Item Information
Title
Review of Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family written by Richard Walser
Creator
Walser, Richard
Source
The Raleigh News & Observer
Date
December 30, 1956
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This entire service and/or content portions thereof are copyrighted by NewsBank and/or its content providers.
Type
Text
Text
Story of Family
PROUD SHOES: THE STORY OF АN AMERICAN FAMILY. By Pauli Murray. Harper. New York. 276 pages. $3.50.
A noted benefactor of the University of North Carolina was Mary Ruffin Smith, a spinster who deeded plantation lands in Orange and Chatham Counties to the alma mater of her two bachelor brothers. A tablet to her memory is on the walls of Memorial Hall in Chapel Hill.
In the 1840's, one of the reasons her brothers never married was that both were in love with their sister's beautiful slave, Harriet, who eventually produced daughters for them both. The heroine of the present book—and this book is not fiction—is the eldest of the four girls, the octoroon Cornelia. After the Civil War. Cornelia married Robert Fitzgerald, a light-skinned free man of color from Delaware who had fought for the Union and wanted to teach in the South.
First near Hillsboro, and then in Durham, he walked in proud shoes. He and his relatives and his children and his grandchildren lived decent, exemplary, and useful lives. The author, a granddaughter of Cornelia and Robert Fitzgerald and great-grandniece of aristocratic Mary Ruffin Smith, gives us a graphic and lively story of the color line in Durham at the turn of the century.
That the Fitzgerald descendants have now left the North Carolina they loved and deprived this needly state of their dignity
and energy—this is a sad commentary on these bitter pro-segregation days. Never before have I read a book about the colored people of this section which was more forceful and heart-rending.
RICHARD WALSER
PROUD SHOES: THE STORY OF АN AMERICAN FAMILY. By Pauli Murray. Harper. New York. 276 pages. $3.50.
A noted benefactor of the University of North Carolina was Mary Ruffin Smith, a spinster who deeded plantation lands in Orange and Chatham Counties to the alma mater of her two bachelor brothers. A tablet to her memory is on the walls of Memorial Hall in Chapel Hill.
In the 1840's, one of the reasons her brothers never married was that both were in love with their sister's beautiful slave, Harriet, who eventually produced daughters for them both. The heroine of the present book—and this book is not fiction—is the eldest of the four girls, the octoroon Cornelia. After the Civil War. Cornelia married Robert Fitzgerald, a light-skinned free man of color from Delaware who had fought for the Union and wanted to teach in the South.
First near Hillsboro, and then in Durham, he walked in proud shoes. He and his relatives and his children and his grandchildren lived decent, exemplary, and useful lives. The author, a granddaughter of Cornelia and Robert Fitzgerald and great-grandniece of aristocratic Mary Ruffin Smith, gives us a graphic and lively story of the color line in Durham at the turn of the century.
That the Fitzgerald descendants have now left the North Carolina they loved and deprived this needly state of their dignity
and energy—this is a sad commentary on these bitter pro-segregation days. Never before have I read a book about the colored people of this section which was more forceful and heart-rending.
RICHARD WALSER