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A Time To Protest: Leadership Lessons from My Father Who Survived the Segregated South for 99 Years
There are many ways to protest...many ways to address injustices, many ways to right a wrong. A real leader sets positive examples to empower others. This book is about such a leader--a farmer, janitor, coal miner, factory worker, land owner, and landlord--who embodied leadership while living in the Jim Crow South for 99 years. He lived a life of protest during a time when protest cost people their lives. His life of protest was highlighted when, at the age of 95, he gifted then-Senator Barack Obama who went on to serve as America's 44th President, with a hand-made cane.Griot extraordinaire, he shared stories of standing up and speaking out against the injustices prevalent in America for a major portion of his life. This book shares his stories validated through historical facts and events that underscore the many ways to education, voting, self-respect, hard work--all that he and his wife instilled in their 10 children who have all gone on to become leaders in their own right.Standing up and speaking out are the marks of a true leader and these are the valuable leadership lessons you will learn when you read this powerful book.
199 pages, Paperback
Published February 14, 2020
10 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 22, 2024
A captivating narrative that switches between descriptions of what was happening in the lives of the author's ancestors and family and the history of that time documented with records of court cases, policies and laws in effect, publications and events from that time related to the lives of African Americans in the United States. This is a well researched and referenced book that is a quick but compelling read. It will stay on your mind long after you have finished the book
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July 30, 2024Review originally published on my blog,
Dragon Bite Books
.
This memoir and history by Penny Edwards Blue was the work of two days’ reading for me. Blue, a native of Franklin County, Virginia—specifically Union Hall—reaches back along her family tree to recount how she, her siblings, her parents, and her ancestors further back stood up against bigoted ideas and indignities inflicted upon Black people in America from the time that Africans first arrived on the American coast up to now. Her father’s grandparents, whom he knew well and about whom he could share personal stories, were freed at end of the Civil War. His great-grandfather was also his grandfather’s enslaver. Blue’s father, born in 1912, was able to shake the hand of Barack Obama and see him elected as president before passing from the world. Through short, personal stories about his actions, his interactions with family and with those who would try to oppress him, his character, and his reputation, the reader gets to know Charles Edwards. Charles lived through legal and enforced segregation as well as the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s and desegregation, and instilled in his family and acted with admirable pride and dignity, actively working through action and withholding of patronage to ensure that he and his family were not cowed by those who wanted to make them feel lesser. These short stories about Charles Edwards and his ancestors were fit between a more general timeline of Edwards’ life and of Black history in America. I still feel like I got to know Edwards personally, but the tone of the book was not as intimate as I had expected it to be.
Chapters and passages about the broader history of Black and white people in America in this and earlier centuries are well researched, though most of the annotations are in the back of the book rather than on the same page as I would have preferred them to be.
If you’re looking for an easy and quick read about the segregated South and the history and the institutional racism that has led to today’s racial divide in the US, and especially if you have an interest in the history of Southwest or rural Virginia, this may be a good book to pick up. The stories help to make more personal these broad concepts and centuries of practices, which could easily be the work of a whole college degree’s worth of classes, but which here are included more as an overview and a means of giving context to the stories shared.
It might be worth noting that Charles Edwards and Penny Edwards Blue are both products of Appalachia too.
***
This memoir and history by Penny Edwards Blue was the work of two days’ reading for me. Blue, a native of Franklin County, Virginia—specifically Union Hall—reaches back along her family tree to recount how she, her siblings, her parents, and her ancestors further back stood up against bigoted ideas and indignities inflicted upon Black people in America from the time that Africans first arrived on the American coast up to now. Her father’s grandparents, whom he knew well and about whom he could share personal stories, were freed at end of the Civil War. His great-grandfather was also his grandfather’s enslaver. Blue’s father, born in 1912, was able to shake the hand of Barack Obama and see him elected as president before passing from the world. Through short, personal stories about his actions, his interactions with family and with those who would try to oppress him, his character, and his reputation, the reader gets to know Charles Edwards. Charles lived through legal and enforced segregation as well as the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s and desegregation, and instilled in his family and acted with admirable pride and dignity, actively working through action and withholding of patronage to ensure that he and his family were not cowed by those who wanted to make them feel lesser. These short stories about Charles Edwards and his ancestors were fit between a more general timeline of Edwards’ life and of Black history in America. I still feel like I got to know Edwards personally, but the tone of the book was not as intimate as I had expected it to be.
Chapters and passages about the broader history of Black and white people in America in this and earlier centuries are well researched, though most of the annotations are in the back of the book rather than on the same page as I would have preferred them to be.
If you’re looking for an easy and quick read about the segregated South and the history and the institutional racism that has led to today’s racial divide in the US, and especially if you have an interest in the history of Southwest or rural Virginia, this may be a good book to pick up. The stories help to make more personal these broad concepts and centuries of practices, which could easily be the work of a whole college degree’s worth of classes, but which here are included more as an overview and a means of giving context to the stories shared.
It might be worth noting that Charles Edwards and Penny Edwards Blue are both products of Appalachia too.
***
February 13, 2023
“I grew up understanding that protest and justice is a right, not a privilege. It is not a choice, but my God given duty and responsibility. It is our God given right, responsibility and duty.”
An informative and digestible portrayal of the author’s father’s experience throughout his life. Inspiring and well researched and presented. A nod to how our ancestor’s choices and triumphs still have reach into our own lives today.
An informative and digestible portrayal of the author’s father’s experience throughout his life. Inspiring and well researched and presented. A nod to how our ancestor’s choices and triumphs still have reach into our own lives today.
June 29, 2023
It was so ironic, or perhaps fitting, that on the day the Supreme Court rejected affirmative action that I had the good fortune to hear Penny Edwards Blue speak in a public library on the collection of her father’s stories, in historical context: ‘A Time to Protest.’ The theme of Jim Crow as recent, repeated (and often untaught) history and her father’s determination to protest daily through noble, meaningful conversations and boycotts remind all of us that action v silence is a choice.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews