Book Review: The Other Side of the Fence by Cynthia Hudgins

Reviewed by Robert Fikes, Jr., Librarian Emeritus, San Diego State University

The Other Side of the Fence mainly recounts in excruciating detail the needlessly painful childhood and teenage years of Cynthia Hudgins, a person of mixed racial heritage who suffered greatly because of this nation’s rigid racial hierarchy based on the infamous “one drop rule.” Born in 1921 in Coronado, California, Cynthia might have a led a less tortured existence had she grown up in a community across the bay in San Diego where she could not have avoided interacting with persons of African heritage-- after all, her grandfather, former slave Amos Hudgins classified as mulatto, was once an adventuresome Civil War veteran who had considerable standing among Blacks in the region, as did his wife, Annie, also a former slave whose Caucasian heritage was evident.

But Amos died when Cynthia was age four and Annie, for whatever reason, never had that heart-to-heart talk about race that would allow her grandchild to have enough pride in her background to fortify her for challenges sure to come. And it certainly didn’t help that both of Cynthia’s parents were emotionally cold (her father didn’t hug and kiss her, and her mother never told her she loved her). Fair-skinned Algernon was a politically conservative military veteran who had a nice office job, and Scottish-born May both distained Blacks and had Cynthia repeatedly shuttled between their home and the girl’s grandparents’ residence.

Cynthia Hudgins with grandmother Annie Hudgins, 845 B Ave, Coronado, 1927

It's quite an unsettling experience reading of the many times in the 1920s and 1930s sensitive young Cynthia was mistreated by mean kids, neighborhood mothers, and random adults once they discovered she was not entirely white—resulting in ostracism, physical assaults, betrayals, feelings of abandonment, loneliness, guilt, paranoia owing to the fear of being outed, self-loathing and the rest. But her struggles were hardly unique. Even in those decades people like Cynthia and her father—those who possessed that contaminating one drop who felt it to their advantage to “pass” as white or were satisfied to let the world assume they were—could be found in every metropolis and in many small towns across the nation.

Cynthia Hudgins with parents, Algernon and May Hudgins, circa 1933

We don’t know why Algernon chose not to associate with San Diego’s Blacks. Another local fair-skinned African American, John H. Dodge, a contemporary who fashioned a successful career in a downtown bank, was a longtime friend of W. E. B. Du Bois and a principal co-founder of the local branch of the NAACP (blue-eyed blonde African American Walter F. White led the national organization in 1931). Moreover, it is estimated by 1940 untold thousands of persons of some trace of African descent had quietly slipped into the population of unsuspecting white Americans. Having grown up in the 1950s and 1960s in Birmingham, Alabama, I knew of Blacks (including my great grandfather) whose countenance revealed not the slightest hint of Africa, who could very easily have passed for white but chose instead to live among Blacks. Algernon’s failure to instill respect for or some identity with Blacks in his defenseless daughter had a devastating effect on her life. “I could have lived with being dark,” she wrote. “It was looking like what I wasn’t that I couldn’t handle.”

Cynthia Hudgins, 1937

Cynthia’s husband was somewhat hostile and indifferent to the plight of Blacks and her son resented her telling him her deepest secret for he simply couldn’t deal with its implications. But the passage of time can heal old wounds and produce a different perspective. What likely would have caused dread and depression generations ago (like the revelation of a Black ancestor) had morphed into something close to acceptance, the kind of positive development one hopes for going forward. Circa 1997, Cynthia revealed her secret to her son’s children. She must have been enormously relieved and elated to hear their instant response: “Cool!”

Clearly, the overarching significance of Ms. Hudgins’ book--which alone deserves praise for its portrayal of everyday life in small town Coronado in a bygone era--is that more than any previous writing on the matter of passing by an individual who was actually involved in the deception, and it will remain of inestimable value as testimony to what some passers endured for it brings to light wrenching psychological trauma attendant to denying a basic and important truth about oneself. In the case of Cynthia Hudgins, a vulnerable and caring soul, full knowledge of her ancestry nearly drove her to commit suicide.

Robert Fikes, Jr., a 1970 graduate of Tuskegee University, earned graduate degrees in modern European history and library science at the University of Minnesota. Retired in 2017, he had been a research librarian at San Diego State University where he was also subject bibliographer for Africana Studies, American, European, Middle Eastern, and African history. He has published books, journal and magazine articles, encyclopedia entries, book reviews, and bibliographies pertaining to history, literature, and art.

The Other Side of the Fence book launch will take place February 4th at 3 pm at the Coronado Historical Association at 1100 Orange Ave. More details are found by clicking this link: Cynthia Hudgins' Memoir Book Launch.

The book is available on Amazon for immediate delivery, but will also be available at the launch and Bay Books in Coronado.