"By the time he turned twenty-five in 1960, S. R. Martin Jr. had graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and had become the first black teacher in a California high school. The next year, he became the first black faculty member at one of the state's oldest junior colleges. The son of a bishop in the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), he went on to represent a number of other firsts: he was the first person appointed to a regular faculty position in the English Department of Washington State University while still a graduate student; he taught the first African American literature course ever offered at WSU; and he helped initiate the first African American Studies program there. In 1970 he was invited to help start a new interdisciplinary college, The Evergreen State College.". "Yet it is less Martin's own personal history than that of his family - both paternal and maternal - that makes this narrative vital for those who would understand the African American experience west of the Mississippi. After avid genealogical research and the generous memory-sharing of relatives, Martin has crafted the story of his forebears from Emancipation to their exodus from the South and Texas - begun even before the great black migrations that occurred around the two world wars. As Martin explains it, he and his brother "arrived on the scene at the confluence of these family streams in time to catch a ride to the shining sea."" "Martin reveals his family's struggles and triumphs as they embrace their new life in the western united States. Students, scholars, and interested general readers of modern African American history and sociology will be greatly rewarded by reading this warm and vivid personal and family memoir."--BOOK JACKET.