Colored People

Gates's memoir of his early life in the mill town of Piedmont, West Virginia in the 1950s and 1960s takes readers into the world of a small, intimate, middle-class "colored" community in all its warmth, complexity, and unapologetic pride. It was a time when the United States was just crossing the threshold into desegregation; when racial boundaries were constantly shifting and progress was measured primarily by the number of black faces that appeared on television. Gates's memories and portraits of the family members, friends, neighbors, and townspeople of his childhood combine to form an indelible portrait of the now-vanished society that blacks created for themselves under the veil of segregation.

"A remembrance of childhood and youth in the 1950s and 1960s that is almost elegiac in its soft tone.... His is an important document--to say nothing of a beautiful work of prose--in the literature of growing up."
--Booklist

CONTENTS

I. Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
1. Colored People
2. Prime Time
3. Wet Dogs & White People
4. In the Kitchen

II. Family Pictures
5. Up the Hill
6. Down the Cumberland
7. Playing Hardball

III. Over in the Orchard
8. Current Events
9. Love Junkie
10. Joining the Church

IV. Saved
11. Change of Life
12. Eternity
13. Living Under Grace

V. Negro Digest
14. Just Talking to the Lord
15. Shattering the Sugar Bowl
16. Abandoning Ship

VI. One Day Next Tuesday
17. Sin Boldly
18. Walk the Last Mile
19. The Last Mill Picnic