During the 1950s, when less than 20 percent of American high school graduates attended college, a group of ambitious young African Americans enrolled at Ohio University, a predominantly white school in Athens, Ohio. Because they were a tiny, barely tolerated minority, they banded together, supported each other, and formed lasting bonds. Years later, at a series of Soulful Reunions, they recalled the joys and challenges of living on a white campus before the civil rights era, and eighteen of them decided to share their stories.
The authors of the eighteen autobiographical sketches in...