James W. Strickland, Ph.D. is a distinguished realist author,progressive change advocate, gifted public speaker, and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker born and raised in the old south. He attended segregated schools and saw first hand the demeaning ills of racism. Though the schools were segregated, he attributes his successes to having been prepared for life's trials by the faculty and teachers of East Street and J.W. Darden High Schools in Opelika, Alabama. His father never learned to read or write because, as a young Negro boy, he had to work the fields of the land owner. The author promised his father as he lay dying in the author's arms that he would erase the "X" that his father used to sign documents and promised to write in his stead forever.
A Charge To Keep - I Have
A Promise Kept
by James W Strickland, Ph.D.,LCSW
A Charge To Keep - I Have
A Promise Kept
by James W Strickland, Ph.D.,LCSW
Published Apr 29, 2010
105 Pages
Genre: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Adventurers & Explorers
Book Details
East Street to Darden is an insightful story of a black boy who started on life’s journey in the 1940s. During this era in the segregated south, he learned more about race relations while attending school in a reconditioned Prisoner of War Barrack made part of the physical structure of East Street School for Negroes.
Though the forces of racism still exist in America, it was not hidden as well in the segregated south as it is disguised in some inner circles today. The author’s travels took him from a once segregated south to an integrated and sophisticated world, traveling from East Street to the Far East. His story paints vivid pictures of a boyhood past plagued with discrimination based on race and discrimination by a subtle black social stratification system within his own race. He takes pride in having learned survival skills from all the villagers in the old south as he walked from East Street to Darden High School...Black in the day and from Darden to the world.
Book Excerpt
"The largest department store in town was the Montgomery Fair. It had two levels and catered to the rich,famous and the poor. It also had the era's white and colored water fountains, but at Christmas, the store had only one Santa Claus. I still believe that Santa Claus was the first person to integrate America because as kids,black or white, his race did not matter".
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