Helen Pruden Kaufmann is the author of White Gloves and Collards, a memoir about her childhood in Edenton, North Carolina, during the transition between the Jim Crow era and the civil rights movement. She was the community liasson for a public school desegregation program in Massachusetts before relocating to California, where she has done writing and editorial work for educational organizations such as the Santa Clara County Office of Education, Joint Venture Silicon Valley's Challenge 2000, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford.