As a graduate student in 1968 at the University of Michigan, Roy G. Phillips heeded the advice of renowned genealogist and author Alex Haley, who encouraged the eager researcher to record the history and wisdom of his family elders while they were still alive.Phillips followed this advice and has produced a masterful and compelling account of family and society during the arduous racial maturation of America. Through the experiences of his family, Phillips traces the evolution of his family's departure from the slave castles of West Africa to America.Exodus from the Door of No Return mirrors the lives of what arguably could be the story of most African Americans.Slavery fractured the family trees of most African Americans. This practice had an impact on black parenting. The author's father, John (Bill) Phillips, was born at a time when the black community still cared deeply for its children. Children abandoned by their parents were seldom abandoned by the community. Sometimes a grandparent, an aunt, uncle or cousin, or a member of the community at large would step in when the need arose. Proff and Lula Phillips, a childless couple, provided a home for the author's father, an illegitimate child who was abandoned by his parents.The author and his wife Vira would have four children, but after raising them successfully, they would emulate the caring legacy of Proff and Lula Phillips by adopting four abused and neglected siblings.Beyond genealogy, the book describes the story of the author's family as it journeyed through slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation; the great migration out of the south, the World Wars, the Civil Rights Movement, and the tumultuous period of the sixties and seventies through the dawning of the 21st century.It is the story of how the author and his family rose and evolved from the storms of racism through dedication, discipline, determination, study, and hard work. .........................................................................
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
ABOUT THE AUTHOR The author began his schooling during the early forties in a two-room schoolhouse in rural Minden, Louisiana, where black and white children could not share a schoolyard.Black children were the recipients of secondhand books, school furnishings, equipment and facilities. There were no yellow school buses to take black children to school as was the case for white children. We had to walk five miles one-way to school each day....rain or shine. Our black teachers were not college-educated, but they taught us, "You're starting out behind, so study and work hard to be two steps ahead of the game." My family reinforced those values. It provided a driving force to move ahead through study and hard work to achieve impressive educational credentials:* B. A. Degree in secondary education from Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan, withemphasis in Science Education; (1957)* M. Ed. In Education from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan with emphasis in ScienceEducation; (1964)* PhD in Urban Secondary Administration from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor,Michigan; (1971)* A National Science Fellow:o Cornell University
