A Friendship, a Dime, and a Dream

The Biography of Willie Lee Buffington

A chance meeting between a young white boy and an African American community mentor leads to an altruistic obsession in this one-of-a-kind biography. Willie Lee Buffington (1908-1988), even as a young lad, never understood the Jim Crow mentality of Deep South America in the first half of the twentieth century. As a dirt poor textile mill worker, he secures a dime to purchase five stamps, sending letters off requesting books for uneducated African Americans. Buffington also works hard to become highly educated himself, parlaying his studies into a professorship. Buffington’s work ethic and empathy for his fellow man eventually snowballs into over one hundred Faith Cabin Libraries throughout South Carolina and Georgia. The remarkable Buffington, relatively unknown, becomes a civil rights icon in this powerful story of faith and good works.