Eva Rutland Interview

Eva Rutland discusses her book When We Were Colored: A Mother's Story. Rutland, author of more than 20 novels and winner of the 2000 Golden Pen Award for Lifetime Achievement, presents the timely and relevant story, first published in 1964, of her life in the years before integration, before affirmative action — when segregation was the norm, discrimination was legally tolerated, and blacks were second-class citizens Rutland chronicles the lives of an ordinary yet extraordinary "colored" family as they move from segregation to integration during the turbulent civil rights era of the 1950s and 60s. Beyond the lunch counter sit-ins, the freedom rides and church bombings, black Americans went about their day to day lives with a fearful but quiet determination, moving into newly integrated schools, neighborhoods and work places. Veteran novelist Rutland tells their true story from her special vantage point of "colored" wife and mother who lived it. Recorded July 10, 2007