Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black
by Gregory Howard Williams

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Book Reviews of Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black

Book Review: A great piece of literature
Summary: 5 Stars

As the author's father is on the train from Virginia with his ten and nine year old sons, the author Greg and Mike respectively, after his white wife fled his violent alcoholism with their two other children, heading for Muncie Indiana after his previously modestly profitable business enterprises, including a tavern, had collapsed, he informs them that he is not Italian as they had always assumed but half-black, the product of a wealthy white Kentucky man and his black maid.

Their father, a dreadful alcoholic, eventually settles himself and his two sons with his mother in Muncie who is also an alcoholic, in her hideous shack which is a hang out for all sorts of neighborhood low life. The boys are eventually rescued by a widow of a prominent local hustler whom they call "Miss Dora" a fifty two year old black lady who is very poor but strongly motivated vis a vis the boys by religous conviction and she lets them live with her. She is well acquainted with their father.

Their father Anthony or "Buster", is probably the most picturesque figure throughout the book. He seems to have been one of the greatest hustlers in the history of humanity. He spents alot of his time in the shack with his mother drinking and fighting with her. He spends the rest of the time working odd jobs dragging his sons along to help out, gambling, swindling rummage sale clerks, asking for favors and money from local politicians and policeman, bar hopping and visiting the local brothel as well as engaging in sex with any woman willing (his abilities in this area have a high local reputation). My favorite episode involving him is when heleaps up on the podium to kiss John F. Kennedy who was campaiging in Muncie in 1960 and waves to a cheering crowd.

The author was clearly regarded in Muncie and under the circumstances was forced to call himself black which he did not shrink from but was forced to endure pretty abominable racism. He was an excellent student and a pretty good athlete but the only serious guidance he got from counsellors or teachers throughout his schooling were stern warnings after he was caught engaging in suspiscious behavior with a white girl in a secluded part of school. He was always very dilligent and polite and was particularly grateful to Miss Dora whose home shielded him and his brother somewhat from the vulgarity and violence of his father's life and to whom he gave all the income that he and his brother could muster from working odd jobs. But his father excersised a greater and greater alcohol-inspired tyranny over them as they got older though his wrath was directed the most at Greg.

This book contains a very vivid portrayal of the violence and misery of life in 1950's America. Not exactly "Ozzie and Harriet." The author portrays very well his teenage years where his environment at his junior high and high school both of which contained a mixture of black and white students was very racially volatile. Towards the end of high school, he ends up falling in love with a pretty white girl named Sara whom he he will marry in 1969 but not before alot of pain particularly from her side as she experiences the hostility and ostracism of her family and anyone else who finds out she is in love with a "Negro" and participating in civil rights activism. His youth was in many ways what one would expect in an environment full of dreadful poverty and apathy. On the other hand it was a pretty typical American male youth.

The author is very far from reticient in dealing with matters involving sex. In his social circle sex or at least talking often about it was a big part of achieving one's maturity, though Greg always was far behind many of his friends particularly his closest friend Brian Settles. Though he did have quite some interesting experiences with a pretty young gal named Hattie including when he was fifteen in Miss Dora's living room engaging in intense carnal stimulation while Miss Dora, Hattie's mother and his grandmother were in the next room. He ran up excitedly to his room in the atic and carried down with him his pencil pouch from school and Hattie said.......

There are alot of memorable or perhaps fascinatingly grotesque characters in this book. Like Fred Badders, a white man, twenty five years his grandmothers's junior but utterly hideous looking who shows up at his grandmother's house every time her social security check comes in and he allows her to use him sexually. Or his brother Mike who becomes involved with various gangsters and moves into a violent and very poor housing project in Chicago with one of his ladies and ends up sleeping with, among a good many women, a student teacher at his high school and two fourty year old women including "Bernice" and Mike at one point tells his brother about a time that he had his dad were lying in bed with her and......Oh boy, anyway I should rap this up. Mike eventually straigtened out though not before he lost his eyesight in a shooting.

Anyway a remarkable achievement. The author, who is currently a professor of law, is able to tell his story in a very unpretensious and intelligent way. There is quite a few grotesque and shocking episodes in this book but they are molded into a story which is very real.

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