From Mud Pies To Memories

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Ninety Years of a Kansas Farm Girl’s Journey to Professor, Mother, and Matriarch
Born on a Kansas farm in 1935—the youngest of twelve children—Ruth Geraldine Burnett Dorsey has
lived a life that stretches from horse-drawn wagons to 18-wheelers, kerosene lamps to computers,
segregated classrooms to college lecture halls.
In these warm, funny, and deeply honest pages, Ruth invites you to:

• Walk the dusty lane to the Burnett farm, a 40-acre plot purchased by a formerly enslaved man in 1883, and has been held in the family for over 128 years.
• Sit under the big shade tree where homemade ice cream churned and family stories flowed like sweet tea.
• Ride hay wagons, attend chicken funerals, dodge mean pigs, and meet a mule named Old Bourbon and a dog named Ring.
• Watch a little Black girl navigate Jim Crow, integration, and unequal school systems—and still graduate at the top of her class.
• Follow her journey from a one-room schoolhouse to Kansas State Teachers College, and on to Compton Community College, where she taught for 30 years, mentored countless students, and helped put Compton College on the map.
• Travel with her from Kansas to Maryland, Mississippi, California, and finally Georgia, where she now shares life with her children and grandchildren.

Told in her own voice—with humor, grit, and a whole lot of faith—Ruth’s story is a rare and beautiful
record of:

• Black farm ownership and survival.
• Family loyalty and everyday courage.
• A woman who refused to let racism, hardship, or age define her limits.

Now in her 90s, Ruth knows she is the last of the original Burnett children left to tell it.