NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Simmons’s evocative account of her remarkable trajectory from Jim Crow Texas, where she was the youngest of twelve children in a sharecropping family, to the presidencies of Smith College and Brown University shines with tenderness and dignity.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) “A riveting work of literature, destined to take its place in the canon of great African American autobiographies.”—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR I was born at a crossroads: a crossroads in history, a crossroads in culture, and a geographical crossroad in North Houston County in East Texas. Born in 1945, Ruth J. Simmons grew up the twelfth child of sharecroppers. Her first home had no running water, no electricity, no books to read. Yet despite this—or, in her words, because of it—Simmons would become the first Black president of an Ivy League university. The former president of Smith College, Brown University, and Prairie View A&M, Texas’s oldest HBCU, Simmons has inspired generations of students as she herself made history. In Up Home, Simmons takes us back to Grapeland to show how the people who love us when we are young shape who we become. We meet her caring, tireless mother who managed to feed her large family with an often empty pantry; her father, who refused to let racial and economic injustice crush his youngest daughter’s dreams; the doting brothers and sisters; and the attentive teachers who welcomed Ruth into the classroom, guiding her to a future she could hardly imagine as a child. From the farmland of East Texas to Houston’s Fifth Ward to New Orleans at the dawn of the civil rights movement, Simmons depicts an era long gone but whose legacies of inequality we still live with today. Written in clear and timeless prose, Up Home is both an origin story set in the segregated South and the uplifting chronicle of a girl whose intellect, grace, and curiosity guide her as she creates a place for herself in the world.
Four techniques for improving client relations that should be part of systemic change - not applied like bandaids - to make family planning services more effective.
Knowledge is power, and the way knowledge is shared in a congregation can build up or break down community. When congregational leaders are sensitive to the ways that information should be shared, the congregation can become safe and strong. Unfortunately, congregations can easily fall into patterns of communication that lead to disastrous interpersonal and organizational outcomes. Even in times of crisis, however, congregations can learn and practice new skills and healthy communication management. Congregational consultants Kibbie Ruth and Karen McClintock show clergy and laity how to appropriately handle information. From proper ways to respond to rumors to relating information about a staff firing to the congregation, Healthy Disclosure is filled with step-by-step ideas for handling different types of sensitive material. It helps clergy and other congregational leaders understand levels of disclosure, including how and when to reveal information, the difference between privacy and secrecy, legal issues related to public knowledge, and the power of secrets from a congregation's past. What we don't know can hurt us. The more conscious congregational leaders are of the information they have and how they pass it along to others, the better off the congregation will be. Information management is both a technical process and a spiritual undertaking. Leaders need the ability to spiritually discern, not just intellectually decide, the solutions to congregational dilemmas. Ruth and McClintock guide readers in developing the skills needed to create a congregational environment of healthy disclosure.
A vivid and moving story about family, courage, and the power of education Ruth remembers the day the sheriff pulled up in front of her family's home with a white neighbor who claimed Ruth's father owed her recently deceased husband money. It was the early 1940s in Jim Crow South Carolina, and even at the age of eleven, Ruth knew a Black person's word wasn't trusted. But her father remained calm as he waited on her mother's return from the house. Ruth's mother had retrieved a gray book, which she opened and handed to the sheriff. Satisfied by what he saw, the sheriff and the woman left. Ruth didn't know what was in that book, but she knew it was important. In Beatrice's Ledger, Ruth R. Martin brings to life the stories behind her mother's entries in that well-worn ledger, from financial transactions to important details about her family's daily struggle to survive in Smoaks, South Carolina, a small town sixty miles outside of Charleston. Once the land of plantations, slavery, and cotton, by the time Ruth was born in 1930 many of the plantations were gone but the cotton remained. Ruth's family made a living working the land, and her father owned a local grist and sawmill used by Black and white residents in the area. The family worked hard, but life was often difficult, and Ruth offers rich descriptions of the sometimes-perilous existence of a Black family living in rural South Carolina at mid-century. But there was joy as well as hardship, and readers will be drawn into the story of life in Smoaks. Enriched with public records research and interviews with friends and family still living in Smoaks, Martin weaves history, humor, and family lore into a compelling narrative about coming of age as a Black woman in the Jim Crow South. Martin recounts her journey from Smoaks to Tuskegee Institute and beyond. It is a story about the power of family; about the importance of the people we meet along the way; and about the place we call home.
Bring Hope, Faith, and Love to Your Relationships. The biblical character of Ruth was striking in her capacity to bring life to her relationships. Even in the midst of tragedy and difficulty, her presence blessed and influenced friends and strangers in her community, the man she grew to love, her children, and her in-laws. This six-week Fisherman Bible Studyguide uses Ruth's story to help you reflect on your own relationships and the ways in which God might be inviting you to move different ways--ways that will lead you into life-giving patterns of relating with others. Fisherman Bible Studyguides offer: * Penetrating questions that generate discussion * Flexible format for group or individual needs * Helpful leader’s notes * Emphasis on daily application of Bible truth
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