Archives West Finding Aid

Eva Elsie Rutland (née Neal) was born January 15, 1917 in Atlanta, Georgia. She earned her B.A. in Economics from Spelman College (Atlanta) in 1937. She has lived in Alabama, Washington, D.C., Ohio, and Germany. She now lives in Sacramento, California. She is married and has four children.

Mrs. Rutland had already written several short stories and articles (three of which were published in the 1950's) when her book, The Trouble With Being a Mama, was published in 1964 by Abingdon Press. The book is about the troubles and joys of being a wife and mother of four in a middle-class black family. The book was well-received and popular at its release, but is no longer in print.

Mrs. Rutland has written material for several other books. One, entitled In Defense of Uncle Tom, was contracted by Abingdon in 1968. Despite months of work, however, the book was never published. At least one of her short stories, "Sex and Mr. Pumpernickel," has been published abroad. In 1978, her play, Pride, Prejudice and Pollution, with music and lyrics by Mel Lawson, was produced in Sacramento.

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Findagrave Birth: Jan. 15, 1917 Atlanta Fulton County Georgia, USA Death: Mar. 13, 2012 Sacramento Sacramento County California, USA

She was the granddaughter of slaves and the daughter of a pharmacist, Dr. Samuel Neal and school teacher, Eva Westmoreland Neal. Mrs. Rutland moved to Sacramento with her husband Bill and their four children in 1952. She had already embarked on her writing career by that time and had several articles published in Redbook Magazine, The Lady's Home Journal and Woman's Day.

She graduated from Spelman College in 1937 and married William G. "Bill" Rutland, a civilian logistics officer for the Tuskegee Airmen, in 1943. His career in the military took them and their young children to Ohio before they settled in 1952 in Sacramento, where he worked at McClellan Air Force Base.

In 1964, The Trouble with Being A Mama, her popular memoir, was published. It recounted the trials and tribulations of a middle class black women raised in comfortable circumstances in the segregated south who was suddenly confronted with the frightening prospect of raising her own children in newly integrating California. The book was out of print when the Rutland family republished it in 2005, under a new title, 'When We Were Colored, a Mother's Story.'

Mrs. Rutland went blind in her early 50s and that's when her writing career took off. Using a computer equipped with a voice synthesizer she wrote some two dozen or so Harlequin Romance novels. In 2000 her mainstream novel, 'No Crystal Stair,' was published. It is a semi-autobiographical, saga of a black family from World War II, the turbulent civil rights era, the black power movement through modern times.

Mrs. Rutland's husband, Bill Rutland was a former Sacramento City School Board member and Deputy Director at McClellan Air Force Base He died in 2005. Mrs. Rutland leaves four children, and five grandchildren.