Emily Bernard

“In my family, race was not a construction, or a theory, or an outdated consequence of history, but the active, living foundation of our reality. Race determined the contours of every choice we made; every mundane public act we performed was a project with a name. When we moved into our house, it was called integration. When my older brother and I entered the public school system, it was called desegregation. The split between black and white was not metaphorical; railroad tracks divided black and white Nashville. On the white side of town, South Nashville, we played a role in a grand project of enormous proportions. We lived in South Nashville, but in North Nashville we could be black in a way that was not possible in any other part of the city. In North Nashville, no one white was watching. We could relax. We were free.”
― Emily Bernard, Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine

“This South is nothing like the South in which I used to live, with its manicured lawns and gated country clubs. Even that South has changed. Over the years, Nashville has gotten bigger and more complex. The relatively modest, adolescent city in which I was born had grown into an adult with a tailored suit and gym-toned thighs, all glamour and muscle. It is part of the New South. In that South, there is no place for my daydreams. My true South, this South, is old, and deep, well into the belly of the region, far below the Mason-Dixon Line.”
― Emily Bernard, Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine