The Color of Love: A Mother's Choice in the Jim Crow South

by Gene Cheek

Cheek spins a mesmerizing yarn, told from a little boy's viewpoint, of growing up poor and white in 1950s North Carolina, surrounded by generations of wife-beating alcoholics. Through plain yet descriptive language seasoned with wry, biting adjectives, he ably conveys the sights, sounds and feelings of his surroundings. His musings are funny and hopeful, and Cheek shapes his childhood voice to suit stories of his tense relationship with his violent, alcoholic father; his mother's endless tolerance and denial; and his admiration for his maternal grandmother, who taught him to "be full of love, not hate." His child's-eye reportage captures the intricacies of his mother's postmarital relationship with Tuck, a strong, kind and gentle black man Cheek had met years earlier, and their secret life as an interracial family. The secret was revealed only after Cheek's mother had Tuck's baby, which enraged her family enough for them to have a court declare her an unfit mother. When the judge ordered her to give up one of the children, the author took the choice out of his mother's hands when he elected to leave the family and become a ward of the state, turning the formerly optimistic young man against the rest of his family. In an epilogue written in his adult voice, Cheek explains that his motivation for writing the book was vengeance, which in the process of writing turned to understanding and, finally, forgiveness. (Publisher's Weekly)

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Race, History, Biography, Book Club, Audiobook

258 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2005

Reviews

[Carlton Phelps · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read.
Mr. Creek lays out all of his dirty laundry for us to see.
Growing up in North Carolina during the Jim Crow years. His Grandmother taught him not to judge a person by the color of their skin but by their deeds. This was his maternal Grandmother.
His father was an alcoholic and blamed everyone else for his failed life.
Gene met Mr. Tucker, a black man, at his Grandmother's home. And as life happens his Mother and Tuck fall in love.
As you can imagine this was unheard of and all types of hell breaks loose against them.
His life was turned upside down by his Father's family.
I found his story to be too real, having grown up in the South during this same time period. We have several dark periods in our history and this one is still going on.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

i don't even know where to start about this book. we all know that things were different racially way back when. but i didn't realize that a white woman having a child with a black man was something that both could be jailed for; a felony. the things that gene and his mother went through were sad and wrong in so many ways. it was a really touching story and i really enjoyed reading it. i'm really glad that things have changed from the way they used to be. however, i still think we have a long way to go.

[CallMeAfterCoffee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook, really well done. I often don't have a lot to say for memoirs, as they're a person's story. Gene Cheek grew up with an abusive/alcoholic father, who had him torn from his family home with his mother and step dad, because his mother had had a child and was in a relationship with a black man during the Jim Crow days. My heart broke for this family.

[Kimberlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gene Cheek's devastating memoir of loss growing up in a poor family that suffered under untreated alcoholism and institutionalized racism and his lifelong pursuit of healing and forgiveness.

Gene's first loss is the emotional loss of his father, Jesse, to alcoholism. Jesse starts drinking soon after Gene is born and except for brief periods of sobriety (up to three months)and periodic attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, Jesse drinks himself to an early death at age 60, but not before he inflicts horrible physical and emotional violence and revenge against Gene and Gene's mother, Sallie (Jesse's wife of 11 years).

Gene's second loss is the loss of his mother to institutionalized racism and the anti-miscegenation laws of 1960s North Carolina.

When Sallie falls in love with a black man and has a child by him, Gene is thrilled to have a baby brother. Jesse, on the other hand, enacts revenge against his son and former wife by claiming her love for a black man makes her an unfit mother for Gene. Jesse doesn't want to raise Gene himself but initiates a custody battle as his defense against paying child support and the battle lands Gene in a foster home and then a school for boys where he learns to hide his vulnerability and express his fears through violence.

I burst into tears three times during the book from the pain and injustice that racism, personal prejudice and untreated alcoholism caused Gene, his mother and Tucker, the gentle man she fell in love with an married and lived with until his death. Tucker was a loving stepfather to Gene and Gene is close to his two half-brothers and their families.

Gene's relationship with his mother remained close throughout his life but it was forever altered that day in the courtroom and the guilt and shame Gene and his mother each had to deal with from that day forward is a heart-wrenching story.

I wish the young Gene and his mother had found Al-Anon for the alcoholism in their family. As for the institutionalized racism of the day, Gene, Sallie and Tucker had to live through it one painful day at a time and were uplifted by Rev. Martin Luther King's leadership and the Civil Rights Movement and were uplifted by President John F. Kennedy.

In the epilogue, Gene writes, "This book started as an act of vengeance. I wanted revenge on those -- long since gone -- who brought pain to my family and me. It changed from revenge to understanding and then finally to forgiveness. I can't pinpoint the exact time because it moved over me like the changing of a season, slow and deliberate. It wasn't until this process was near the end that I even noticed it, but I am grateful for it.

"I am often asked by those who know me if I can lay this down and move on with my life. It would be nice if I could answer yes, but once again that would be a lie. The truth lies somewhere else. While writing this book, I did gain understanding, and with it came forgiveness, but I have not forgotten. The facts are this will remain a part of my life, as long as there is life. I'm not sure if complete healing is attainable. I don't think that I will ever forget, and I'm not sure that I should."

[Robbin Melton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This is the most powerful book I've read in a long time. This autobiography tells the story of a young white boy, Gene, in 1950s Winston-Salem whose mother, Sallie, falls in love with a black man, Tuck. Forced to choose between keeping her son or the infant son she has with Tuck, Gene, then-12, decides for her and is resigned to live 5 years in foster care until he reaches 18. Astoundingly, Sallie and Tuck stay together in the same town until Tuck's death, roughly 35 years later.
This painful story reveals how poorly Gene and Sallie were treated by whites, including their own family which turned their backs on them in a court of law. Ironically, it is the black community which embraced this "odd" family and took them in as their own.
As I also am in a multiracial family, I take this book to heart. My only wish is that it were longer. Almost half the book was spent on the author's childhood vs. what his mother/stepfather went through. Very little of the book actually touched on that, but perhaps it couldn't because the author didn't live at home for five years while life carried on back home.
But, it did reveal that while Gene still loved his mother, a permanent rift was forged between them when he was forced to live away from home. What I fail to understand is why didn't Tuck just grab Sallie and Gene and move up north? Why stay in the same town where the KKK and the police were indistinguishable? Why would Sallie allow her 12-year-old son Gene to make such a huge decision when it was not his to make?
Overall, Sallie could've and should've been a better parent, beginning with the first signs of abuse at the hands of Gene's father. Late in life, Sallie became something of an LPN, but why didn't she try to better herself while trying to raise Gene?
While I have many more questions, I still believe in the gist of this story written simply in one man's words. Every citizen of the world should read this.

[Hayley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This memoir follows Gene Cheek, a white boy with an abusive, racist, alcoholic father, raised in the segregated south. When Gene’s mother leaves his father and begins a relationship with a Black man that results in a baby, Gene is removed from her home by the court system and placed into foster care.

Here’s my problem with the story. The first half of the book gives a wildly long and in-depth spotlight to Gene’s father who is a roaring, racist drunk who beats Gene and his mother. At least five of his relapses are discussed in depth, and the author uses the voices of other family member to continually say he’s a good man, he’s a good man, he’s just sick.

I understand that growing up in this kind of situation is incredibly damaging and difficult, and the critique is not on the author’s life. But this story is just not told well. It really feels like Gene uses his mother’s story of being a white woman in the south in the 60s who fell in love with a Black man, to sell his own memoir, which is not about overcoming racism at all. The marketable piece of this story is “me and my momma went against the grain and loved people of all colors even when it was dangerous to.” And that’s just not what this story is. This story is about a boy who was mistreated and grew into an angry young man and had to reconcile that within himself. The story is about abuse and alcoholism and acceptance. It’s not about being anti-racist. That story is not Gene’s to tell. It’s his mother’s, and it’s only one facet of this book.

So much of this novel is spent giving racists a voice and distinguishing “us” versus “them.” Why didn’t the author spend more time developing the characters of Black people in this novel? Why is the beginning so drawn out and the action very short and quick at the end? The framing is just very very strange, and I felt this book was deceptive in that way.

Don’t market a story, memoir or otherwise, about being anti-racist and then make 2/3 of the novel a platform for white people to be racist, justifying it with “they’re good deep down inside.”

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story told in the pure essence of pain. This story has me constantly thinking about choices, forgiveness, and the complexity of life. So many parts of this book were hard to read, but I felt compelled to go the journey with him.

[Rachel Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though the beginning of this book drags, the last third is so profound it makes it a 5 star. It is hard to believe that a little boy would have the courage to ask the judge to take him away from his mother. The fact that any mother would be given such a choice is horrific. I love when Gene talks about the difference between himself and the other delinquent boys- he had been loved by a family. That made all the difference.
If you don't want to read the entire book download a This American Life episode called Parental Guidance Suggested. There you can hear Gene Cheek tell his amazing story.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listening via audiobook. I heard Gene Cheek's story on This American Life quite some time ago, so I was glad to see it fleshed out into a book. I seem to be on a summer theme of racial prejudice and inequality having just finished "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" (from Kate) and now reading "The Warmth of Other Suns" (from Daisy) and listening to Gene's story. Damn, I hate haters.

All that said, listening to the conversations Gene recalls, he may be attributing to himself a bit too much maturity for a kid that age. Sounds too glib.

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book! It is autobiographical, but reads like a novel. A real page turner. Actually a memoir of a young white boy in rural NC, who is wrenched from his loving mother by the courts because she loved a black man. Wish the story wasn't true, but it is. We have a lot to learn from people like Gene Cheek. Thank goodness he has the courage to write about his experience.

[amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

this memoir has a touching and raw quality. While Gene Cheek is certainly no Shakespeare, his writing is so honest and genuine. His story is astonishingly upsetting, yet like the photo on the cover, his version is tender and beautiful.

[Sara Phelps · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mediocre writing, but a powerful story.

[Shadira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gene Cheek is a “blue collar son of the South” who has written angrily and passionately of his childhood with an alcoholic white father, a mother who dared to love a black man, and all the stops along the way on the bus ride to the hell of interracial madness.

Growing up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the city where this reviewer works, in the South, where this reviewer grew up, Gene was as much an heir to the American dream as any working-class kid. His mother, Sallie, loved him and spent much of his young life trying to protect him from the abuses of a violent drunken father. But when she crossed the color line and developed a deep relationship with a kind, thoughtful black man named Tuck, she had to give up her oldest son.

The book begins with stark descriptions of a little boy’s confusion about his father’s behavior, his fears of his own family, and the comfort he got from his mother and grandmother. The latter was a tolerant, open person who inadvertently introduced his mother to a black man. When Sallie’s husband found her sitting on a couch with Tuck, engaged in totally innocent conversation, he flew into one of many rages. Subsequently, after he himself had abandoned his wife and was in arrears on his child support payments, he began to stalk Sallie until he caught her and his son in an African American neighborhood. Police appeared at Tuck’s door. Later, the Klan burned a cross on the family’s front lawn, after Sallie committed the worst sin a Southern white woman could – she had Tuck’s baby.

The backdrop to this dramatic story is the Civil Rights movement, and the role of Winston-Salem black activists. The thorn of radicalism in the flesh of a tight-knit white community, traditional and riddled with racial hatreds, exacerbated the struggle that Sallie faced in trying to keep her family together. It was a crime for her to marry Tuck or even to admit to having a relationship with him. In court, vying for the custody of twelve-year-old Gene, mother and son listened in tears as everyone they knew including close relatives avowed that Sallie was a bad mother and that Gene would be better off away from her. There was no mercy, strained or otherwise, in the courts. Sallie’s lawyer never showed up and subsequent appeals were denied. Sallie had to deny that she knew Tuck and was, unbelievably, given the choice of putting her older son in foster care for his own good or giving up the baby she had had with her loving partner. Gene chose foster care rather than force his mother to give up her baby, his half-brother.

Gene was sent to a foster home and then a boy’s home. His anger and emotional detachment followed him through adolescence into adulthood. Later he chose to isolate himself in a mountain retreat where he fought with his demons and wrote this compelling book.

The bad old days before Martin and John are well depicted in this plain chronicle. Winston-Salem is still struggling with its racially scarred past and amends have been made. For younger readers this book may seem like a grim fairytale, but the events were real, and we would do well to remember the past as we look to the future.


I really felt the author's pain as he told it in the book.

[Takara · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the book “The color of love” by Gene Cheek it’s about a nine year old boy and his twisted life with his mother and father. In the book the story take place in Forsyth County Courthouse of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The main characters in the book is Gene Cheek, Cornelius Tucker, Sallie A. Tucker. I found this book just browsing in the school library.

The plot of the story is Sallie had a secret relationship with a black man that is Cornelius Tucker. In the south it’s illegal to have a relationship with the opposite race. Sallie look past the color of Tucker skin because that’s how she was raised by her mother Anderson. Sallie and Tucker then had a son together forcing Sallie to choose between her oldest son Gene and biracial son.

I enjoyed this book because I love books that talk about history and what life was like before my time. I feel like this is a good book and everyone will love. The book give a little aspect of everything. My favorite part of the book is when Sallie and Gene ran away from her abusive and alcoholic dad. I like this part because they were so sad with him and he was causing all the problems in there lives.

I think people of all ages would love this book. It is a great book that will get your head stuck in it. It grabs the reader attention. This is a book i just highly recommend.

[Danielle Schiestle | brooklynbookgirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ooof. This book. Where to even begin? It's breathtakingly honest. Heartbreaking. Visceral. This memoir is well written. It's hard to read. It makes you think. As someone who grew up in North Carolina and lived in both Winston-Salem and Hickory, it really made me think about life in the south. Especially in regards to segregation and interracial relationships. It also illustrates how love is taught. The ending of this book takes place after I was already born and living there, which really makes me pause to reflect. I'm grateful this book caught my eye and I would recommend reading!

[Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

(I read this as an ARC, so it's possible the final version is different...)

The last 80 pages of this book are outstanding. This author's story from that point on is a compelling page-turner. But before pg200 or so, which is when the very upsetting "mother's choice" comes into play, it was a bit hard for me to get through. Cheek's father's almost continuous drunken abuse cycle is really hard to read for that long. I think this book would be much improved with a really hardcore editor, or even a ghostwriter.

[Mary Burkholder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in a vivid, captivating style. The author was very perceptive as a boy, no doubt due to the trauma in his life. I was fascinated by the eye-witness details from a not-so-long-ago racist past. I couldn't help being a little angry along with Cheek at the way the adults in his life made him suffer. I wished his mother had given up Tuck to protect her son right away or that Tuck had taken both of them North. Includes a lot of swearing.

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this years ago after hearing the author tell his story on This American Life. It was heartbreaking story. I checked out the book from the library and began reading the most gut wrenching story I had read since Styron’s Sophie’s Choice. The only difference was that Gene Cheek’s story was true.

[Bre Herndon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a tragic and saddening life story that one wouldn't wish on their enemy. I grieved as I read this haunting tale of "a Mother's choice" that ultimately cost her almost everything. I hope this book brings the author the internal peace that evil-spirited and bigoted human beings stole from him.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure what I expected when I checked this out but I'm glad I read it. Some of the remembered conversations of a 9 year old boy were aged by wisdom and clarity, but it was only a little distracting. The story itself was touching and heartbreaking both for the boy and the man.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book!

[Megan Funaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Sadly, so many parts of it are still relevant today 60 years later.

[Kristina P (ARC Reviewer) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great reminder of how far we have come, let us not
go back to this level of racism. Don’t let hate rule your heart. I love the ending

[Michelle Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very sad, but compelling. Well told story, wish the United States had a culture that created a better life for this man.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful audiobook. Will go in my favorites shelf for audiobooks. I have not cried this hard listening to a book for a long time.

[Amy Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't remember when I read this, probably more than ten years ago. I went to a reading by the author at Duke, and was impressed by him and his story.

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

A honest, raw , first person telling of growing up in the south during the Jim Crow laws.

[Dylana Ann Larson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written, straight and to the point. I hesitated starting this book because it seemed it would be a downer. Which it was, especially recalling the court proceedings. A good lesson to read about and I’m glad I had the chance to learn about Gene Cheek’s story.

[Nandi Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was sort of drawn to this book by some folks giving it the thumbs up on Shelfari, and imagine my suprise today at the library that I come to find the very book that I didn't think I would find it at our library. But I took that book home and couldn't stop reading it until last night. I feel the author in his own way wanted to put his unique story to paper after dealing with his past, he tries to make peace with it by writing about it. I was already feeling a bit raw behind Tears of the Desert, then to turn around and read this book just made me want to go somewhere and bawl. I almost did and believe me when I tell you, I don't do that. To recap the book, Gene Cheek was the son of an alcoholic father and loving mother. When the mother took as much as she could take from the father, she left him. She moved in with her mother and brother, but when her mother passed, she moved out. Quietly, she began to have a relationship with a African American man, Cornelius Tucker, who was everything her first husband wasn't. She got pregnant and had another son, Randy. Here is when the trouble start. The first husband got mad, and started making trouble for the mother and had a hearing to get his son away from the mother. Although the author said he loved his mother, preferred to be with his mother,and they wanted her to get rid of the baby she just had, The author sacrificed himself instead. he was taken away by the courts into foster care. Despite of the difficulties, he had no ill will against his mother or Tuck, though he had some against his father, fraternal grandmother, who claims she couldn't take him in, aunt, uncle( both of whom later asked for forgiveness), he did grow up well, went into the Navy, married, had children, worked, and later divorced. He never forgot his mother, he forgave his father(who wouldn't acknowledge or even speak on what he did at the end of his own life)and he spoke very well of his siblings. Matter of fact, Tuck to me, was a better father figure for him, and he spoke glowingly of him. If you want to read about a young man's choice to love, keep some kleenex handy.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot until the last, oh, ten or fifteen percent, say. Now I'm not sure about the work as a whole. It's well written. No question. But it is beginning heavy, spending too much time on too many details of his youth. It makes me feel the beginning tries to build too much evidence for a case I don't quite get. Then later, when he is grown and the REALLY important things begin to happen, we start rock skipping across time. Make no mistake. This is a story of a White man, a White boy, in the Jim Crow south, writing about his difficult life and how he dealt with (or, really, and rather obviously, did not deal with) his mother's choice to marry a Black man. This book is not about his mother, except indirectly.

I don't have a precise, objective case to make against Gene Cheek. Subjectively, I feel he missed the marrow of a greater, deeper story. My personal take is: what was it like to be left behind both by his mother and the KKK Jim Crow south? His father and Jim Crow south went one way, his mother and her new life and family went another, into the segregated Black community. Cheek didn’t go either way, in his book, although he gives expositional support to his mother and to the closeness he has to his half brothers. But that’s not the story. The book seems more a justification of why his mother loved a Black man and why Cheek doesn’t deal with the deeper issues of Race and facing the truth of his feelings. He still contains, and will not face, residual racist attitudes, while accepting entirely his new siblings. It’s his mother and his step-father and their children he accepts and embraces, not the revelation of how love transcends not only race, but every conceivable hindrance.

In the end, I felt cheated and betrayed by Cheek, and disappointed by his by what I see as cowardice.