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The Legend of Buddy Bush
by Sheila P. Moses
Simon and Schuster: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2004. 216 pages.
Twelve-year-old Pattie Mae would prefer to be called Patricia, but she yearns even more to leave Rehobeth Road in Rich Square, North Carolina and join her older sister up north in Harlem. The realities of racism and segregation come to the foreground in Pattie Mae’s story of her falsely accused Uncle Buddy and his escape from the deplorable brand of justice too often practiced in the era before the Civil Rights movement.
The year is 1947, and Pattie Mae and her family -- her mother and grandparents and Uncle Buddy -- are living a rather routine life on Rehobeth Road. Uncle Buddy, Pattie Mae explains, “wasn’t my real uncle. He was what Grandpa called kinfolks on nobody’s side,” and had been raised by her grandparents ever since his own mother and father were killed in a farming accident. Having gone north for many years, Buddy returned to North Carolina, perhaps to get over a broken heart, and “When he came back in 1942, he came home to us.” Five years later, on the night that Uncle Buddy takes Pattie Mae to her very first picture show, he is accused of attempting to rape a white woman and summarily carted off to jail with a noticeable absence of due process. The story that unfolds is emotional, inspiring, and instructive.
Author Sheila P. Moses, who is also a poet and playwright, creates an appealing voice for her main character. Pattie Mae is a girl on the cusp of a young womanhood that is upon her, perhaps, too soon and under too stressful circumstances. She is well-spoken and clearly a product of her time and place. She is a girl who listens and hears and absorbs the family and community cultures that surround her, and values home while at the same time thinking of a better future. Side plots concerning the death of Pattie Mae’s grandfather and her older siblings who are already “up north” help reveal the many facets of Pattie Mae’s character.
Her Uncle Buddy’s story ends in ambiguity -- he escaped unharmed before he could be lynched, but his ultimate fate is unknown to us. Moses appends Pattie Mae’s account with some of the facts of the case of the real Buddy Bush. Unlike the fictional Buddy, the real Buddy was tried and acquitted, as were the men who attempted to lynch him, and white citizens were among those enraged by the treatment of an innocent black man. The fictional account takes a more -- pardon the expression -- black and white approach. This might be excused by Pattie Mae’s subjective point of view, but a touch more nuance regarding race relations in 1947 North Carolina would have been welcome. Even so, The Legend of Buddy Bush offers a satisfying narrative of a transitional time in American history, told in the voice of a wise girl/woman, that will teach young readers about the dangers of racism and justice gone wrong. (Ages 12+)
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