Ric Sheffield — We Got By: A Black Family’s Journey in the Heartland

Sunday Service — 10:30 a.m.

Leader — Bambi Gordon

Speaker — Ric Sheffield

Title — We Got By: A Black Family’s Journey in the Heartland.

Topic —Life along the color line in rural Ohio was hard. Being Black often meant feeling frightened and alone. For a family like Ric S. Sheffield’s, examining this reality closely meant confronting challenges and tragedies that often felt overwhelming, even as their odyssey also included the joyful and inspiring. Navigating day-to-day existence in a world where trusting white neighbors required a careful mixture of caution and faith, Sheffield and his kin existed in a space where they were both seen and unseen.

Spanning four generations and assessing the legacies of traumatic events (arrests, murders, suicide) that are inextricable from the racial dynamics of the small community his family called home, this gripping memoir is a heartfelt, clear-eyed, and rare chronicle of Black life in the rural Midwest. Experiencing the burden of racism among people who refused to accept that such a thing existed only made the isolation feel that much worse to Sheffield and his relatives. And yet, they overcame the obstacles and managed to persist: they got by.

I am very pleased to announce the publication of my new book, We Got By: A Black Family’s Journey in the Heartland. Filled with revealing glimpses of life along the color line for 4 generations of my family, I hope you find the stories that I share in this book to be both touching and inspiring. Thank you for your support and encouragement for the various projects that I’ve undertaken to explore notions of rural diversity and the Black experience in small town America. The paperback is available for pre-ordering. You can find the book on Amazon here. You can also order it directly from the publisher and receive a 35% discount by using the code GOTBY (case sensitive) for a limited time. using the link here. Be sure to enter the code and click “Apply Code” to get the discount when you are checking out.

Bio — Professor Emeritus Ric S. Sheffield, author of We Got By: A Black Family’s Journey in the Heartland, has researched, taught, written, and lectured extensively about rural diversity in general, and the Black experience in small town America in particular. As co-director (with Prof. Howard Sacks, Kenyon College) of the award-winning Community Within: Black Experience in Knox County, Ohio project and co-director (with Prof. Brooke Bryan, Antioch College) of the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s (GLCA) Oral History in the Liberal Arts (OHLA) program, he has designed and executed projects intended to explore minority communities in small town America. He also offers workshops on exploring diversity in rural geographies and cultural contexts.

Fellowship has returned. Join us downstairs after service for coffee and conversation.

*Masks are requested in the building*