An extraordinary look at privilege, discrimination, and the fallacy of post-racial America by Pulitzer Prize–winning cultural critic Margo Jefferson National BestsellerWinner of the National Book Critics Circle AwardA New York Times Notable BookJefferson takes us into an insular and discerning society: “I call it Negroland,” she writes, “because I still find ‘Negro’ a word of wonders, glorious … writes, “because I still find ‘Negro’ a word of wonders, glorious and terrible.”
Margo Jefferson was born in 1947 into upper-crust black Chicago. Her father was head of pediatrics at Provident Hospital, while her mother was a socialite. Negroland’s pedigree dates back generations, having originated with antebellum free blacks who made their fortunes among the plantations of the South.
It evolved into a world of exclusive sororities, fraternities, networks, and clubs—a world in which skin color and hair texture were relentlessly evaluated alongside scholarly and professional achievements, where the Talented Tenth positioned themselves as a third race between whites and “the masses of Negros,” and where the motto was “Achievement. Invulnerability. Comportment.”
Jefferson brilliantly charts the twists and turns of a life informed by psychological and moral contradictions, while reckoning with the strictures and demands of Negroland at crucial historical moments—the civil rights movement, the dawn of feminism, the falsehood of post-racial America.
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Amazing book for an old white guy to read. With two black granddaughters, I try to broaden my experience and understand others. This book opened my eyes to many aspects of our culture I would never see or feel. Ms. Jefferson is a highly intelligent, private-school educated, upper middleclass black woman who’s environment was not so different from my own or my wife’s. But her experience was completely different. The way she relates it is eye-opening. It should be required reading in high school.
Having grown up in a WASP suburb of Chicago about the same time the Author was growing up on the Southside, I was so delighted to read about the middle class families she writes about. Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in America. I wonder if families like hers still live there.
It is enlightening and inspirational. I am encouraged that while people of African descent still have a long way to go in the quest towards ensuring, “the pursuit of happiness and liberty and justice for all”, we have made tremendous progress and there is no turning back!
The lives of two sisters, Margo and Denise Jefferson is not an unpredictable memoir. It’s one some of us have lived through and remember with mixed feelings. By the time you finish reading it, there is the realization that being a minority, one called a Negro in the Twentieth Century was more than difficult. To remember these difficult days is to realize our strength.
We needed muscle power because Negroes lived double lives. They tried to please the majority, white people, and they also tried to keep their black brothers and sisters happy whom they met in the church and in the neighborhood. It must have felt like tap dancing to two different tunes. It’s like, perhaps, living the life of a double agent. You’re split down the middle every single day. If you do whatever it is correctly or in error, you’re so fatigued you can’t enjoy life. You just walk through it. Hoping your falls won’t lead to violence against your body by some unknown person. Thankfully, Margo Jefferson gives us the chance to celebrate her families lives and the lives of some well known individuals. Reading this book is the chance to write thank you for sharing your memories of what should never become silenced.
As a 60+ white guy who has worked in public schools and with Black families for many years, it was good to learn more about the accomplishments of the Black Community as they fought against the terrible and overt racism that occurred in my lifetime. It also helps me understand how our current situation, where racism is not (as) overt, where the damage continues (the horrible quality of education for poor, black and brown children in the USA today), and how structural barriers are still deeply embedded in our society.
The within the black community issues also helped me better understand, as a outsider looking in, some of these issues.
Finally, the author’s approach is different, and at time made the read more challenging.
All in all, if you want to know more about how black Americans survived and thrived in an overtly racist American, it is worth the read.
This is a fascinating blend of memoir, history, and criticism. I’ll be thinking about the structure and implications for a long time.
Great insight into this world.
This is the life of Margo who has grown up a bit different since her dad was a doctor and her mom showed them how to be ladies and act according to what the white people thought of as good manners. She gives a lot of insight to the times and what people were saying and doing at that time and how her and her family were treated.