Early Life
Ginger was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the fourth son and next-to-last child of an affluent Southern family that moved to Indiana (Debs' home state) while he was very young, and was shortly thereafter plunged into abject poverty by the Great Depression. After four years "squatting" in a series of unoccupied houses in Greencastle while their eldest son attended DePauw college, the Ginger family settled in Indianapolis, still in extremely difficult circumstances. These experiences deeply influenced Ray Ginger's political convictions and much of his historical work: in later life he frequently recounted his childhood humiliation when sent to collect the bag of flour that was the only form of public welfare available, and also the intense personal rage that dominated his youth.
Read more about this topic: Ray Ginger
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)