All we had was each other

the long version

In All We Had Was Each Other, twenty Black residents of a small Ohio River town tell the stories of their lives. Madison, though in the North, had its cultural roots in the South, and for most of the twentieth century the town was strictly segregated. In their own words, Black men and women of Madison describe the deprivations of discrimination in their hometown: what it meant, personally and culturally, to be denied opportunities for participation in the educational, economic, political, and social life of the white community. And they describe how they created a community of their own, strong and viable, self-sustaining and mutually supportive of its members.