Our Separate Ways, With a New Preface and Epilogue

 

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LOST CHILDHOODS

Ruthie Mae White

Ruthie Mae White has always been a survivor. The eldest of eight children born to Johnnie Mae and Jonathan White, she grew up in the Carolinas in the 1950s in one of the poorest counties in the United States. Johnnie Mae tried to support her family by sharecropping and cooking and cleaning for whites. But in the rural South, black people trying to scrape out a living by sharecropping lived a mission impossible. Poverty that defied description was an everyday reality for Ruthie Mae and her family. The house the family rented was no larger than a small shed, with floors made of uneven plywood planks perched atop concrete cinder blocks. The roof was a combination of rusty tin and tarpaper. Ruthie Mae does ...