Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family

By Pauli Murray

Book Overview

First published in 1956, Proud Shoes is the remarkable true story of slavery, survival, and miscegenation in the South from the pre-Civil War era through the Reconstruction. Written by Pauli Murray the legendary civil rights activist and one of the founders of NOW, Proud Shoes chronicles the lives of Murray's maternal grandparents. From the birth of her grandmother, Cornelia Smith, daughter of a slave whose beauty incited the master's sons to near murder to the story of her grandfather Robert Fitzgerald, whose free black father married a white woman in 1840, Proud Shoes offers a revealing glimpse of our nation's history.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807072095
• ISBN13: 9780807072097
• Release Date: August 1999
• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

a very good book

I heard about Pauli Murray in my North Carolina History. I chose to read her book as a book report and was blown away. The book was easy to understand and i could relate to the author.

Awesome reading!!...

My Civil War history professor required us to read this for his class. I was always taught the horrific side of the Civil War and Reconstruction and I will always have that side in my memory. I never knew the real story of the few blacks that well off than their poorer counterparts. Pauli Murray should consider herself thankful for being allowed to grow up in her racially tolerant neighborhood. This should be required reading for high school and college students.

Courageous Family Autobiography

Pauli Murray was reared in an extraordinary extended family of Northern Freedmen who had come South after fighting with the Union Army & Southern aristocrats-Indians-Slaves. Her great-aunt donated the land in Chapel Hill on which sits the University which denied her admission. This is a story of the courage of the "Yankee Schoolmarms" (including her Grandfather)who brought education to the newly freed slaves, and the courage of those who sought the education he offered. Her aunts also followed their father in lives devoted to education. One of the most moving moments in the book is when her Aunt Pauline read the Supreme Court's decision to integrate in 1954, the year before her death. "Thank G-d, I have lived to see this day," she said.Murray's own life was more than worthy of the ambitions they instilled in her. This is the way an autobiographical family story _should_ be written: if only such writers were thick on the ground.