Synopses & Reviews
In this direct, winning memoir, Charlayne Hunter-Gault tells the story of her life from her birth in a Deep South still living out the legacy of the Civil War to her historic role in desegregating the University of Georgia, a high point in the Civil Rights Movement.
Charlayne's father, an army chaplain from a family of preachers, was away more than he was home, so she was raised by her mother as part of a lively, affectionate extended family. From Due West they moved to Covington, Georgia, and eventually to "L. A." Lovely Atlanta, as it was known in the Black community where Charlayne began to show signs of the leadership that would characterize her later career. A year on an army base in Alaska provided her first full exposure to the white world. But it was in 1961, when she was one of two students to desegregate the University of Georgia and make that place hers, too, that she found herself calling fully on the reserves of courage, fortitude, and conviction instilled in her by her parents.
In My Place is a resonant success story a story of triumph over obstacles, of recognition and empowerment but even more it is a testament to the strength of family love, self-reliance, and self-esteem. Generous, witty, warmhearted, and dynamic, it tells how a remarkable woman became remarkable.
Review
"'We were simply doing what we were born to do.' With this simple statement, MacNeil-Lehrer journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault recalls her role as the young student who integrated the all-white University of Georgia. She has set down her memories leading to that tumultuous time in her memoirs entitled In Our Place. As Hunter-Gault writes, it becomes apparent that she was indeed a model to bring the South into the 20th century. She was bright, beautiful, well off by the standards of many Southern blacks, and lived a relatively normal life. All that ended on Dec. 13, 1961 when Hunter-Gault and Hamilton Holmes entered the University of Georgia. Hunter-Gault fills in the personal, compelling details of that time, such as how girls a flight above her in the dormitory took turns pounding the floor at night so she wouldn't be able to sleep or her gradual disillusionment with being a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement. Her life comes through as clear as her prose, with the same sense of purpose and persistence that got her through her travails at Georgia, and to her status as a national journalist. It is this work Hunter-Gault seems to want to be remembered and recognized—the rest was something she was born to do." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Review
"In My Place is Charlayne Hunter-Gault's richly readable reminiscence of growing up black and middle class in the segregated South, and acquiring in that warm and caring environment the cold courage required to desegregate the University of Georgia." Derrick Bell
Review
"Charlayne Hunter-Gault's moving, warm, frank autobiography is more than a personal chronicle. It is the biography of her generation for it epitomizes the experience of many courageous Black students who led the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It is essential reading for those who want to acquire a better understanding of the impact that the sixties generation had on America." Joyce A. Ladner, Harvard University
Review
"An inspiring historical journey." School Library Journal