The Other Side of Nolan Street: A Memoir of Innocence and Intolerance (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798272221261)

In 1955, in San Antonio Texas, eleven-year-old Sylvia encounters racial prejudice for the first time when she is enrolled in a newly integrated junior high school. Applying the simplicity of childhood logic, she attempts to solve the problem by deciding not to be Black anymore, a bold but clearly impossible choice for a little brown-skinned girl.

Blending humor and pathos, childhood memories and a healthy dose of American history, The Other Side of Nolan Street: A Memoir of Innocence and Intolerance is the warm, intensely personal coming of age memoir of a naïve young Black girl. Raised by loving grandparents who chose to shield her from the harsh realities of the Jim Crow South that surrounded her, Sylvia had little sense of racial identity and no fear of people society deemed "different."

Her story captures the absurdities of racism through the innocent, curious eyes of a child. Also navigating the angst of adolescence, she marches to the beat of her own drum-accompanied with only her diary-as she experiences the embryonic stages of public school integration and the rise of the American Civil Rights Movement.

The memoir reminds us that the so-called "Black Experience" is not uniform in nature. While there are shared struggles, The Other Side of Nolan Street offers a fresh, personal, and thought-provoking view of what it meant to grow up Black during one of America's most turbulent events.

"Informative, entertaining, timely...and a monster good story!"
- Guy Washington, former Regional Manager of the National Park Service Network to Freedom Underground Railroad Program

Author: Sylvia Alden Roberts
ISBN-13: 9798272221261
Publisher: Independently Published
Language: English
Published: 03/16/2026
Pages: 350
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.03lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.78d