Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's

In the tradition of To Kill a Mockingbird, yet more stirring because of its real-life perspective, Sunny Nash tells her story of a time before the civil rights movement of the 1960s with immediacy and poignancy.

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Bigmama didn't shop at Woolworth's, not just because things cost more there than from the hawker who drove through the Candy Hill neighborhood from time to time, but because in the 1950s black shoppers were not very welcome in white Texas towns like Bryan.

Sunny Nash was Bigmamma's granddaughter, and through her young eyes she saw not only the indignities and economic hardships her family and friends suffered - unpaved roads, mosquito-infested drainage ditches and outdoor toilets, back stairs to balcony seating in the movies - but also the love and warmth of everyday life in the segregated neighborhood.

Sunny Nash, author of Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's, an award-winning writer, photographer, producer and public speaker, is among the distinguished list of scholars and histories who contributed to the African American National Biography, produced by Harvard University and published by Oxford University Press. In the biography, Nash contributed music biographies about jazz guitarist, Kenny Burrell; trumpter, Clark Terry; and R&B vocalist, Ben E. King. Nash has also writtern music biographies about soloist, Marian Anderson and blues singer, "Ma" Gurtrude Rainey.

"Amen" by Sunny Nash appears in The African American West: A Century of Short Stories (University Press of Colorado). In this book, Nash is in prestigious company such as Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison and W.E.B. DuBois. Her work also appears in many other anthologies and collections, including Common Bonds: Stories by and about Modern Texas Women (Southern Methodist University Press).

Bigmama Didn’t Shop At Woolworth’s, recognized by the American Association of University Presses as a resource in the understanding of race relations in the United States, can be purchased and ordered from all major bookstores and the Republic of Texas Museum in Austin, operated by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, whose mission since 1891 as been to preserve Texas heritage and historic structures and landmarks around the state such as the Alamo.

“My Grandmother’s Sit-in,” an essay in Nash's Bigmama Didn’t Shop At Woolworth’s, is so crucial to a better understanding of race relations in America that Glencoe Literature: the reader's choice (Glencoe/McGraw-Hill) has included it in its high school textbook edition.

Robin Fruble of Southern California said, “Every white person in America should read this book (Bigmama Didn’t Shop At Woolworth’s)! Sunny Nash writes the story of her childhood without preaching or ranting but she made me realize for the first time just how much skin color changes how one experiences the world. But, if your skin color is brown, it matters a great deal to a great number of people. I needed to learn that. Sunny Nash is a great teacher,” Fruble said.

Tags

Sunny Nash, bigmama, race relations, reader's choice, texas history, southern history, Young Adult, african-american, Native American, civil rights