Mrs. Peterkin of South Carolina is one of the first to write a book unaffectedly about negroes, without conscious or uncon-Julia (Mood) Peterkin 1880–1961 Courtesy of Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc.scious belittling mockery in view of superior white advancement.

"Green Thursday" is a collection of short narratives—sketches almost, so slight is the thread of action—dealing with the vicissitudes of the family of a negro husbandman on a small South Carolina farm. With sincerity, simplicity, delicacy and sympathy the author reveals glimpses of the life of Kildee, his wife Rose, his children, the little maid-servant …, and the life of the negro community…. [A] constant thread of toil emerges in Kildee's manful struggle with the soil. There are broad splashes of color; a house that burns, the time that Baby Rose is burned to death, the time the red rooster picks out the eye of another child. Tragedies conceived...