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A Mother's Choice in the Jim Crow South
The Lyons Press
May 2005
272 pages
ISBN: 1592286267
Hardcover
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Historical | Non-Fiction Memoir
Nine years after the landmark civil rights case Brown v.
Board of Education in 1954, and only a year before the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, a judge in the Forsyth County Courthouse
of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, wrenched twelve-year-old
Gene Cheek from the security of his mother's devotion. Here
is a true story of love in a time afflicted by hatred,
ignorance, and racism. At its core, this is a frank account
of a love affair between a white woman and a black man that
took mother from son and split a family forever.
In the early 1960s, the city of Winston-Salem struggled
under the strict edicts of segregation, setting the tone of
division that would plague Gene Cheek's life. Raised by his
alcoholic father and his earnestly loving mother, Gene
learned about the power of hatred and the strength of love.
Yet when his mother fell in love with Cornelius Tucker, an
African-American man, and became pregnant with Tucker's
child, their union was seen as morally and lawfully unfit.
The court forced the parents to choose between the
mixed-race infant and Gene. From a distance of more than
forty years, Gene Cheek recounts a life of constant struggle
with his biological father. Briefly that tension dissolved
with the warm guidance of Cornelius Tucker - but that period
of peace would soon end. The Color of Love is Gene Cheek's story told in his
singularly honest voice. Its sincerity and truth resonate
with a plea for tolerance, and the irrevocable nature of the
decisions and emotions of modern life.
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