As unfortunate as it may be, the truth is that several African-American men and women in the United States are the offspring of grandmothers and great-grandmothers raped by white slave owners. How did these women handle the combined trauma of being sexually assaulted, despised by their masters’ wives and other whites for apparently ‘seducing’ their men and carrying children that would be constant reminders of their oppression? First published in the 1950s, Pauli Murray’s Proud Shoes tells the true story of how Murray’s grandmother coped with being raped by several brothers, bearing their children and subsequently living as a member of a white family. | Proud Shoes by Pauli Murray, Paperback | Indigo Chapters