Those Who Saw the Sun: African American Oral Histories from the Jim Crow South by Jaha Nailah Avery

Abstract

Reviewed by: Those Who Saw the Sun: African American Oral Histories from the Jim Crow South by Jaha Nailah Avery Wesley Jacques Avery, Jaha Nailah Those Who Saw the Sun: African American Oral Histories from the Jim Crow South. Levine Querido, 2023 [320p] illus. with photographs Trade ed. ISBN 9781646142446 $19.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R* Gr. 8-12 The ten oral histories curated in this profound collection are introduced by the author’s own recollections of her grandparents raising her in Asheville, North Carolina. As Avery grew up, became an attorney, traveled the United States, and reflected on the country’s racial dynamics, the stories her grandparents would share and the inherent value Avery saw in them became the impetus for the project. As Avery’s voice recedes in the subsequent chapters to let her subjects speak, it is clear that those experiences, her genuine appreciation of the personal, the intimate, and the everyday, informs every interview. The focus on elders that have direct experiences of the Jim Crow South is notably uncompromised by the realities of lives that span the wholeness of the country from Baltimore to California, from the separate but surely unequal train cars of Chicago to the historically Black colleges of Alabama. In that faith and church are recurring elements in these conversations, Avery’s thoughtful questions and the answers they elicit engage well with the impressive minds, often put-upon bodies, and persisting souls of subjects and readers alike. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois