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A Twenty-First Century Freedwoman Discovers Her Roots
Basic Books
January 2006
288 pages
ISBN: 0465015557
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Starting with a photograph and some writings left by her
grandmother, Thulani Davis goes looking for the "white folk"
in her family-a Scots-Irish family of cotton planters
unknown to her-and uncovers a history far richer and
stranger than she had ever imagined.
When Davis's grandmother died in 1971, she was writing a
novel about her parents, Mississippi cotton farmers who met
after the Civil War: Chloe Curry, a former slave from
Alabama, married with several children, and Will Campbell, a
white planter from Missouri who had never married
In this compelling intersection of genealogy, memoir, and
Reconstruction history, Davis picks up where her grandmother
left off. Her journey takes her from Missouri to Mississippi
to Alabama, back to her home town in Virginia, and even to
Sierra Leone. The Campbells lead her to locate not only
their pioneer history but to find the previously unknown
roots of her mother's family; to Civil War archives, where
she discovers the records of the Campbells who fought with
Confederate troops; to the Silver Creek plantation in Yazoo,
Mississippi, where the two branches of her family history
became one; and to a county near her Virginia hometown where
both families started their American journey, completely
unknown to each other.
My Confederate Kinfolk examines the origins of some
of our most deeply ingrained notions about what makes a
family black or white and offers an immensely compelling,
intellectually challenging alternative.
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