Afterword

Abstract

Starting with memories of childhood and family, in some cases reaching back into slavery, the interviews in this book have passed through work and community life before ending with a discussion of activism. Not only do the narratives convey a sense of progress, but also the order of the collection advances a tone of optimism. Some of positivity builds in the book as a function of the interviewing process. From Dora Dennis and Blanche Davis, both born in 1900 to Shirley Sherrod who was born in 1947, the book’s narrators told their stories to younger people who conducted the interviews. They passed on to the interviewers—black, white, and Latino students operating within an integrated educational system—hopes, dreams, and encouragements as much as the realities of their lives. Regardless of the questions they were asked, it was important to interviewees to tell uplifting stories of change, and perhaps they perceived that these were the stories they should tell. For the Behind the Veil interviewees are among last generation to have known enslaved persons, or to have received that history from people who had known slaves. Cora Flemming’s (Chapter 5) approving assessment that “black people can stand up for themselves now,” reveals one of the most significant changes that occurred during our narrator’s lives: African Americans gained the right to fight for their own liberation, an aspiration they carried into freedom and across the color line.