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:
“Pray be always in motion. Early in the morning go and see things; and the rest of the day go and see people. If you stay but a week at a place, and that an insignificant one, see, however, all that is to be seen there; know as many people, and get into as many houses as ever you can.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“And we can get back to that raw state
Of feeling, so long deemed
Inconsequential and therefore appropriate to our later musings
About religion, about migrations. What is restored
Becomes stronger than the loss as it is remembered;
Is a new, separate life of its own.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)