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Barefootin' |
| Life Lessons from the Road to Freedom |
Unita Blackwell, JoAnne Prichard Morris
ISBN: 0609610600
Format: Hardcover, 272pp
Pub. Date: June 2006
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
BBP Sales Rank: 173,325
List Price: $23.00
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When you're starting out on the road barefootin', you don't know where you're
going. But you've got to step out, or you'll never get anywhere. And you keep
on going, one step at a time.
You have to have faith to go barefooted-you don't know what you might step on,
what pain might come-but you keep on walking. And it makes you tough. Sometimes
you skip and jump and run. Sometimes you get a thorn in your toe or trip over a
limb, but there's no turning back.
Barefootin' means getting mud between your toes and dancing on the water! Your
spirit is in your feet, and your spirit can run free.
In 1933, Unita Blackwell was born in Lula, Mississippi, a tiny town in the
Delta where living was as hard as it gets, the stuff of the blues music that
originated there. Like the other black people in Lula, Unita grew up in a
sharecropping family, riding on her mother's cotton sack before she was old
enough to pick cotton herself. Having left school at age twelve in order to
make a living, Unita was trapped in menial jobs, and a bright future seemed
beyond her reach.
But Unita was forever changed in the summer of 1964 when civil rights workers
came to her town of Mayersville, Mississippi. Electrified by the movement,
Unita transformed her life from one of despair to one of hope, and in
Barefootin' she details her inspirational rise from poverty to power, from
silence to outspokenness, from oppression to freedom.
From her rebirth as a freedom fighter and social activist to her tenure as
mayor of her home town, to her work as an international peacemaker and
presidential advisor, here are all the unlikely turns of Unita's remarkable
life. The lessons she sharesaffirm and motivate us all, whether it's to
remember that ordinary people can do extraordinary things, that world-changing
movements are the result of many small steps, or that freedom means taking
responsibility for our own lives and helping to make the world a better place
for all.
Infused with the language and rhythms of the Delta, Barefootin' is at once the
stirring memoir of an exceptional woman and a guide to living a full and
meaningful life from someone who knows how. |
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