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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Book of the Week

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Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

BBC Radio 4 LW

Book of the Week: Negroland

Margo Jefferson

Jill Waters

Book of the Week: Negroland: Episode 3

Factual: Life Stories

Negroland 130616 s gt

Episode 3

Negroland

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Negroland, Episode 3

Margo Jefferson turns her critical gaze towards her own childhood - Chicago in the 1950s.

Margo Jefferson's father was a successful black doctor who wanted his family to enjoy the comforts of a white neighbourhood. But Chicago in the 50s was not open to all.

To be born into a black, relatively wealthy family in the late 1940s was to be born into a world of contradictions. Margo Jefferson describes this world of 'privilege and plenty' as 'Negroland'. 

As her father became increasingly successful as a leading black paediatrician, he and her mother moved the family into a neighbourhood that had been exclusively white. Change was coming but it wasn't always welcome. As a young girl, Margo had to learn who amongst her white friends she could trust and who came from families which really despised them.

Margo Jefferson went on to become an arts and theatre critic on the New York Times and Newsweek; she won a Pulitzer for her journalism and now teaches at Columbia University.

Written and read by Margo Jefferson
Abridged and produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Margo Jefferson's memoir asks what it means to be born both black and privileged.

Margo Jefferson's memoir looks back on her childhood and the black bourgeois upbringing that 'made and maimed me'. Read by the author.

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