God's Awful Truth

In Huntsville, Alabama during the mid 1950's Pricilla learns the back of the bus is "reserved for us colored folks." (autobiographical) We feel her embarrassment as she skulks to the front and her pride as she pulls out her Piggly Wiggly coin purse, digs out a dime and tosses it in the metal box for an old lady. Ca-ching. We can relate to her confusion later upon hearing about the arrests and convictions of Rosa Parks and two other children in Montgumra.' Priscilla stumbles over her Daddy's big words and wonders if her "meteors" are mixed; but her conversational descriptions of food, clothes and social customs are keen. Priscilla hangs out with her idiotic brother, turtle cousin, real pretend sister and first kiss underwater on the abandoned Randolph place. They dredge for their lost baseball and find the skull of the Mayor's vanished brother. In search of answers, they spend time with the sickly Mayor (he really is an ex-Mayor.) His beautiful and educated maid Ophelia seems to know much about the Randolph family since she worked there for years. They hear of tales of hoodoo, the Underground Railroad, child abuse, infidelity, murder and rape. By accident they are sole witnesses to the Mayor's hanging. Ophelia kicks the chair out from under his polished wingtips. "Dinner is served." Only then do they learn what happened to Jack. Ophelia is arrested. Was the Mayor's death euthanasia, murder, or suicide? They know about "Yellow Mama" Alabama's infamous electric chair in smoking detail and agree no one should die that way. Priscilla's conviction in what is fair never wavers, and she testifies God's awful truth. Rosa Parks, and children, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith are in the story, and a reference section "Freedom Fighters" collects key female transportation activists as far back as 1854. Segregation stories, information about the acquisition and use of slaves for the Randolph plantation before the Civil War, and the practice of hoodoo as medicine and magic are historically based. This book cites Emily Post and excerpts of slave, Civil War, and civil rights songs.