Color Line follows Williams to college and to a brief, painful reunion with his natural mother. A powerful tale of a young man's struggle on the cusp of the nation's racial conflicts and confusions. Mary Carroll

Williams's coming-of-age years were hard. His father was an alcoholic, and his mother left when Greg was still in grade school, not to be seen for more than a decade. His father soon lost his business, and the rest of the family set out from Virginia for Muncie, Indiana to be near relatives. To Greg's amazement, having lived his short life as white, his fair-skinned father's relatives were black. Facing a lifetime of choosing whether to be black or white and, whatever his decision, opprobrium from both races, Greg opted for black. Today he is dean of a respected law school, a man who in the 1950s Muncie of his youth might have been patronizingly called "a credit to his race." "A credit to the human race" is more like it. Recommended for all libraries.
--Jim Burns, Ottumwa, Ia.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dutton Adult
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0525938508
• ISBN 13: 9780525938507
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304