BOOKS
An eye-opening, atmospheric novel set in the South and Midwest during the time of Jim Crow that reveals a little-known part of American pre-civil rights history of Black intrigue and power.
Jordan Sable, a prosperous undertaker turned political boss, has controlled the Black vote in St. Louis for decades. Sara, his equally formidable wife, runs the renowned funeral establishment which was created to address the concerning rise in mass burials because there weren’t enough caskets available for Black people. Having a dedicated business to serve the needs of the community has allowed the Sables to ensure that Black people could be buried with dignity. Together, they’ve amassed enough success and power in the Black community to wield influence in politics, effect change and be a source of unity and stability for their friends and neighbors. But when their daughter falls for the wrong man, the family must rally to save her future before their legacy is jeopardized, showing just how precarious the livelihoods of the Black community were at the time.
THE SABLE CLOAK
Why I Wrote This Book
—Gail Milissa Grant Fall 2022
I was born on the cusp of the modern civil rights movement in St. Louis, Missouri, a mostly Jim Crow town, just beginning to grudgingly desegregate some of its public facilities. My parents took the unprecedented step of moving into an all-white neighborhood in the late 1940s which bewildered their friends. Black people back then lived in the same areas of town and spent their time and money with each other. The restaurants and shops of every stripe were all Black-owned, so there was never a question of being ‘refused service.’ My mother always said that, while growing up, the only white people she encountered were life insurance peddlers and the tire salesmen who kept her parents’ funeral home’s stable of cars rolling. I was fascinated by the stories of their youth: the dazzling formals in a Black-owned penthouse or someone’s mansion, and smaller parties where luminaries like Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, Thurgood Marshall, and Leontyne Price showed up.
Even as a teenager, I felt that these two threads — this scarcely documented, tightly kit, upwardly mobile, politically active, pre-1950s Black community, and my parents’ bodacious challenge to segregated housing — had meaning and warranted a book. It became my mission to reveal the accomplishments of overlooked Black Americans, who succeeded in the face of prodigious odds, serving as examples for their progeny, and setting in motion a social movement without end.
After a brief career in academia and twenty-two years as a Foreign Service Officer during which time I directed cultural exchange programs for leading American intellectuals, professors and writers at Embassy postings in Oslo, Paris and Belo Horizonte (Brazil), I turned my attention to writing a family memoir, “At the Elbows of My Elders: One Family’s Journey Toward Civil Rights.” Published in 2008 by the Missouri History Museum, it received the 2009 Benjamin Franklin Book of the Year (autobiography/memoirs) and an Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History in 2010.
AUDIOBOOK PREVIEW:
PRAISE & REVIEWS FOR THE SABLE CLOAK:
“From the very first page, I was captivated by the world of Sara and Jordan Sable, a Black family thriving in the South during the 1940s. As pillars of the upper middle class, their political and social influence was as extraordinary as it was groundbreaking for the time. But when a shocking event threatens to unravel everything they’ve built, their bold and unexpected response alters the trajectory of their family’s history forever. I loved The Sable Cloak for its seamless blend of history and fiction. With equal parts jaw-dropping twists and deeply emotional resonance, Gail Milissa Grant brings to life a rarely explored chapter of American history—a powerful Black family navigating life before the civil rights movement. This epic tale of legacy, resilience, and sacrifice is an unforgettable must-read.”
“Grant presents an evocative view of affluent Black life prior to the civil rights era, showing how her characters’ wealth and influence can’t shield them from racial violence. It’s a rich family saga delivered with style and heart.”
“The Sable Cloak captives the reader in this engrossing historical novel set in the Jim Crow South and Midwest between World War I and the early 1960s. Gail Milissa Grant has created finely drawn deeply human characters who fall in and out of love, create thriving businesses, start labor unions, and form families with strict codes of conduct that help them challenge the racial status quo across the generations. The saga of the Andersons and the Sables from rural South Carolina to Atlanta, St. Louis, and beyond enriches our understanding of how many Black Americans succeeded against the odds, sometimes at great personal cost.”
“The Sable Cloak is an exquisite story about the Black middle class in the 1940s and it has a pulse that rings steady and strong, making it a real pageturner. It is both bold and imaginative with characters who leapt off the page and into my heart. A fascinating piece of historical fiction that visits Black wealth, politics, love, and the ability to choose one’s own destiny and protect your legacy. A must read.”
AT THE ELBOWS OF MY ELDERS
I am especially proud of my family memoir because it was conceived in order to honor my elders who, as black Americans, worked hard, went to school and through one courageous, everyday act after another paved the way for the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and beyond.
Even while in grade school, I felt that one day their story and mine would be of interest to others.
Besides the innumerable stories my parents told me about how they navigated through a segregated America, they also broke a residential color line when, in the late 1940s, they created our home in an all-white neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri.
We were the only blacks, the only professional family, and my brother and I, the only Protestants in a Catholic grade school. An intimidating situation, to be sure, but one that was ultimatelyfortifying and uplifting.
Winner of the Benjamin Franklin Book of the Year 2009 (autobiography/memoir)
Award of Merit from the American Association for State and local history 2010
Press
THE ST. LOUIS BEACON NEWSPAPER
This article is an interview with me shortly after my book was released. http://www.stlbeacon.org/arts-life/books/9203
MS. MAGAZINE named “Elbows” a Great Read upon the book’s release in the fall of 2008: http://www.msmagazine.com/The ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH newspaper named “Elbows” a Best Book of 2008 in its December 7, 2008 edition (Arts & Entertainment Section)
ST. LOUIS MAGAZINE commented on an episode from “Elbows” in its Flashback column (December 2008) entitled Hopeful Romantics: http://www.stlmag.com/St-Louis-Magazine/December-2008/Flashback-1944
BLACK RENAISSANCE/RENAISSANCE NOIRE, a publication of New York University’s Institute of African-American Affairs, included selections from “Elbows” in its Summer/Fall 2008 edition.
A FABULOUS NEW YEAR’S EVE by Lauren Mitchell | Director of Publications Missouri Historical Society December 31, 2014 I recall many stories about New Year’s through the decades, but the one that I enjoy the most is from Gail Milissa Grant’s At the Elbows of My Elders. Her description of a lavish party transports me to a time when women wore “long gloves and gowns (some of them daringly backless) and the men [wore] tuxedos.” As she says while introducing the party discussed below, “One word seems to sum up the “talked-about-for-months parties” that St. Louis Negroes put on during Jim Crow days: ‘FABULOUS.’”
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY (St. Louis) MAGAZINE ARTICLE
“Following Ancestral Footsteps”
Please see this link for the article: http://magazine-archives.wustl.edu/Spring09/GailMilissaGrant.html
PRAISE & REVIEWS FOR AT THE ELBOWS OF MY ELDERS:
“Decades before the beginning of the civil rights movement as most Americans recognize it, black families across the U.S. were fighting the battle against discrimination. Grant’s father, a lawyer and civil rights activist in St. Louis in the 1950s, was among the less well known resisters of segregation, eventually working with more prominent figures, from Thurgood Marshall to Ralph Bunche and A. Phillip Randolph, to fight racial inequities in St. Louis. Grant recalls a long line of family resisters, middle-class business owners who were always on the forefront of the racial divide, challenging Jim Crow laws and practices while sustaining the social and economic underpinnings of the segregated black community. Grant describes growing up with the gut-wrenching “unknowing” of whether she would be welcomed in a store or business or turned away because of her race. As barriers were broken, Grant went on to a 20-year career in the foreign service with the U.S. Information Agency. This is a fascinating look at the struggles of one black family that mirrored the national struggle for civil rights.”
“Gail Milissa Grant has done a great service by presenting this riveting memoir of her remarkable father, my friend and mentor in matters of civil rights. It was to Dave Grant that I repaired for guidance and encouragement when I was assigned the task, nay privilege, of drafting the opinion on the constitutionality of a proposed city ordinance to ban discrimination in public places.”
“At the Elbows of My Elders is an engrossing memoir that deftly chronicles a family’s private lives and political passions. Grant’s extensive research vividly brings to life St. Louis’s confusing and contradictory forms of segregation and its black citizens’ determination to fight Jim Crow. Attorney David M. Grant’s pioneering activism sharply illuminates the long civil rights movement in St. Louis. This is a major addition to the history of social justice movements in Missouri and to the study of the black middle class in America.”
“Gail Milissa Grant’s achingly honest family memoir is social history at its finest. Accessibly, engrossingly written, At the Elbows of My Elders brings alive an era already but dimly remembered when privileged, proud, productive people of color in towns and cities everywhere defied the logic of racial prejudice in their domestic and civic lives and, thereby, set an indispensable example for the civil rights triumphs of the coming generation of Americans black and white.”
“In this well-written family memoir, former U.S. foreign service officer Grant presents an African-American family history that forgoes the epic sweep of the Civil Rights story to illuminate the difficult everyday life of a middle class black family in the first half of the 20th century. Focusing on the lives of her parents and grandparents, Grant’s St. Louis story captures the strong voices of her family and the ambivalent tenor of their times. The facets of institutional racism are many and not always expected; Grant’s father, a lawyer and an early activist, found himself in jail more than once: “the police had been told, ‘Just call him boy and he’ll give you grounds to lock him up’ which they did, and I gave them reason.” Grant’s mother claims she never felt racism during her “cocoonlike upbringing,” and remarks that on Chicago’s south side, “It was actually quite a lot of fun being segregated…. There was music everywhere and there were so many swank clubs.” Grant also shares tales of her own upbringing in a mostly white neighborhood, her pioneering grandmother—the first African-American embalmer—and a few marquee names like Cab Calloway and Josephine Baker. Covering an underreported facet of the 20th century American experience with detail and devotion, this insightful read should hold meaning for many. 60 color illus. (Oct.)”