The Ditchdigger's Daughters

The Ditchdigger’s Daughters is a loving memoir of how a poor and uneducated black laborer, a child of the Great Depression, overcame incredible obstacles to give his daughters a better life. Dr. Thornton’s father fought in World War II as a Navy seaman, second class. By age twenty-seven he had five children to raise——all girls, and no boys. He dug ditches for a living while his wife cleaned houses. Together, they formulated a dream: that all their daughters would be doctors. Fortuitously, his daughters formed a traveling band, "The Thornton Sisters", which achieved not only musical success on the “college circuit”, but earned them college tuition money as well. From the tenements of East Harlem to the footlights of the Apollo Theatre to the halls of an Ivy League medical school, Dr. Thornton has written a family biography that is a modern Horatio Alger saga. The book tells the true story about a black family of all girls that transcends race, color and gender to rekindle our be