Pierre Toussaint: A Citizen of Old New York, by Arthur Sheehan (HC, 1955, $2)
He was born a slave in Haiti in the late 1700s, but moved with his master to NYC. He learned to style the intricate women's hairstyles of the time and became very wealthy. Meanwhile his master died, and his master's wife, Marie Berard, became poor. Toussaint, who was offered his freedom, chose to stay a slave for 20 years to look after the Berard household! He was freed at the death of Berard. By then he was happily married and even more wealthy, both in money and respect. He gave away money and counseling, to white and black, rich and poor. In 1996, for his charity and his piety, he was declared "venerable" by the Pope, the second stage toward being proclaimed a saint. (Did you know who he was? I didn't).
Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (The first major migration to the North of ex-slaves), by Nell Painter (TPB, 1976, $2)
Slavery ended and blacks were free, but only to become tenant farmers, still poor, and still vulnerable to violence. "And so, in the spring of 1879, they fled by the thousands- to the one sure promised land they knew: the Kansas of John Brown." This was the first migration of blacks, a rural-to-rural one. (The next one in the 1900s would be much larger and from the country to the cities.) Their lives would eventually improve, somewhat.
Composition in Black and White: the Life of Philippa Schuyler, by Kathryn Talalay (TPB, 1995, $2.50)
She was the daughter of a controversial black journalist of the Harlem Renaissance and a blond, blue-eyed Texas heiress. They had great hopes for her. Schuyler was a prodigy. She was crawling at four weeks and playing Mozart by four years. In the 1930s both Time and Look magazines featured her. She was a role model not only for other aspiring musicians, but to most blacks. Yet as she got older she felt lost, neither black nor white, so she vanished, in part to play concerts in Europe, in part to a different identity where she passed as a South American. In her 30s she started her second career, that of a journalist in Vietnam, where she found she could pass as Asian and go where others couldn't. She was finally becoming "whole" when she died in a helicopter crash at age 35.
Find these inspiring books on the new non-fiction table. Avail. 8/31.
