A Summer Remembered
John E. Fleming
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 Silver Maple Publications
ISBN: 0970897022

An African-American's coming of age in 1950s Appalachia. The story of the summer John Fleming turned twelve & his cousin Ike came to visit for the whole summer.

Morganton, named after Daniel Morgan, the Revolutionary War general, is located in Burke County, North Carolina. Formed in 1777 & named after Dr. Thomas Burke, a member of the Continental Congress who was also the state's governor for a year, it is situated along the Catawba River valley of the Piedmont Plateau, an attractive place ripe for boyhood adventures.

Ike lives in Durham & because he's come under the influence of a gang of tough boys at school, he's sent away to stay at grandfather DePapa's home, next door to Johnny's in hopes of changing his wayward ways. By summer's end, however, it's not at all clear who has influenced whom!

A Summer Remembered is a labor of love & a family heirloom, complete with black & white photos. It will be enjoyed by both the young & adult reader, as an atmospheric reminiscence of a sprawling family & its history on both sides of the color bar & slavery -- “The Old African Tamishan” is a marvelous tale; of many aunts, uncles & cousins; of life before TV & computers when children had chores; mothers ran families & homes; fathers worked three jobs & boys fought, cussed & created adventures all the live-long day.

Told from a distance of 50 years & a lifetime in another state, John E. Fleming remembers the many & varied tales of school, landscape & relationships, with delightful details about daily life, how children behaved, & how people of color saw each other & their segregated section of a small rural town, & of how it was in that long-ago time before the Civil Rights Movement.

While A Summer Remembered is in need of both a family tree diagram (there are so many aunts & uncles in the Fleming & Hennessee families) & an editor, it is to be savored with many pots of tea, or tall tumblers of ice tea in the shade of your porch or front yard tree, when it is time to tell family stories, & remember.

John E. Fleming grew up to graduate from Berea College in Kentucky & spent two years in the Peace Corps in Malawi, Africa. He completed his Master's & Doctorate in American history at Howard University, & while a Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Educational Policy there, published The Lengthening Shadow of Slavery & The Case for Affirmative Action for Blacks in Higher Education 1978. He joined the Ohio Historical Society & became founding director of the National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center. He was later the director & chief operating officer for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. He is currently VP for Museums at the Cincinnati Museum Center. One of his daughters is the author Barbara Fleming, whose newest mystery will be reviewed shortly.
(11/06/05)

Rebecca