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In the Land of Cotton

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hroughout history classes during my school, I was told of slavery, and the contempt that remained towards African-Americans in the south long after slavery was abolished. I was told of segregation, and cruelty, and violence and murder. All of this struck a chord with me as wrong, but the books we were given to read were never instrumental in evoking the rage and sadness these events merited. The acts themselves, and the paragraphs they elicited in our history books sufficed in that regard. Then I read Martha Taylor's In the Land of Cotton. I couldn't put this book down for a second. I read it from start to finish with very little interruption. The book reads as a novel, and so is thoroughly captivating in that regard, but then I realized that it's not fiction at all. It's Ms. Taylor's life story growing up during the Civil Rights Movement.
The book begins in 1956 with a young Martha telling of her life in Tennessee, where she lives with her affluent grandparents while her parents and younger sister reside in Arkansas. Her parents move to Tennessee and she moves back in with them into a suburb with identical housing, much different than the world she inhabits with her grandparents. One thing they both have in common, however, is their disdain for and distrust of the African-American neighbors. As you'll find within the first few chapters, that distrust and disdain should have been held for someone far closer to home.
Martha's father has always had trouble holding down a job, but after finding a job he hires Lucy to be a caretaker for Martha and her sister, while he and his wife are at work. Lucy quickly becomes a confidante to Martha, and Martha doesn't see her as the maid or the nanny but as a friend, and later as part of her family. Martha and Jimmy, a friend in the neighborhood, like to explore as a means to escape their home lives, and one day Martha finds a road and eventually convinces Jimmy to explore with her. It isn't long before Martha is going alone, and she finds the road leads to Lucy's home and family.
Although hesitant at first to let Martha stay and visit for obvious reasons, eventually she's welcomed with open arms by Lucy, Lucy's mother,Mammy Grace, and the patriarch of the family, Uncle Jesse. One person she develops a close kinship with immediately is Lucy's nephew Silas. Martha being there isn't always smooth sailing as told in one heartbreaking incident. Eventually, the friendship between Silas and Martha develops into more, much to the the dismay of all involved, including Silas who knows he has no place in Martha's world during the height of the Civil Rights movement, in the south no less. Martha's family moves to Texas, and reeling from the amount of loss in his life, Silas moves to Chicago. They keep in touch mainly through Martha's weekly calls to Lucy, but eventually find their way back into the other's life. After all, they've never left each other's hearts.
The goings-on of the era are highlighted extensively throughout the telling of her story, from Kennedy to Martin Luther King to Vietnam, space expeditions and Malcolm X. Before I realized this wasn't fiction, I silently applauded Ms. Taylor's research. But it wasn't research, it was something she lived through. And I think that is the key difference between this and so many other books I've read that take place in this era. Ms. Taylor opens the curtains to show us not just the world as it was then, but her world as it was then. Taking place over the course of twelve years, it's both eye opening and incredibly heart breaking. I cannot recommend picking up this book enough.

It's strange that another world could have been so close by. "In the Land of Cotton" is a fictional exploration of racial relations in the 50s, using a young unassuming white girl by the name of the Martha as the protagonist of the story. She finds a black family living in the woods, and discovers a whole different world as she learns to understand and despise the racial divide that was so prevalent in America during the time. "In the Land of Cotton" is a top pick for those seeking historical fiction focusing on the emergence of civil rights.

This book is a gripping story of a girl growing up in the deep South in the 50's and 60's. Martha A. Taylor has a story to tell, and she tells it with a fierce determination and enormous compassion.

I've read a lot about the Civil Rights Movement, and was shocked that even after the Civil War blacks were denigrated to a different tier of society than whites were. But they were, and I didn't know why. I remember madly loving Miz Williams, who worked as a housekeeper for our family for an all-too-brief period of time. Her name was Virginia, same as mine was then, and she'd tell us about her family. She kept the house clean, made great chocolate chip cookies, and stood up with my sister against her oppressors (frequently me and my brother, as we carried the teasing a little too far at time). I couldn't understand why she lived in the projects. I couldn't understand why anyone did, frankly, as they scared me. I thought the people who lived there did so because they were criminals, selling drugs, robbing people, etc. But if Miz Williams lived there, that couldn't be right. So she must have lived there because that was the only place she and her family could afford and where they were welcomed by their neighbours.

Martha has her own version of Miz Williams in the person of Lucy. Lucy takes Martha right into her heart, and loves her hard, loves her truly, consoling her when her parents go out of town and the creepy pedophiliac is left to babysit. But then the unthinkable happens--Martha's father loses his job, and the decision is made to let Lucy go since he will be home during the day.

Martha, heartbroken, gets up the courage to go see Lucy at her house. What she finds when she gets there, and the friendships and bonds she make last with her forever. The love that builds between Martha and Lucy's nephew Silas begins to grow and blossom against an increasingly turbulent world--sit-in's at lunch counters, riots in major U.S. cities, the Korean War, the Vietnam Conflict. Silas ends up in the military, and gets sent to a hospital in Germany with life-threatening injuries. Martha defies her family (who do not yet know that Silas is black), and sneaks awway to Germany to see him. She is saddened to learn that, despite the injuries, he will be sent back into conflict, but gains the courage to tell her mother that the Silas with whom she is so deeply in love is black.

Her mother is shocked--an interracial marriage was a thing not to be thought of! And she was right. I remember the first time I saw an interracial marriage, and even as liberal minded and nonprejudiced as I thought myself to be, it shocked me. But that was when I was a child in Georgia in the 60's & 70's, a generation or two behind Martha's.

Martha herself tells you that it took her a long time to understand how deep the roots of prejudice go, to understand that Lucy and Silas and their wild wonderful family were not extraordinary blacks. They were extraordinary people because of themselves, not because of their race nor despite it.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. It's fascinating and heartbreaking and eye-opening and every good thing. Go. Read it. You know you want to.

Martha Taylor expertly weaves a lovely, emotional, story that first intrigues the reader who glances at the synopsis, (thinking it is a fiction story) and learns about a girl who discovers a primitive black family living in the forest. Thus the story holds the reader's attention, who then comes to realize the truth throughout reading the entire story, and is hooked until the bittersweet ending. This is not only a tale about Martha and the lovely family that she discovers and her struggle to live through and understand racial inequality. There is also extensive highlights of current events in our nation in the mid 50's to the 60's included in the story such as continued racial prejudice, Martin Luther King's strive towards equality and the Vietnam war. This story serves as an outstanding example of how America was still living with racial hatred and inequality, despite the positive efforts made to abolish slavery roughly a hundred years earlier.

In my parents' and grandparents' world skin color was an everyday reminder. In my world it had become the color of life. ~Martha Taylor

Martha Taylor's autobiography chronicles her life in the South starting in 1956 through 1968. She is a lonely white girl in Tennessee who bonds with her black housekeeper, Lucy Boyd. When her father loses his job they have to let Lucy go and unbeknownst to her family, Martha follows Lucy to her home. Martha is taken in by Lucy's family and meets Silas who is her first black playmate and the love of her life. Though Martha's family moves to Texas, she keeps in touch with the Boyd family and especially, Silas, who goes to Chicago to get a better education and joins the service to fight in Vietnam. Ms. Taylor includes the history of the civil rights movement, the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King and the Vietnam War and how they affected her life.

It is a heartwarming, heart-wrenching, coming of age story that takes us back to a time of struggle and destiny. Ms. Taylor's writing is unpretentious and beautifully written. A must read for old and young alike.

"In the Land of Cotton" Martha A. Taylor tells the story of a young white girl growing up in the south in the fifties who becomes friends with a black family. As her parents are busy working and/or not being around, she becomes closer and closer to this other family. Eventually, she falls in love with Silas, a boy from the black family. But remember, this is the south and the Civil Rights Movement is happening and the beginning of the Vietnam conflict is right around the corner. Ms. Taylor writes a heartwarming story of personal growth, change, love and heartbreak through one of the toughest periods of our country's history. One learns much from what she writes in this book.

"In the Land of Cotton" is Martha Taylor's very personal look at one of the most volatile and exciting periods in American history, a time during which the Civil Rights Movement changed race relations in this country forever. It was a decade during which America put a man on the moon, fought one of the most unpopular wars in its history, and finally recognized that all men are, indeed, created equal. Like Martha, I came of age in the South during the 1960s. Unlike her, with the exception of how America's Viet Nam adventure impacted all young men of the time, I was largely an outside observer to what was happening around the country.

When Martha's story begins in 1956, she is a young girl living a relatively sheltered life with her grandparents in Memphis, Tennessee. One year later Martha's parents buy a home in a new Memphis subdivision and she moves back home to live with her parents and little sister, a move that will change her life forever. Martha's parents are happy enough to leave her to herself as long as she is home before dark every evening and she is quick to take advantage of that lack of attention.

Exploring the area on her bicycle one day, Martha is thrilled to discover, deep in the woods near her home, the little family enclave in which Lucy Boyd, her family's black housekeeper, lives. The Boyd family is at first a little uneasy about having Martha around so much, fearing what might happen if the little white girl is noticed there among them. Martha, however, because she understands her own family's racial attitudes well enough to know she can never tell them about her visits, is able to continue them in complete secrecy.

And continue, the visits do. Martha comes to know and love the several generations of Boyds living in their primitive family compound and they, in turn, accept her as one of their own. By the time her parents move the family to Texas, the Boyds have taught Martha more about the world and life than she will ever learn from her own parents, and she has become especially attached to Silas Boyd, a young man about her age.

What happens to Martha and Silas over the next few years is as much America's story as it is their own. Deeply in love though she might be, Martha realizes that her family is never likely to accept her love for a black man. Silas, on the other hand, has the reluctant approval of his mother but knows that being seen with a white girl in the 1960s South could cost him his life. Swept up by the rapidly changing events of the times, their story is one of inspiration and tragedy.

"In the Land of Cotton" is a touching reminder of those times for those of us who lived through them. Just as importantly, it is a very readable personal history of that period for those too young to remember it for themselves, history told in a manner that makes it both vivid and real - something even the best history books seldom achieve.

"To be part of history is a wonderful experience but, to stand perfectly still holding your breath those precious few seconds when you know history is imminent but before it is written; before it actually becomes history, that is overwhelming." ~ Silas Boyd

In The Land of Cotton is a poignant and emotional chronicle of a young, unpretentious white girl coming to age in the color divided world of the fifties and sixties. Martha's story places the reader smack in the middle of the civil rights war; a beautiful and heart wrenching journey through history that weaves a tale of forbidden friendships, misconceptions and human nature, at both its best and worst.

Martha's passionate desire to break through the prejudice and learn for herself the truth, submerses the readers into the tumultuous, discriminatory world of soul mates kept apart by skin color and social stigma.

In The Land of Cotton is a prodigious must read for any generation. For those who experienced the world divided by flesh tone, Martha's take will bring them back to an all too familiar, and perhaps even uncomfortable, territory. For others, it will be a heart and eye opening rendition of history, and the long, hard fought battle of equal opportunity and universal acceptance, not just between colors, but people.

Martha's weaving of history and personal experience give readers a start to finish, can't put down narrative, offering a singular panorama of an ever changing, ever adapting world and the people caught in the maelstrom of it all. It is a seamlessly written tale of love, moral dilemma, honor, political uprising, conviction and self evolvement.

In light of this year's Presidential Election, In The Land of Cotton can't help but assume the form of a beacon of hope for any individual who has ever felt different and longed for more.

Well written, beautifully depicted and stirring, In The Land of Cotton is sure to present old and new reader alike with a unique perspective in to a part of history that shaped and molded past generations and formed the future as well as to serve as a reminder that true love is, and always has been, colorblind.

Martha A, Taylor's book In The Land of Cotton is a personal and poignant story drawn from the early experiences of her life in the South. It is a story I shared in a small part as her aunt. It is also a story of change with all it's difficulties, tragedies, and celebration. In the late 50's, young people were beginning to stretch their imaginations, and their perceptions of the world beyond their towns or neighborhood. In The Land of Cotton captures that spark of curiosity and wonder of youth along with the struggles of the older people of both races to cope with their fears, doubts, and resistance to the coming change. Martha Taylor captures those feelings in her descriptions of her family's history and her relationship to a new found family she loved as her own. A family whose racial difference opened a new frontier in feelings and understanding.
The "sparks" of the 50's ignited an explosion of conflict and rebellion in the 60's, which Taylor follows in beautifully detailed historical context. Yes, the subject of multiracial relationships can be difficult enough to handle, but In The Land of Cotton places that relationship in a context of time and space that brings history to life. It is an exciting, must read book!

This is a story of a young white girl coming of age in the Deep South during the racially tense era of the mid 50's and 60's. It's a time when a child's only obligations were school, chores to be done and to be home before dark. But life changes and her parents are struggling to make ends meet. Martha's paternal Grandfather is called to watch her and her younger sister, while they work.She finds that Touze, her grandfather likes to play 'touching' games. When Lucy, a colored woman is hired to be nanny to the girls, Martha's world is forever changed. This story begins in Memphis in 1956 and follows the history of the Civil Rights Movement. If you grew up during this time you will relive history as Martha's story unfolds, if not you'll come to a deeper understanding of how far we have come in less than a lifetime from segregation to inauguration. In The Land of Cotton is a story of determination to be true to one's belief's, both fact and fiction this is a book to enjoy and learn from.