I have been reading a number of books about racism, both to try to grasp what people were feeling in the 1940s and how we are doing in the 2020s. Most of what i have learned is overwhelming. To be honest, much of it i have known but not acknowledged to myself, it is so painful. Yet it is what my characters lived. And my loved ones. It has been a part of my own definition.

A few of the books recently read that have bid me learn:

1. Lowell Greathouse - Rediscovering the Spirit

2. Bev Walker - The Sailmaker

3. Thomas Dixon, Jr. - The Leopard’s Spots

4. Richard Wright - 12 Million Black Voices

5. Cynthia Carr - Our Town

6. Ina Whitlock - Stories of a Midwest Childhood, 1930s - 40s

7. Burns Mantle, ed - Best Plays of 1939-40

8. Lawrence Leamer - The Lynching!

9. Frederick Bassett - South Wind Rising

10. Frederick Bassett - The Old Stoic Faces the Mirror