Henry Louis Gates grew up in the small mill town of Piedmont, W.Va., in the Potomac Highlands of Mineral County. He went on to achieve the recognition of Time magazine in 1997 as one of the “25 Most Influential Americans.”
In his book, Colored People, A Memoir, he describes life in this West Virginia town from the 1950s, where segregation was firmly in place and opportunities for blacks were clearly limited, through the late 1960s, when the effects of the civil rights movement shook the town.
The book is loaded with humorous irony and an intuitive honesty that makes it a seductive literary read from the get-go: “No, my children will never know Piedmont (W.Va.), never experience the magic I can still feel in the place where I learned how to be a colored boy.”
The structure of Colored People, A Memoir is not linear, as in most autobiographies. Instead, the book reads as if written in a free associative state. Each chapter describes the everyday aspects of life in this small town and is themed around particular experiences of growing up in the community—life in the kitchen, nights in front of the television, experiences at school, just to name a few. It isn’t until you finish the book that you realize Gates has woven a marvelous tapestry of a strong minority community in a deliberate fashion. Each “chapter” of experience is a critical element of the powerful culture in which he lived.
In his description of Piedmont, Gates states: “. . . our neighborhoods were clearly demarcated, as if by ropes or turnstiles. Welcome to the Colored Zone, a large stretched banner could have said. And it felt good in there, like walking around your house in bare feet and underwear, or snoring right out loud on the couch in front of the TV—swaddled by the comforts of home, the warmth of those you love.”
This is an example of one of those euphemisms Gates is able to churn out every page. His hard-won insights enable our evolving consciousness. The message slowly emerges—where segregation is bad, there also has to be room for a healthy recognition of the black minority and its special culture alongside and equal to the majority white culture.
It’s not that Gates would want to turn the clock back. Except for when watching sports, Gates’ family rarely saw a black person on television—until the civil rights movement, which arrived through the news long before it arrived in Piedmont. “The TV was the ritual arena for the drama of race. In our family, it was located in the living room, where it functioned like a fireplace in the proverbial New England winter.”
They were obsessed with sports because, “It was the only way we could compete with white people even-steven.”
This is an issue that Gates sees as detrimental to blacks today, that sports have come to replace intellectual achievement, and he has actively campaigned against it in the mainstream media.
The rich background that he was brought up in, though rife with poverty and racism, was hardly limiting, however. This is not a memoir about a terrible childhood: “The colored world was not so much a neighborhood as a condition of existence.”
Dance halls, the barbershops, the segregated “pic-a-nic” at the paper-mill, the church, but most of all the love and support that came from the family, which included 7 aunts and 10 uncles and cousins, and “Big Mom” are the things that support this young boy as he grows into a man and learns about the world and how it works.
This book would not be as powerful, however, if it was not for the main supporting character: Mama.
“She knew what people had meant to be in their hearts, not what the world had forced them to become. She knew the ways in which working too hard for paltry wages could turn you mean and cold, could kill that one thing that made you live. She remembered the way you hoped to be, not the way you were.”
It is clearly this woman’s strength that carries Gates through his trials in life. She was the first black woman, in 1957, to become elected the secretary of the PTA. at the school. When she was told that her son’s hairline ball and hip fractures (which eventually severed) were psychosomatic and a symptom of an overachieving black boy, she promptly left the doctor’s office and drove the distance to Morgantown to get him help. It was her self-pride and intelligence that instilled in Gates the self-confidence he needed to take on the issues of racism that he tackled later in his life. Unfortunately, a depressive disorder set in when she was in her late forties. It was against her depression that he forged himself in his teens, making character-shaping decisions like joining the church, which helped to carve his independence.
His father, also a loving character, was there for Gates in different ways—as a fantastic storyteller and a constant debater, which helped to move his intellectual development to full maturity. Mostly they disagreed, especially when it came to Henry’s “black identity,” which became important to him in the 1960s.
Ultimately it is a jubilant approach to life that comes through in this book. Though undoubtedly a memoir about a black African American, it is written through the lens of someone with universal insight about human nature that happens to be sporting colored-tinted glasses. The glasses are an accessory item only though.
With the visit of Henry Louis Gates to Shepherd University, residents of Jefferson County have the opportunity to ask themselves how and why the terms colored, black, or Negro are still important to our community today—questions raised by the themes Gates addresses in this infectious autobiography. It is relevant to Jefferson County with its obvious racial demarcations.
Finally, Colored People, A Memoir is not a G-rated read (firmly in the R-rated category). It is a brilliant polyphonic narrative that weaves together a picture of a minority culture that is rich enough to produce one of our nation’s most influential voices, without sacrificing style. Ultimately, however, it is a coming of age book that transcends color boundaries and is about the power of family and community to shape an individual’s destiny.
