Forty years after they were written, what can the negro stories of the late Julia Peterkin, a white South Carolina plantation mistress, say to the black man today? How can they speak to the present situation in this country? to the issue of race? What can these forgotten tales possibly tell us? (p. 173)

It was in 1924 that the publication of Green Thursday, her first collection of short stories, arrested national and even international attention. The negro community on "Blue Brook" plantation presented a fresh literary scene. But what was essentially new in Julia Peterkin's projection of her characters was the terms of their responsibility. Then prevailing in the South was the threadbare and incomplete myth of the irresponsible negro, whom the responsible white man had to take care of. In the North, little Eva still came over the broken ice on the river to escape a Southern Simon...