Life in the old South has always fascinated Americans--whether in the mythical portrayals of the planter elite from fiction such as Gone With the Wind or in historical studies that look inside the slave cabin. Now Brenda E. Stevenson presents a reality far more gripping than popular legend, even as she challenges the conventional wisdom of academic historians. Life in Black and White provides a panoramic portrait of family and community life in and around Loudoun County, Virginia--weaving the fascinating personal stories of planters and slaves, of free blacks and poor-to-middling whites, into a powerful portrait of southern society from the mid-eighteenth century to the Civil War. Loudoun County and its vicinity encapsulated the full sweep of southern life. Here the region's most illustrious families--the Lees, Masons, Carters, Monroes, and Peytons--helped forge southern traditions and attitudes that became characteristic of the entire region while mingling with yeoman farmers of German, Scotch-Irish, and Irish descent, and free black families who lived alongside abolitionist Quakers and thousands of slaves. Stevenson brilliantly recounts their stories as she builds the complex picture of their intertwined lives, revealing how their combined histories guaranteed Loudon's role in important state, regional, and national events and controversies. Both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, for example, were hidden at a local plantation during the War of 1812. James Monroe wrote his famous "Doctrine" at his Loudon estate. The area also was the birthplace of celebrated fugitive slave Daniel Dangerfield, the home of John Janney, chairman of the Virginia secession convention, a center for Underground Railroad activities, and the location of John Brown's infamous 1859 raid at Harpers Ferry. In exploring the central role of the family, Brenda Stevenson offers a wealth of insight: we look into the lives of upper class women, who bore the oppressive weight of marriage and motherhood as practiced in the South and the equally burdensome roles of their husbands whose honor was tied to their ability to support and lead regardless of their personal preference; the yeoman farm family's struggle for respectability; and the marginal economic existence of free blacks and its undermining influence on their family life. Most important, Stevenson breaks new ground in her depiction of slave family life. Following the lead of historian Herbert Gutman, most scholars have accepted the idea that, like white, slaves embraced the nuclear family, both as a living reality and an ideal. Stevenson destroys this notion, showing that the harsh realities of slavery, even for those who belonged to such attentive masters as George Washington, allowed little possibility of a nuclear family. Far more important were extended kin networks and female headed households. Meticulously researched, insightful, and moving, Life in Black and White offers our most detailed portrait yet of the reality of southern life. It forever changes our understanding of family and race relations during the reign of the peculiar institution in the American South.

Situated within today’s changing racial demographics, Family History in Black and White: A Novel traces two competitors – one white and one black – for the same position. Both are urban high school principals. Ultimately, both must reckon with a surprising twist in their histories.

As the country enters a new era of conversations around race and the enduring impact of slavery, The Hairstons traces the rise and fall of the largest slaveholding family in the Old South as its descendants—both black and white—grapple with the twisted legacy of their past. Spanning two centuries of one family’s history, The Hairstons tells the extraordinary story of the Hairston clan, once the wealthiest family in the Old South and the largest slaveholder in America. With several thousand black and white members, the Hairstons of today share a complex and compelling history: divided in the time of slavery, they have come to embrace their past as one family. For seven years, journalist Henry Wiencek combed the far-reaching branches of the Hairston family tree to piece together a family history that involves the experiences of both plantation owners and their slaves. Crisscrossing the old plantation country of Virginia, North Carolina, and Mississippi, The Hairstons reconstructs the triumphant rise of the remarkable children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the enslaved as they fought to take their rightful place in mainstream America. It also follows the white descendants through the decline and fall of the Old South, and uncovers the hidden history of slavery's curse—and how that curse followed slaveholders for generations. Expertly weaving stories of horror, tragedy, and heroism, The Hairstons addresses our nation’s attempt to untangle the twisted legacy of the past, and provides a transcendent account of the human power to overcome.

The complex issues of race and politics in nineteenth-century Texas may be nowhere more dramatically embodied than in three generations of the family of Norris Wright Cuney, mulatto labor and political leader. Douglas Hales explores the birthright Cuney received from his white plantation-owner father, Philip Cuney, and the way his heritage played out in the life of his daughter Maud Cuney-Hare. This intergenerational study casts light on the experience of race in the South before Emancipation, after Reconstruction, and in the diaspora that eventually led cultural leaders of African American heritage into the cities of the North. Most Texas history books name Norris Wright Cuney as one of the most influential African American politicians in nineteenth-century Texas, but they tell little about him beyond his elected positions. In The Cuneys, Douglas Hales not only fills in the details of Cuney’s life and contributions but places him in the context of his family’s generations. A politically active plantation owner and slaveholder in Austin County, Philip Cuney participated in the annexation of Texas to the United States and supported the role of slavery and cotton in the developing economy of the new state. Wealthy and powerful, he fathered eight slave children whom he later freed and saw educated. Hales explores how and why Cuney differed from other planters of his time and place. He then turns to the better-known Norris Wright Cuney to study how the black elite worked for political and economic opportunity in the reactionary period that followed Reconstruction in the South. Cuney led the Texas Republican Party in those turbulent years and, through his position as collection of customs at Galveston, distributed federal patronage to both white and black Texans. As the most powerful African American in Texas, and arguably in the entire South, Cuney became the focal point of white hostility, from both Democrats and members of the “Lily White” faction of his own party. His effective leadership won not only continued office for him but also a position of power within the Republican Party for Texas blacks at a time when the party of Lincoln repudiated African Americans in many other Southern states. From his position on the Galveston City Council, Cuney worked tirelessly for African American education and challenged the domination of white labor within the growing unions. Norris Wright Cuney’s daughter, Maud, who was graced with a prestigious education, pursued a successful career in the arts as a concert pianist, musicologist, and playwright. A friend of W. E. B. Du Bois, she became actively involved in the racial uplift movement of the early twentieth century. Hales illuminates her role in the intellectual and political “awakening” of black America that culminated in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. He adroitly explores her decision against “passing” as white and her commitment to uplift. Through these three members of a single mixed-race family, Douglas Hales gives insight into the issues, challenges, and strengths of individuals. His work adds an important chapter to the history of Texas and of African Americans more broadly.

Where did I come from? Where did my parents, my grandparents, and my great-grandparents come from? Who were they? What race were they? Why were there so many light skin people with white features in my family? My inner city Los Angeles friends had been instructing me to “get back to my roots” for years. I was finally going to take their advice. Reconnecting with my West Virginia family was the starting point. After meeting my 88 year old great-Aunt Bunch for the first time, the pieces of our family puzzle came together as I sat in her kitchen listening to her recount our family history, and what I heard was fascinating! From White to Black tells the story of my family, as told to me by my great-Aunt Bunch and through the family history records of her great-cousin, Grace. Bunch grew up in a family that had been white for almost 100 years… until the One Drop Law changed everything. In 1930 Bunch's family was subsequently reclassified as Negro when her grandmother's 1/4 black ancestry was revealed in a county census. This sudden reclassification and its ensuing segregation resulted in a backlash of racism and discrimination that forever changed the destinies of Bunch and her brothers and sisters. “From White to Black” is an American story. It's the story of a Black family that started off White.

Neither Black nor White: The Saga of An American Family is a historical novel, which traces the history of the Hadnot family from Gloucester, England in 1585 to New Orleans with the birth of Lucille Catherine (Celia) Hughes Hadnot the matriarch of six families. It is the true story of a Black family, who were never enslaved, but owners of slaves; a tale of a people who regarded themselves as "neither black nor white." It is a story of family -- one black and the other white, both related by a common ancestor named John Hadnot. This novel by Joseph E. Holloway is compelling reading, which explores black culture, history, Jim Crow as well as issues of colorism. Book jacket.

Intimate and honest essays on motherhood, marriage, love, and acceptance Brown White Black is a portrait of Nishta J. Mehra's family: her wife, who is white; her adopted child, Shiv, who is black; and their experiences dealing with America's rigid ideas of race, gender, and sexuality. Her clear-eyed and incisive writing on her family's daily struggle to make space for themselves amid racial intolerance and stereotypes personalizes some of America's most fraught issues. Mehra writes candidly about her efforts to protect and shelter Shiv from racial slurs on the playground and from intrusive questions by strangers while educating her child on the realities and dangers of being black in America. In other essays, she discusses growing up in the racially polarized city of Memphis; coming out as queer; being an adoptive mother who is brown; and what it's like to be constantly confronted by people's confusion, concern, and expectations about her child and her family. Above all, Mehra argues passionately for a more nuanced and compassionate understanding of identity and family. Both poignant and challenging, Brown White Black is a remarkable portrait of a loving family on the front lines of some of the most highly charged conversations in our culture.