The Grant family is emblematic of many black middle-class and blue-collar people who, beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, went to school, paid their dues, and forced America to face its prejudices. Grant details how her family built a prosperous life through the operation of a funeral home, the practice of chiropody (podiatry), and work on the railroad and on pleasure boats that plied the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. During the 1950s the Grant family home provided a refuge for African American entertainers and political leaders refused accommodations by major hotels. The black community chafed under Jim Crow laws but also built its own institutions. The tension between what they could and could not do for themselves energizes this memoir.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In this well-written family memoir, former U.S. foreign service officer Grant presents an African-American family history that forgoes the epic sweep of the Civil Rights story to illuminate the difficult everyday life of a middle class black family in the first half of the 20th century. Focusing on the lives of her parents and grandparents, Grant's St. Louis story captures the strong voices of her family and the ambivalent tenor of their times. The facets of institutional racism are many and not always expected; Grant's father, a lawyer and an early activist, found himself in jail more than once: "the police had been told, 'Just call him boy and he'll give you grounds to lock him up' which they did, and I gave them reason." Grant's mother claims she never felt racism during her "cocoonlike upbringing," and remarks that on Chicago's south side, "It was actually quite a lot of fun being segregated.... There was music everywhere and there were so many swank clubs." Grant also shares tales of her own upbringing in a mostly white neighborhood, her pioneering grandmother-the first African-American embalmer-and a few marquee names like Cab Calloway and Josephine Baker. Covering an underreported facet of the 20th century American experience with detail and devotion, this insightful read should hold meaning for many. 60 color illus.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Decades before the beginning of the civil rights movement as most Americans recognize it, black families across the U.S. were fighting the battle against discrimination. Grant’s father, a lawyer and civil rights activist in St. Louis in the 1950s, was among the less well known resisters of segregation, eventually working with more prominent figures, from Thurgood Marshall to Ralph Bunche and A. Phillip Randolph, to fight racial inequities in St. Louis. Grant recalls a long line of family resisters, middle-class business owners who were always on the forefront of the racial divide, challenging Jim Crow laws and practices while sustaining the social and economic underpinnings of the segregated black community. Grant describes growing up with the gut-wrenching “unknowing” of whether she would be welcomed in a store or business or turned away because of her race. As barriers were broken, Grant went on to a 20-year career in the foreign service with the U.S. Information Agency. This is a fascinating look at the struggles of one black family that mirrored the national struggle for civil rights. --Vanessa Bush
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very vivid history of African-Americans during the 20th Century in St. Louis, Missouri,
By
This review is from: At the Elbows of My Elders: One Family's Journey toward Civil Rights (Hardcover)
At The Elbows of My Elders: One family's Journey toward Civil Rights, reads like a movie. The main characters, David M. Grant and Mildred H. Grant are seen from childhood in the early decades of the 20th century to middle class working people in the later decades of the century.
Because of the strong families they came from, they were catalysts, participants and witnesses to the defeat of Jim Crow in St. Louis, MO and other Black communities all over the US. I enjoyed the book because my father was a direct contemporary of David Grant and suffered under the very constraints that Mr. Grant fought so long to overcome. This is a must read for anyone who wishes to understand how things have changed, yet have remained the same over the last almost 108 years. To put it in context, a bright young man was lucky to get a job as a porter, waiter or some other subserviant position that he could lose at any time. Fast forward to today when an African American has a good chance to be elected President of the United States. Even though there are problems that still plauge people of color in America, this history gives insight into the preliminary efforts and struggles endured by a community that was rich with people of considerable talent and tenacity and intelligence. If you are interested in the social forces that have shaped people like Obama, At the Elbows of My Elders will shed light on how it happened.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
From Jim Crow to Barack Obama - The Civil Rights Saga of a Defiant Black Urban Family,
By
This review is from: At the Elbows of My Elders: One Family's Journey toward Civil Rights (Hardcover)
I finished reading Gail Milissa Grant's vivid and poignant "At the Elbows of my Elders-One Family's Journey Toward Civil Rights" on the night this country elected the first African-American to the presidency. Ms. Grant's excellent memoir depicts the spirit, resourcefulness and tenacious vision of a mid-20th century urban, Jim Crow-burdened African-American family actively insisting, day by day, on the societal recognition of their inherent dignity, equality and innate right to thrive and prosper. Ms. Grant's fluid storytelling colorfully weaves the tapestry of her heritage to open our eyes to a history we, as a country, really know little about. The coming of civil rights in St. Louis is depicted through the personal story of her maternal and paternal families hell bent on rising above the racist circumstances into which they were born. Through the stories received as a child and the interviews she conducted as an adult,we get to personally experience the lively cast of characters making up her grandparents' households, the mortuary and chiropody businesses her family resourcefully built, behind the scenes of landmark civil rights cases and protests, the "overground" railroad hosting of the infamous Josephine Baker and other notables by her father in their home when hotels would not accept blacks, and the amazing development and accomplishments of urban civil rights leaders, including the then young Thurgood Marshall. Despite those difficult times, these families lived with the kind of courageous defiance we could not imagine today for ourselves. But then there was always, through the generations, the family dinner table laden with amazing food, where stories were vividly told, and where affection, humor and laughter soothed those days when Jim Crow almost got the best of them.
David Grant, the author's activist father, was an ingenious, charismatic and irrepressibly dedicated lawyer who was destined from the start to instigate revolutionary political change in St. Louis. Lit with a fire fanned with his Howard University law school training, he organized boycotts and galvanized blacks in St. Louis to align with the Democratic Party, as well as developing a criminal law practice second to none. Ms. Grant's mother, raised lovingly to be shielded, as best possible, from the ugly racial prejudice in St. Louis, was a beautiful, well-traveled debutante who became a dedicated partner to her husband, not only in her home, but in his law office as well. Ms. Grant's command as a historian is also stunning --- her research is both rigorous and fascinating. In addition, her memoir is full of direct quotes from her parents and others, lending intimacy and delicious meat on the bones of the St. Louis civil rights story. Gliding through each story is Ms. Grant's deep appreciation and reverence for her family. She helps us recognize that we all come from people who mold and make us -- for better or for worse. Growing up at their elbows, we eventually ride upon their shoulders. Reading this book dramatically demonstrates how far we've come, but more than that, it celebrates the innate American spirit in the African American community during a time when hating America could have been the most natural response to an entrenched, oppressively mean and misguided socio-political landscape. This book is to be proudly applauded and savored. As a black woman of a progressive family who grew up in Detroit and on the south side of Chicago in the 50's and 60's, I feel that this book helps us honor the unsung heroes and heroines in our own communities who helped make the phenomenon of November 4, 2008 in Ms. Grant's and my own lifetime, possible.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A humble memoir by an African-American Princess,
By Marva Williams (Los Angeles California) - See all my reviews
This review is from: At the Elbows of My Elders: One Family's Journey toward Civil Rights (Hardcover)
Ms. Grant's book has taken us on a sentimental journey and we feel as though we've found again a long-lost friend, one who has come full circle with the ability to historically collaborate and creatively communicate their journey. At The Elbows Of My Elders is a poignantly sweet and straightforward piece which gives us a vision of earlier life for African-Americans on the horizon of "..a Dream" yet never letting us forget that privilege carries with it a price, one of responsibility and continuing the work of our ancestors who have laid the path before us. We hope to hear more from this author in the future again and again "rubbing" elbows.
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