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1945, Brooklyn, New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant. Post WWII euphoria, nostalgia, the PAL, and interracial relations as they really were, as told by the pioneering Black track stars.

This is their warm story of their religious home life (Papa was a minister), their "mixed" neighborhood, their athletic triu... More

1945, Brooklyn, New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant. Post WWII euphoria, nostalgia, the PAL, and interracial relations as they really were, as told by the pioneering Black track stars.

This is their warm story of their religious home life (Papa was a minister), their "mixed" neighborhood, their athletic triumphs and heartbreaking defeats. This a story of the realities of post-WWII racial prejudices; the pride of the girls' immediate neighborhood, and the vulnerability they learned to feel when they ventured outside of it.

Mary and Martha's immediate neighbors and shop-owner friends, fixtures in their growing up years, were a wonderful mix of Black, Jewish, Irish and Italian people. The twins relate personal, sharing stories about each, and because they were kids, it is striking how many of their remembrances have to do with food or candy. (The girls insisted that their story contain an appendix of the recipes that have become a part of their lives!)

The twins story is also the story of the Police Athletic League and how the sisters, Black sisters, helped to reshape it. The PAL gave them the psychological boost to achieve, to believe. It opened very real doors. And it changed forever for women because of them. The PAL story picks up from the first race that Mary won at the 13th Regiment Armory Regional Track Meet (but received the silver medal because she was Black, and the white German favorite had to get the gold). It includes the successes of "firsts" the twins shared in the first Black PAL girls track team in Bedford-Stuyvesant and the first integrated PAL AAU Women's track team in New York City. Their scrapbooks are filled with photos and medals. And the panorama shows the white canvas of female athletes and spectators that first greeted them.

Today, Mary and Martha are leaders in their own interest areas. Both rose in the ranks of the Women's Auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention; VARANA, the Volta Region Association of North America; and the Women's Africa Committee of the African American Institute. Mary retired last year from the Elmhurst Hospital Center as Administrative Executive Secretary to the Director. Martha pursued politics and became the first Black Administrative Secretary in the New York Supreme Court and then the first Black Legal Administrative Secretary to work in the Appellate Division. She has been a team with Justice William C. Thompson for over 30 years. When she graduated from John Jay College of Criminal Justice earning a Bachelor of Science degree, she did it with an award for excellence in academic achievement. Both of the women have firecracker personalities that light up any room they are in.