Anthologies of African American Writing

Those Who Saw the Sun: African American Oral Histories from the Jim Crow South

"Those Who Saw the Sun: African American Oral Histories from the Jim Crow South". Ed. Jaha Nailah Avery. Levine Querido/Chronicle Books, 2023.

• Reprint as paperback: Lantern Paperbacks, 2025. 288 pp.

• Introduction
• Clotie Graves
• Eleanor Boswell-Raine
• Florence Hayes
• George Caleb McLaughlin
• Johnnie Booker
• Oletha Barnett
• Phyllis Taylor
• Rev. John Kennard
• Trevor Chavis
• Walt Carr

• Acknowledgments
• Appendix
• About the Author
• Some Notes on This Book's Production

• The book consists of a collection of interviews with individuals who experienced Jim Crow at first hand.
• The book is intended for a young adult audience (or an age 12-adult audience)
• The book was designed by Chindo Nkenke-Smith (Amalaeju Design Studio)
• The book's Appendix consists of a glossary of persons, events, works, etc. mentioned in the text.

• "The past is not past. We may think something ancient history, or something that doesn’t affect our present day, but we would be wrong. 'Those Who Saw the Sun' is a collection of oral histories told by Black people who grew up in the South during the time of Jim Crow. Jaha Nailah Avery is a lawyer, scholar, and reporter whose family has roots in North Carolina stretching back over 300 years. These interviews have been a personal passion project for years as she’s traveled across the South meeting with elders and hearing their stories. One of the most important things a culture can do is preserve history, truthfully. In 'Those Who Saw the Sun' we have the special experience of hearing this history as it was experienced by those who were really there. The opportunity to read their stories, their similarities and differences, where they agree and disagree, and where they overcame obstacles and found joy – feels truly like a gift."

• About the editor: "Jaha Nailah Avery is an African American woman and proud Southerner. Hailing from Asheville, North Carolina, she received her law degree from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied constitutional and civil rights law. She spent several years in the startup tech space before embarking on her professional writing career, and her work can be found in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Architectural Digest. Her aim is to always document, celebrate, and preserve the stories of Black people, communities, and history."

• Jacques, Wesley. "Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books" 76.10 (June 2023): 320.
"The ten oral histories curated in this profound collection are introduced by the author's own recollections of her grandparents raising her in Asheville, North Carolina. . . . it is clear that those experiences, her genuine appreciation of the personal, the intimate, and the everyday, informs every interview. The focus [is] on elders that have direct experiences of the Jim Crow South" but their lives "span the wholeness of the country from Baltimore to California, from the separate but surely unequal train cars of Chicago to the historically Black colleges of Alabama" (320).

• "Kirkus Reviews" 28 March 2023 (online):
"Jim Crow comes alive in oral histories. . . . Now in her 70s and the operator of an African American history tour company, [Clotie] Graves [daughter of a Mississippi farmer] is profiled along with nine others, including a dentist, a bank examiner, a music teacher, and a cartoonist. Their upbringings were equally varied: one the son of a North Carolina sharecropper, another the daughter of a San Francisco pastor. They testify to both the diversity of African American experiences and cruel universalities as well as the nurturing of children and teens within caring Black communities. The Rev. John Kennard, the first Black tax assessor in his Alabama county, reminisces, “Growing up going to totally Black schools was the best thing that ever happened to me, and then to go to basically a totally white institution was the next best thing. Because I found out I could excel in either.” Avery asks each of her subjects whether they believe that Dr. King’s dream can be realized in America. The answers differ; what doesn’t is the wisdom and experience that inform them. An extensive appendix to this invaluable work serves as a microencyclopedia of the era. These elders’ voices are a collective treasure."

• "Publishers Weekly" 27 April 2023:
"Beginning with the African proverb “when an elder dies, a library burns,” debut author Avery interviews 10 Black elders from various locations in the American South to develop this powerful collection of firsthand historical accounts of growing up during the Jim Crow era. . . . Participants’ opinions on the rise in activism in the Black community and their perceptions of whether Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream can be realized feature prominently at the end of each interview. . . . With the intention of preserving varied Black experiences and the wisdom and knowledge they offer, the creator crafts a vital, nuanced depiction of a fraught period in American history via myriad perspectives. Historical b&w photographs feature throughout; extensive back matter concludes."

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