Slavery's Descendants: Shared Legacies of Race and Reconciliation

Description

Race remains a potent and divisive force in our society. Whether it is the shooting of minority people by the police, the mass incarceration of people of color, or the recent KKK rallies that have been in the news, it is clear that the scars from the United States'histories of slavery and racial discrimination run too deep to simply be ignored. But what are the most productive ways to deal with the toxic and torturous legacies of American racism? Slavery's Descendants brings together contributors from a variety of racial backgrounds, all members or associates of a national racial reconciliation organization called Coming to the Table, to tell their stories of dealing with America's racial past through their experiences and their family histories. Some are descendants of slaveholders, some are descendants of the enslaved, and many are descendants of both slaveholders and slaves. What they all have in common is a commitment toward collective introspection, and a willingness to think critically about how the nation's histories of oppression continue to ripple into the present, affecting us all. The stories in Slavery's Descendants deal with harrowing topics—rape, lynching, cruelty, shame—but they also describe acts of generosity, gratitude, and love. Together, they help us confront the legacy of slavery to reclaim a more complete picture of U.S. history, one cousin at a time. Funding for the production of this book was provided by Furthermore, a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund (https://www.furthermore.org). Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Foreword: Coming to the Table Introduction Part I: Uncovering History 1. President in the Family 2. So Many Names 3. The Will, the Woman, and the Archive 4. Overcoming Amnesia: How I Learned the Forgotten History of Two Families Linked by Slavery 5. Oregon’s Slave History 6. Seed of the Fancy Maid Part II: Making Connections 7. State Line 8. The Plantation Cake 9. Am I Black? 10. The Immeasurable Distance between Us 11. Making Connections 12. A Millennial Facing the Legacies of Slavery Part III: Working toward Healing 13. Standing on the Shoulders of My Ancestors 14. So Close and So Far Away 15. Born Both Innocent and Accountable: A Moral Reckoning 16. The Terretts of Oakland Plantation: An Essay of Atonement 17. Not a Wound Too Deep 18. To See: The Blindness of Whiteness Part IV: Taking Action 19. Digging Up the Woodpile 20. On Being Involved 21. Changing the Narrative 22. Tangled Vines: A Bloodline Shaped by Slavery 23. A Dream Deferred along Holman’s Creek 24. A Tale of Two Sisters Afterword: What a Legacy of Slavery and Racism Has to Do with Me Postscript: From Branches to Roots Acknowledgments Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index