Dr. Essie Proax Knuckle, formerly of Roanoke, has recently authored a new book, “My Children’s Minds Will Not Be the Devil’s Workshop.” Published in September 25, the book follows three Black children who go on an imaginative journey across America after their mother warns them “an idle mind is the devil’s worship.”
Guided by maps, a Sears Roebuck catalog, and The Negro Motorist Green-Book, the siblings imagined their way through states like Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Missouri. Encountering the horrors of lynchings, sundown towns, minstrel shows, and the legacy of the Trail of Tears. In Springfield, Missouri, they stop at a statue marking where three innocent black men were burned by a mob. In Tulsa, they learn about the massacre of over 300 black residents and the destruction of their thriving community. But alongside the terror, they discover light: Native American stories, multicultural families, black communities offering food, shelter, and prayers. They learn that if you can imagine a dream, you can claim its power, if only in your mind.
Dr. Knuckle is one of four siblings born in Slate Hill to Mr. and Mrs. Dallas Proax Sr. She wrote a well thought-out book, “Slate Hill – 1949: My Five Year Old Memories of my family and Slate Hill, A Community in Roanoke, VA.” This book was based on her five-year-old recollection of her community.
Recently her current book is being read in Barbados, Iceland, Nigeria, and Sweden. Her writings are presented in the Black vernacular that she grew up hearing. It not only enlightens readers about what life was like for Black children growing up in the Jim Crow south but it further assists readers in understanding how Black children use their learned cultural skills to help them become productive citizens and how they might use resilience as a survival mechanism.
The book on Slate Hill is the only book that portrays an actual physical map of the many homes and families that once occupied that now demolished community.
