Author Donates His Work to Tucker Library

Jonathan Grant, co-author and editor of the award-winning book The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia, has presented the Tucker-Reid Cofer Library with hardcover first editions of his work.

He also introduced the library to his new novels Chain Gang Elementary and Brambleman at Wednesday's event.

“Both novels deal with important issues,” Grant said. “I think of them as “book club books.’ Chain Gang Elementary will be of special interest to readers.”

Brambleman is a follow-up to The Way It Was in the South and focuses on the mob-driven expulsion of more than 1,000 blacks from Forsyth County, Georgia, in 1912. After that, Forsyth remained virtually an all-white county for almost 100 years. 

Grant, a former Evansdale Elementary School PTA president, has now donated more than two dozen of his books to DeKalb County. “Librarians’ acquisition budgets have been cut to the bone in recent years,” Grant said. “I wanted to do what I could to help them out. My mother and grandmother were librarians, so I’ve always known how important libraries are."