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Brown: Her journey began with this photograph of a young African-American girl dressed in tartan plaid. Along the way she also discovered unlikely lovers and Confederate soldiers. They are all connected because they are the kinfolk of respected novelist and playwright Thulani Davis. At a time when people everywhere from a variety of racial backgrounds are digging into their ancestral past to find out where they come from, Thulani offers up her own unusual history in a new book My Confederate Kinfolk. We will talk about the book and Thulani's journey to write it next on Black Issues Forum.
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Brown: Good afternoon. I am Natalie Bullock Brown. Welcome to Black Issues Forum. Our guest today is an accomplished novelist and playwright, having written two novels 1959 and Maker of Saints, several plays, the scripts for feature films, and the librettos for operas Amistad and Malcolm X. She is also the author of two collections of poems and now a non-fiction book entitled My Confederate Kinfolk: A Twenty-First Century Freed Woman Discovers Her Roots, the result of her journey to learn about the white folk in her family. As we will hear today she uncovered an unusual history that is both compelling and fascinating. Our guest today is Ms. Thulani Davis and we are excited and honored to welcome her to the show. Thanks for joining us on Black Issues Forum.
Davis: Thank you.
Brown: Let's start right off with the book. Tell us a little bit-well, how would you describe My Confederate Kinfolk?
Davis: Well I guess it is a journey. It is a journey-it has been a journey for me and it is a journey through the lives of two families from the 1850s until about 1930. And sometimes they are on this journey separately and sometimes, eventually they meet up in Mississippi.
Brown: Well tell us about the photograph that started it all.
Davis: I found this-I got the photograph years ago when I inherited two photo albums from my great grandmother and my great grandfather. My great grandmother was African-American and had been enslaved in Alabama and my great grandfather was a cotton planter from a white family in Missouri. And stuck in the albums was a photograph of my grandmother in tartan and I thought what is an 8-year-old black girl doing in tartan in Mississippi in the 1880s? It was a puzzle so I started looking into that. And also to find out who the people were in the photo albums.
Brown: So most of the pictures that are in My Confederate Kinfolk actually are family photos? These are photos that you have in your possession and that you did not go to an archive to find?
Davis: Well half of them. The black people are in my photo albums and maybe some of those that are in the book of the Campbells, Will Campbell's family, maybe one or two are mine, and some of the Confederate solider photographs are mine but to complete the story and the pictures I did have to go to the archives in Missouri where the Campbell's papers are and they had pictures of everyone in the family, most of whom were people I had never seen in my life so-in fact in the book there are two pictures taken on the same day at the same moment in Yazoo City and the picture of Will Campbell is one of the people who was in Missouri and the picture that we are talking about was in my possession; they were probably never together because of the different race of the people in the pictures even though they were taken at the same time.
Brown: Wow, that is amazing. Well tell us a little bit about your great grandmother, Chloe Curry, and your great grandfather Will Campbell and just give us some of this rich history that you found out about.
Davis: Well Chloe's family was probably originally came into Virginia from Sierra Leon. They were in Alabama most of their years in slavery and they had quite a few years of being separated as a family. Even the parents I believe were separated at least twice for long periods. She grew up on cotton farms. She actually did work outside and inside; she worked in the fields and she later became a seamstress, she was also a housekeeper. Like many people of that era she had many skills, survival skills, and tools for employment.
Will came from a privileged family in Missouri. He was the last living child in his family, or the baby of the family, and yet because the war came and they occupied, the Union Army occupied his hometown and his house, he stopped going to school at nine years of age and went haphazardly to school or had tutors off and on during the war but he basically, his life was interrupted by the war. He was moved around to Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas throughout the war and camped out in the swamps of Arkansas and had quite an amazing sort of experience of the war. He was too young to be in it but four of his brothers were and his mother went from battle site to battle site taking bandages and medicine to her sons. So she lived on horseback for at least two-and-a-half years of the war.
Brown: Well how did Chloe and Will meet? Tell us more about their relationship and how it unfolded.
Davis: Chloe married in Alabama after the end of slavery and had four children and continued to work for a woman who was probably the woman who owned her earlier on. She and her husband decided to follow her brother to Mississippi because there was both a lot of violence in Alabama against blacks for voting, which they had just started to do, and the economy in Alabama was very bad at the time. So Mississippi looked better and they headed out that way. Chloe's husband hated Mississippi; he ended up leaving, going back to Alabama. They eventually divorced and he had another family. She ended up getting a job as Will Campbell's housekeeper and that is how the relationship started. I don't know exactly what the nature of the relationship was originally but they ended up living together for 24 years and they had my grandmother and they also shared the raising of her other children.
Brown: How old was Chloe when she met and began to work for Will Campbell?
Davis: Probably 24.
Brown: And how much older was he?
Davis: He was the same age; actually I think he was-I should know-he was a year or two younger.
Brown: Oh okay, okay. That seems to be unusual on top of the fact, just all of these little interesting tidbits about the relationship that he was younger, that it was interracial, and that they were together for as long as they were at a time when completely illegal at least to sleep with someone of the opposite race but tell us about the laws that were in place at that time and who they were really for.
Davis: When she first moved to Mississippi in the 1870s reconstruction was on and there were a set of laws that actually gave her the rights of a citizen. But around the time that she met Will Campbell, reconstruction was being destroyed, black people were being terrorized not to vote and there was a whole change of government and throughout the 1880s and 1890s; Jim Crow was invented and enacted in state legislatures so there were first the trains were segregated and then there were a series of laws passed excluding interracial marriage, which was legal five years earlier, then barring any kind of relationships between people of different races. And there was ten years of jail time attached to breaking that law. Although it was primarily to protect white women and send black men to jail because very few white people that I know of were ever punished for breaking that law. It meant that Will and Chloe would have kept the appearance of sleeping in separate places in the house and that sort of thing.
Brown: What do you know about your great grandmother and grandfather that would give you some insight into what they saw in each other, how they were attracted to each other and what kept them together for so long?
Davis: I really think they must have been great friends. He taught her everything she needed to know to run a cotton plantation of several thousand acres. When he died she took on all of his loans, paid all of his debts, and was able to continue to farm, getting loans from his same bankers for another 20 years so I know he taught her the business. Chloe couldn't read or write. And I said his access to school had been very limited. I think they both had suffered both hard times and isolation and after they became a couple they were severely isolated where they were; his family shunned him to a degree. His brother for instance who lived next door moved away and I believe that they were both very much involved in just the day-to-day life. They didn't have dreams of running off to Paris or anything. They were both-their friends were people who farmed cotton in Mississippi and as my grandmother wrote hard work was what they knew.
Brown: During your journey of uncovering all of this information, how were you transformed by finding out about the part of your family that comes from Will Campbell and just Chloe and-you know how did that impact you?
Davis: Well several ways. I was continually surprised. I always knew I had some white ancestry and most people I grew up around would, did say they had white ancestry but finding out who the people were amazed me in many ways. One their humanity came across to me. Their inhumanity in some cases also came across to me. But my first shock was to see the pictures of them and to discover that I looked like some of them; I was completely unprepared because I thought I looked like all of the Davis', which I do but. Three of the women in the Campbell family were writers and they, some were published in the local newspaper, one published some short stories herself but they-I found rejection letters that one received from publishers in New York and I felt bad. I would not have gotten along with that woman but I share that experience and I felt privileged. It reminded me that being a published author is still a rare and wonderful thing to achieve and it is hard to do that. And it also made me wonder about genes-like there are three writers in the Campbell family and did that get passed to me some mysterious way along with my hairline? So there were constant surprises and then I met some living Campbells who are really cool people and we get along and we are still getting to know each other so that was really something to get used to because in middle age you think you've met most of your family.
Brown: Why is it important for African-Americans, and I guess I should ask you do you think it is important for African-Americans to delve into their history in a similar manner as you have and what can we hope to learn that can be beneficial to us?
Davis: Well I think it is not for everyone. It is very frustrating. It is great if you have information. I think it helps broaden a person. I was empowered by it. I mean I feel that when you do the work it is not just who they are and where they were from-like I know I am descended from the Tim Nay people of Sierra Leon-but the stories empowerment, the stories of what people went through make me know that I could have, should have the kind of grit they had. I was routinely thinking, "Oh my God I could never have done that" when I learned what people went through and so I don't think I have the kind of toughness my great grandmother did but I am glad to know that I can think about myself being that way. And I felt that I had connections to more people and places. I don't think it changes anything to find out I am sixth cousin to President Polk but I do feel a part of a tradition of women who did theater in America because some of the Campbells built theaters and so I feel I have a tie to Missouri and the Midwest which is new, and to Mississippi. When I went there last week and someone said, "Welcome home." And I never went there before a year ago so I do feel like I have Mississippi ties.
Brown: That is wonderful. Who in the book, or in your research about your family, was most inspirational and who frankly repulsed you in your family?
Davis: I guess my great grandmother inspired me a lot. But she arrived in Mississippi at a time when actually this wave of terror started and there were people who lived in Yazoo County, Mississippi with her who are incredible heroes to me; I never knew anything about them. Some of them were-had their houses burned down, some of them were run out, some of them were killed. But there were a whole array of people who had been cotton farmers or sharecroppers who voted and who helped other people to vote who became real heroes to me because they, many of them were killed for trying to help other farmers and sharecroppers vote and at the same time the people who were their enemies, who were trying to repress them, some of them, or one of them at least was one of my Campbell ancestors. And so I had to try to wrap my mind around his experience-one of the reasons I am glad I went through the Civil War was it helped me to understand how he could regard African-American life as so dispensable that someone was lynched in his front yard and he left the body hanging there. He had seen things and done things in the Civil War that were also really terrible-things that were done to freed men who were fighting against them and at the same time I know his experience in the war was devastating. It was not a glorious experience and he probably had three years of Hell prior to that happening so in a way that was, they had a human response which they took out on black people. But so I feel I really needed, almost as a novelist, to try and understand people fully in order to understand what they were like in dealing with each other.
Brown: Right. There is a picture in your book of a Confederate soldier and another young man. Tell us about them.
Davis: That I believe is the youngest son-youngest brother-of Will-I am not, okay.
Brown: Is it Josiah Danforth?
Davis: Yes and Samuel Campbell. Samuel Campbell was a brother to Will Campbell and the youngest in the family to be in the war. He lived for a couple of years after the war but all of them-and Danforth fought in the war as well-all of them suffered malaria, dysentery, and typhoid during the war and most of the Campbells died from related diseases, even after the war. They all had chronic malaria and bronchial problems so he died at 26 years of age in Mississippi.
Brown: Wow. Now I think you said a little bit to me before the show that in some people, some African-Americans may because of the time period you are dealing with, I mean slavery is very touchy to many African-Americans, especially the older ones. And there may be viewers out there that are thinking well why are you even interested in the white side of your family, I mean who cares, I don't want to know about that, I don't want to have anything to do with that. But how do you-how would you respond to that? Why is it important to know about that side?
Davis: Well I think it tells you who the African-Americans were in several ways. I know plenty of people who do not want to know anything about their white ancestry. I met a woman in Mississippi who said she played with people who were, white kids who had the same last name and she sort of knew they might be her cousins but she still doesn't want to know. But I feel like I know a lot more about Chloe and about my grandmother because they not only worked for Leonodas Campbell who had the lynching in his yard, but they lived with them because of the intimacy of the work, particularly being a housekeeper. That it tells me why she was so determined to send all of her children, grand children, nieces, nephews to school outside of Mississippi because there weren't good schools in Mississippi. Why she was determined to get them a piece of land of their own to farm, to allow them various ways to insulate themselves against pressure she had felt both in slavery and after slavery and I think knowing about the Campbells allows me to know what she talked about, who she saw every day, just the quality of her life. Some of the people that she knew in Alabama, some of the whites that she worked for, were people who made sure she was exposed to certain kinds of information, who helped her in some of her endeavors and who continued to be in touch with her over the years. And so it tells me what she knew about the world if they were sending her cards from New Orleans even though she couldn't read; someone would read them to her. And I knew she couldn't read or write but when I found all of the land deals that she did after she inherited the land I had to have a completely different impression of how accomplished she was. So she couldn't read or write but I have a stack of papers like this for sales and purchases of land that she made in her lifetime. So it broadened my understanding of who was teaching me what.
Brown: Right, right. Well let's talk a little bit about how you went about your research and just the genealogical tools that you used. Tell us about, you know the libraries, archives, what kind of places did you have to go and what sort of services did you use?
Davis: Well I am a newspaper reporter so I felt at least starting out that I was prepared to dig for a long time because I am used to doing that. But I went-I used the internet quite a bit; it saved me a lot of time. I started by Googling the names in the photo albums and I came up on a site called "My Confederate Kinfolk" and when the site opened-it is not there any more-but Dixie started playing and there was a little Rebel soldier waving a flag. And this man had listed about 80 people who were related to him in one way or another who were in the Civil War and what units they were with and about 37 or 40 of them are also related to me and that was a great shock for me and gave me the title of the book. But I started there so I ended up on sites you wouldn't think you'd go to, like the Sons of Confederate Veterans have a lot of information. And then I went to the National Archives to look at microfilm of census records. I looked at records in Missouri in a museum where the Campbells left their papers. I got records from the county up in Missouri. I wrote to offices in Alabama; every state has a Department of Archives and History and they provided me wonderful information in Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina actually. And online I eventually signed up for one of the genealogical services that gives you access to census records so that I could work at night. I didn't want to do it and I did it the hard way for a long time and with the most important cases after I got it online I went back to the archives to look at the microfilm myself because everything is handwritten and names are misspelled often and you really have to do your best to double-check things. And actually the human beings who work in some of the offices where I ordered records from helped me more than anything, and librarians because they were able to tell when something was misspelled-a name from their area or whatever-and to send me information that appeared to be, that was invisible to me online.
Brown: Would you do it again? It took you four years. After all that you went through, would you do it again?
Davis: Sure, I miss it.
Brown: Great. We are extremely grateful to Thulani Davis for taking time out of her busy schedule to be with us today. Thank you so much. And we will be talking more about tracing your roots next week with Mitchell Lewis so be sure to join us. And if you'd like to learn more about Ms. Davis' book or other work please visit the Black Issues Forum website at www.unctv.org/bif. We'd also like to hear your feedback and suggestions so send us an e-mail or you can call the BIF line at 919-549-7167. Be sure to meet us back here each Sunday afternoon at 4:30. For Black Issues Forum I am Natalie Bullock Brown reminding you to be encouraged, no matter what. Have a good one.
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