Beatrice's Ledger

"Too often our stories about Black America, and the Black South in particular, focus on slavery, segregation, and post–civil rights politics. In Beatrice's Ledger, Ruth R. Martin chronicles the beautiful, complex, and steadfast Black living that has happened between and beyond those moments in our history. Her portrait of Smoaks, South Carolina, recalls Zora Neale Hurston's Eatonville in Their Eyes Were Watching God for its description of memorable characters and cultural rituals, of enduring communal connection to the land and spirit. And like Hurston's classic, Beatrice's Ledger gives us a heroine whose journey from the South Carolina Lowcountry to points all around the world inspires our own quests for self-discovery and a sense of home."—Angela Ards, author of Words of Witness: Black Women's Autobiography in the Post-Brown Era

"The spunky daughter of a hard-working family, Martin offers a lyrical accounting of everyday life in the rural South of the mid-twentieth century, including the fraught intimacies and etiquette of racial interaction. Her memoir is a valuable addition to the first-person record of Black resilience and achievement during the Jim Crow years."—Jennifer Ritterhouse, author of Growing Up Jim Crow: How Black and White Southern Children Learned Race

"Beatrice's Ledger is a gift to historians and general readers who yearn for a firsthand account of the Lowcountry during a time that is now remote and yet exists within the framework of the lived experience of someone still with us. It is a pleasure to read and the place—and its citizens—truly come alive in Martin's careful reconstruction."—Rachel Devlin, author of A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America's Schools

"I would recommend Martin's outstanding book to scholars of the South or scholars of African American history, as well as historians of the twentieth century. ... Beatrice's Ledger captures the complexity of history without overemphasizing challenges or successes. As a reader, I knew this intricacy meant it was an authentic story, which is what makes Martin's retelling of it so superb."—Rachel B. Lane, The Oral History Review