00:05:00.020Yay! Two Canadians talking about American history. You know, we bring an objectivity
00:05:05.080to it that I think some Americans find startling. This is what I've learned from the episodes
00:05:09.720I've done about American history. I've heard this from listeners who were like, wow, I've
00:05:12.480I've never, because when you just grow up being taught a certain thing, you don't question it
00:05:16.400necessarily. But when someone from the outside looks at it and I'm like, this doesn't make sense
00:05:21.200when I start. And then when I learn it and I explain it to them, they're like, oh, I never
00:05:24.880thought about it that way. So actually, first I just want to say, so before I read your book,
00:05:30.300I was just like, wow, which vice president's black wife? And then I read about the vice president
00:05:34.060and I'm like, well, I've never heard of him, but I assume Americans have. And then in your book,
00:05:38.280I realized like, no, even Americans haven't heard of him. Who is the vice president in question?
00:05:42.220just so people know. So the vice president in question is Richard Mentor Johnson. He was
00:05:49.660born and raised in Kentucky, and he grew up in a pretty privileged family, right? Landholders,
00:05:58.520enslavers. He started out as a state congressman, and then he became a federal congressman,
00:06:05.700senator and one term vice president of the United States under Martin Van Buren. So his his career
00:06:12.320spanned almost five decades, 44, 45 years between mostly at the federal level, including that one
00:06:19.700term as VP. And the VP term ran from 1837 to 1841. When I'm looking at American history, I want to
00:06:27.560learn, you know, like, is this someone that people know about? Am I going to be breaking people's
00:06:31.580understanding of something? But this guy, it seems like no one's heard of him, even in your book
00:06:34.980towards the end, you talk to some descendants. And even they're like, wow, I'm a descendant of
00:06:39.300a vice president. And they're people who are interested in history. And they're like,
00:06:41.980we've never heard of him. But I understand why your book is just called The Vice President's
00:06:46.260Black Wife, not Richard Mentor Johnson's. Because that wouldn't, nobody would know.
00:06:52.420But the book is about his wife. And actually, we'll talk about that, I think, why you use that
00:06:59.400word to describe the relationship. So we're talking about Julia Chin. So I think before
00:07:06.420we get into sort of her biography, can you explain how you came across her story?
00:07:12.600I actually call myself an accidental biographer. I talk about that in the introduction to the book
00:07:17.740because this really was the most happy of accidents. I was doing research to teach one
00:07:29.280of my undergraduate classes I teach a you know regularly teach a big lecture class on you know
00:07:35.240U.S. history part one basically right from the era of contact down to the civil war in one semester
00:07:41.460so 500 years and 15 weeks and I was reading a textbook and I came across a small like a really
00:07:49.520small paragraph about this guy named Richard Johnson and how abolitionists hated him and they
00:07:56.380used him in his life as an as an example of why we should abolish slavery, because they said that
00:08:02.560here was this man who had all this power. He was an enslaver, a politician, and he regularly
00:08:09.220sexually assaulted and had sexual relationships with the enslaved women that he owned. And so,0.99
00:08:15.040you know, he he became kind of like an example for the abolitionists of why we should abolish0.97
00:08:18.940slavery, because we need to protect black women from their rapist enslavers. But then there was0.86
00:08:24.440like this follow-up-like sentence, Johnson had, you know, three, at least three relationships with
00:08:29.700three different enslaved women, one of whom was named Julia Chin, who he was with for almost 25
00:08:33.800years and had two daughters with. And I thought to myself, hang on, hang on, hang on, what?
00:08:39.880Because in the U.S., people talk a lot about Thomas Jefferson and his long-term relationship
00:08:45.180with Sally Hemings, even though he never acknowledged Hemings, never acknowledged
00:08:49.420their children. It was sort of widely understood that they were together for decades until her
00:08:54.000death. They had many children together. This is the story that everyone talks about. But I was
00:08:58.520like, hang on, I'm a U.S. historian. I've been studying U.S. history for decades. I had already
00:09:03.940by that point written one book. So I teach U.S. history all the time. How have I never heard,
00:09:09.800not just of Richard Johnson, but why have I never heard of Julia Chin? Why have I never heard of
00:09:13.780this relationship? I mean, if it was quarter century, two kids, you know, this sounds very
00:09:19.420Hemmings-esque, right? Why have I never heard of this? And so I kind of thought I should, you know,
00:09:26.140I was finishing that first book. I was putting it through the production process. And I thought,
00:09:29.480well, let me come back to this when I have more time to think about it. But it was really that
00:09:34.820small paragraph in that U.S. History Survey textbook that sort of led me to go, oh, you know,
00:09:41.940there might be a there there. I thought, well, maybe it'll be an article. Maybe it'll be nothing
00:09:47.040at all. I certainly didn't anticipate that it was going to be my second book project.
00:09:51.640And then about a year later, I was having a conversation with one of my colleagues,
00:09:56.500Christina Snyder, who is a specialist in Native American history. And she was starting a new
00:10:01.060project at that point on an Indigenous boarding school called Choctaw Academy. And she was really
00:10:06.460looking at Native boarding schools as a whole, but particularly focusing on that one. And in the
00:10:11.500course of our conversation, she mentioned that the boarding school was on the property of this
00:10:15.780Kentuckian who was a politician and a vice president. And I said, hang on, hang on, hang on.
00:10:21.040Is this the same guy? Because I was remembering, is this the same guy who also had all of these
00:10:25.920sexual relationships with Black women on his plantation? She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. She0.99
00:10:29.880said, but it was like way more complicated than that. And I thought to myself, whoa, whoa, whoa,
00:10:35.180hang on a second. Indigenous boarding school and enslaved people and a Black woman, what's going1.00
00:10:40.460on here? And so I just started doing some preliminary internet research and sort of was
00:10:45.840really surprised, but not surprised to find out that there had been very little work done,
00:10:50.540like really nothing done on Julia Chin at all. But even on Johnson, there hadn't been a biography
00:10:56.580written on Johnson since 1932. And so I thought to myself, wow, this is like totally like,
00:11:03.860you know, unexplored territory in a sense, right? For a historian, you know, there aren't like,
00:11:08.660there's so many biographies of abraham lincoln there's one coming out like every month right
00:11:14.080like oh another lincoln biography i mean no offense to lincoln biographers but i was like
00:11:18.960this is like really kind of unexplored territory johnson hasn't been written about in almost 100
00:11:23.560years nobody's actually done a sustained examination of chin or their daughters their
00:11:29.140family and i was like well maybe there just isn't enough information maybe there's not enough
00:11:33.920sources. But I was like, you know, so I'm talking to that same colleague and I was like, someone
00:11:39.120really needs to do some research on this. Someone needs to write about this family, about her, about
00:11:44.300their daughters. What was it like to live as a Black woman in a relationship with this powerful
00:11:49.340white man in the middle of rural Kentucky? And I was kind of going on and on on my soapbox.
00:11:53.580And she finally paused and looked at me and said, isn't that kind of what you do? Right? Because
00:11:59.240in my first book I had I had talked a lot about interracial sexual relationships but in Charleston
00:12:04.360South Carolina and I sort of I so she's she literally was just like isn't this kind of what0.90
00:12:09.060you do like I kept saying someone should do this yeah like she was like dude you need to do it
00:12:13.440right who is that someone yeah and I saw I was like oh okay and so I kind of it really was this
00:12:21.060weird series of you know events and uh you know coincidences whatever you want to call it that
00:12:27.120eventually led me to to start doing this work on chin and so it it was a series of happy accidents
00:12:33.920and coincidences yeah what i do want to sort of establish as well because this is just something
00:12:40.240that's been on my mind recently since like a month or two ago like when i saw the movie sinners for
00:12:45.360instance um hailey steinfeld's character and hailey steinfeld herself who like has is one eighth black
00:12:51.840and like she's always presented she has filipino heritage as well i think she's one eighth filipino
00:12:56.600as well. But she's always presented as white. And then in that movie, I was like, this is such a
00:13:01.440good talking point for me on a audio podcast when we're talking about mixed race people and what
00:13:07.020did they look like. And like, we don't know what Julie Chin looked like. Obviously there's no0.93
00:13:10.500portraits, there's no photography, but the fact that her children were able to live as white
00:13:16.580people basically like indicates how light skin she must have been. So can you explain just from
00:13:22.320your research about like, when we're talking about a black woman, like, and she was a black
00:13:26.220woman but what but she might have looked to us today like a white person it's just whatever the0.79
00:13:32.420status was of your mother like you become enslaved if your mother was enslaved if your mother was
00:13:36.980black then you're black also so just to visualize this can you explain that well you're actually
00:13:42.840asking about two different things one is appearance the other is legal status yeah right and so the
00:13:49.620legal status thing is in some ways a little bit easier to nail down because the way the law worked
00:13:57.400in the U.S. was that it's part of sequitur ventrum is the Latin phraseology for this particular law
00:14:04.740and it dates back to the mid to late 1600s after Bacon's Rebellion which happens in Virginia
00:14:14.200And essentially at that point, colony by colony, right, what will become the United States essentially passes legislation saying that as the womb or the mother goes, so does the child follow, right?
00:14:30.120And so paternity becomes irrelevant in terms of the status of free or slave.
00:14:36.140Enslavement or freedom depends upon the status of the legal status of the mother.
00:14:40.920If your mother is enslaved, you are born enslaved.
00:14:44.200if your mother is free at the time of your birth you are therefore born free but at that point of
00:14:51.800course there it doesn't say anything about race but what begins to happen of course is that0.60
00:14:56.660white women who had had never they had never been enslaved for life but there were white women who
00:15:01.580had been indentured servants right that sort of thing but we begin to see part of sequitur ventrum
00:15:06.180basically creates a very definitive clear schism about right who gets to be enslaved who gets to
00:15:13.440be free. And so it doesn't matter if you have a white father or if you have a free black father,
00:15:20.780right? It depends on who your mother is, right? White women are not going to be enslaved. Black0.51
00:15:25.820people will be increasingly, race is going to be created, right? Prior to this, there is no1.00
00:15:31.160sort of conscious understanding of race, right? Whiteness is created as a result of and in1.00
00:15:37.760opposition to blackness, right? And vice versa, right? Prior to this, it's everyone is, they're1.00
00:15:43.020german they're french they're irish they're they're dutch they're english they're scottish
00:15:47.640they're they're not white there is no understanding of whiteness right it's ethnic and national0.58
00:15:52.400cultural differentiations but in order to create the system here where slavery follows the condition
00:15:59.600of the mother you have to therefore create right racial difference has to come into being right
00:16:05.520white so so certain groups of women will never be enslaved well who are those women it's not about
00:16:10.640religion it's not about ethnicity it's about this idea of of whiteness so that's that's where we i
00:16:17.340mean so i just gave you a really quick history lesson so good thank you but if you go this is
00:16:24.140where it starts right this idea of whiteness and blackness of otherness of right who gets to be
00:16:30.460free who gets to be enslaved and so freedom right if a black woman is free then her children are
00:16:36.680going to be free as well right again irrelevant of in terms of paternity so this is because we0.72
00:16:43.340don't know who at that point there's no dna testing we don't know who contributes the right
00:16:47.660sperm but we know whose body the child comes out of and therefore that that idea of the status of
00:16:56.500the womb the freedom or enslavement of the womb and the passage of that onto the child is really
00:17:01.780critical. So for Julia Chin, we know she was enslaved because her mother was enslaved. Her
00:17:08.420mother was owned by Richard Johnson's parents, Robert and Jemima Sugat Johnson, right? Because
00:17:15.720Henrietta was owned by the senior Johnsons, that means any children that Henrietta had were also0.97
00:17:21.900going to be enslaved. So Julia is born enslaved. Her brother Daniel is born enslaved. There may be0.98
00:17:27.860other siblings that we're unaware of, but in the records, the only ones that I'm able to discover,
00:17:33.480at least up until this point, has been Julia and her brother Daniel. So they are both born
00:17:38.360enslaved. They're born enslaved on the Senior Johnson's plantation, right? They're owned by
00:17:43.540the same people who own their mother because she's enslaved, they're enslaved. Whoever owns her0.97
00:17:48.680owns them. Until if, unless they decide to free them, right? If they decided one day to free them
00:17:55.380or to sell them to someone else or bequeath them to somebody else, this is how it's going to go.
00:18:00.400And that's what happens. At some point, when Julia is around 13, give or take a year,
00:18:09.080she and her brother Daniel are bequeathed, passed on to Richard, who is one of the Johnson's 10,
00:18:16.90011, 12. They have a lot of kids. So he by this point is like, you know, 30 years old. He's setting
00:18:24.200up his own farm, his own home, his own independence, just a couple of miles away from his parents.
00:18:30.060And in order to help their son get his plantation up off the ground and running, he needs laborers.
00:18:36.640So not only do his parents give him 2,000 acres of land, they also give him almost 100 enslaved
00:18:42.980laborers to help him because he needs carpenters and wheelwrights and masons and field hands and0.63
00:18:47.240domestic staff, right? It's plantations or businesses. So Julia and Daniel are transferred
00:18:52.800to Richard's legal ownership at that point,
00:28:14.700she was a full working hand. Was she going to work in the field or was she going to work in
00:28:19.100the house? Well, she had been trained to work in the house, but she's being brought in not just to0.99
00:28:23.060be a member of the domestic staff, but to run the domestic staff. That's the key here. She's going0.99
00:28:28.280to be the housekeeper. This is a huge job, especially because there's no white wife,1.00
00:28:34.540right? She's going to be in charge of everything, buying, selling, like overseeing, disciplining,1.00
00:28:40.240you name it signing contracts I mean she's going to do it all she's going to basically take on the0.91
00:28:45.780role of a white mistress like in terms of like so what gets purchased what gets cooked how do you1.00
00:28:52.320take care of guests taking care of the gardens the farm animals right the orchards all of that0.99
00:28:58.760even before she becomes sexually involved with Richard and has two children this is going to be
00:29:03.300her life run you know organizing the huge parties that he throws everything and again we're like
00:29:08.580she's 14 this is a 2000 acre plantation and they they would have said to you they being europeans
00:29:13.660white people would have said she's enslaved and this is what she was trained for and at 14 she's
00:29:18.100not a child she's a full hand it's just we're gonna i i don't know we talked about this just
00:29:24.560a bit before we started recording but like there's part of like julia's character what she was like
00:29:28.400and what she was capable of and it's like this is a 14 year old in the situation who was capable of
00:29:33.680this job and i you know she was specifically chosen partially for her looks but partially
00:29:37.060because mother knew that like this person is up to the job so it's like who she is and what were
00:29:42.980her capabilities and then there's also what is this life that she was born into that she had to
00:29:48.040live and kind of like the precarious balance of those two I think you outline really well in your
00:29:53.260book just trying to see like who was she what was she like but then also how else could she have
00:29:58.960been if this is the life that she was born into but there is something about her and we see this
00:30:03.040as we go on and talk about her life that she was not everybody in my current job would be capable
00:30:10.400of managing. I work for the public library. It's like not everybody could manage a small public
00:30:15.480library. Not everybody could manage a huge planet. She could. So part of that is like, yes, her
00:30:21.360training, but part of that would be just her innate capabilities, I think. And that comes through
00:30:27.100through what she's able to accomplish later in her life I think yeah she's um you know she's
00:30:33.460she's really amazing but it shows you like what happens when like I think that most children if
00:30:40.320you took them and started giving them a particular kind of education whatever that education is the
00:30:46.000age of five or six they're going to develop like a whole lot of different skills and talents right
00:30:49.800um and she is I mean she's obviously very skilled like she's not just it's hard to explain how0.93
00:30:56.440important a housekeeper is like in this day and age because they really are managers. So she0.91
00:31:02.940actually, she's literate, right? She knows how to read and write, which is pretty important because
00:31:09.060most enslaved people at this time and point don't know how to read and write because they're
00:31:13.300forbidden from learning how, right? Frederick Douglass once famously said that an educated0.94
00:31:18.520slave is a bad slave. Because if you're educated, you're going to ask questions, you're going to
00:31:23.200want more. You're going to be challenging things that aren't right. So she knows how to read and
00:31:28.580write. She's also financially literate. She knows how to do math, right? So she's not just directing
00:31:37.000the other enslaved staff, right? Yes, she knows how to weave and sew and knit. She knows how to0.95
00:31:44.120engage in contract negotiations. She can buy and sell because she knows math, right? She can read1.00
00:31:51.140and right. And so this is a woman who is able to actually do like all of the work, right,1.00
00:31:59.020that upper level management would be expected to do, because she's been given the opportunity to,
00:32:05.380you know, obtain a certain kind of education, right, not just how to wash clothes or wash floors0.91
00:32:12.220or sew clothing, or, you know, or cook or any of these other things, all of which she can do,
00:32:17.780But she can read, she can write, she can do math, and she's also given medical training.
00:32:24.180And apparently, and this is, I mean, most frontier women, and Kentucky at that point was the frontier, right?0.99
00:32:31.360It was still a territory when the Johnsons came out from Virginia to help settle it.0.98
00:32:37.500Most frontier women had a certain modicum of, like, medical knowledge because you don't have doctors and hospitals, right, on the frontier.1.00
00:32:46.160And so you have to know how to do a lot of this stuff yourself for yourself and for your kids and your family.
00:32:51.520But she develops enough medical skill that her husband, Richard, will later say that, right, that she's actually as good as one half of the trained physicians in the area.
00:33:04.920Right. Richard doesn't hire a doctor to look after the people at Blue Spring Farm, which is the name of their plantation or Choctaw Academy, the Native American boarding school I mentioned earlier.
00:33:15.920He doesn't hire a white physician to look after the school or the farm until after Julia dies because she's that good. Right. I mean, she in in decades of that indigenous boarding school being open, she only lost like one student until there was like a massive like cholera outbreak. Right.
00:33:36.840And the cholera outbreak was beyond anyone's capabilities. It didn't matter if they were white, black, enslaved or free. It was killing everybody. And nobody knew how to stop it because people didn't understand how cholera worked back in the day. But, you know, she she was that good. Right. That it was she was able to, like, minister to the health care needs of the enslaved people, white family members, teachers of the academy and the academy's students.
00:34:02.460so yeah she's pretty amazing i love that like in your book you really explain you know the book is
00:34:10.320talking about her life and her story and how it came about but you're also explaining how you
00:34:13.620came to these conclusions what are the documents you're looking at so like you're finding
00:34:16.800things people are saying about her where it's like they have no reason to misrepresent well
00:34:22.040they do and some of the things but that richard in his letter is saying like i didn't need to
00:34:26.700hire a doctor. It's like, yeah, like that is true for sure. So, so we've got her, she's 14 years
00:34:32.780old. She's the housekeeper of this house. And then quite quickly, she becomes pregnant with
00:34:39.460his child as a teenager. And that's not surprising either. One of the things that I try to explain0.94
00:34:46.380very clearly is that, right, being promoted to housekeeper of a large plantation for an enslaved0.89
00:34:55.460woman, although it comes with certain privileges, right, carrying the keys to the plantation on your
00:35:01.380belt, being able to oversee the house staff, dictate punishments, you know, buy and sell1.00
00:35:08.120goods for the property, engage in contract negotiations, like all of these things that
00:35:13.580have, so you have access to better food, better clothing, you can bring your relatives into the0.87
00:35:18.440house and give them better jobs, which she did. So you have all these privileges, but it's a
00:35:23.720double-edged sword because when as an enslaved woman you're brought into the house like that
00:35:28.460whether it's as you know a day made or as a housekeeper or anything in between you're also0.98
00:35:35.080more susceptible to sexual assault right enslaved women would regularly talk about how they didn't0.99
00:35:42.400want to have children because they understood that how part of sequitur ventrum worked0.99
00:35:46.380but if they had children they hoped they were boys and then if they had girls they hoped they0.91
00:35:52.500were ugly, right? Because they understood that having children for the slave machine was bad0.93
00:35:59.480enough, but having daughters was even worse because daughters not only would transmit slavery0.60
00:36:05.240to future generations through the womb, daughters would actually be susceptible to sexual assault0.51
00:36:10.840by overseers, by enslavers, by enslavers' sons, right? By lots of different white men, right?0.88
00:36:18.160in all different directions, guests to the plantation, right? So there's always this0.90
00:36:23.640concern about having daughters and about having good-looking daughters. And what you really
00:36:29.320didn't want is for those daughters to be sent to the house, because if they were in the slave
00:36:33.220quarters, you at least had a modicum of oversight over your kids. You could, like, keep an eye on
00:36:39.180them in the fields. They slept in your house during the evening. Yes, people could still come
00:36:44.720in and just yank them out any time. But there was that psychological feeling of like you could give
00:36:49.480more protection if you were in front of them. But when she's taken away at the age of six,
00:36:54.600right, Henrietta is only going to see her daughter once a week on Sundays, day off.
00:37:00.660But then after the age of 14, Julia's moved to a whole different plantation two miles away. And
00:37:06.780for us, two miles is nothing. But back then when you're on foot and you have to get permission to
00:37:10.640leave your plantation if you're enslaved, that means Henrietta can't keep an eye on her kid in
00:37:14.820any way, shape, or form at all anymore, right? She's really on her own. And the fact that she's0.99
00:37:19.500placed in the house and made a housekeeper, it immediately is suspect. You know that this is
00:37:25.320problematic. A, he doesn't have a wife, but even if he did, this could still happen. But he doesn't
00:37:30.240have a wife. She's young. We've heard that she's attractive, right? She's small. She's slender.0.91
00:37:36.740She's, you know, all of these things. And historically, if you look at the literature, enslaved housekeepers are often sexual mistresses and sexual mistresses are often enslaved housekeepers in white households.0.94
00:37:50.940Like the line between the two is real blurry. Right. And so it's a dangerous position to be in, because if you are a woman in the house, you are susceptible to assault and attack by every white man in that house, from the patriarch down to his enslaved down to his white sons.0.60
00:38:10.300and it's it's really hard like how how you're sleeping right in that house so if you're they
00:38:15.900have 24 or 7 access to you and within a year she is pregnant right so here's a man who's 30 years
00:38:23.420old um 30 31 here's a girl who's 13 or 14 and they you know they grew up on the same plantation
00:38:32.580but they probably didn't really know each other growing up because the age difference was so vast
00:38:36.920that by the time Julia is old enough to be taken into the main house and trained as a servant from
00:38:41.980the age of six, Richard is already like out of the house, right? He's gone to college, then he
00:38:47.380becomes a state senator, state congressman, and then he moves to D.C. because he becomes a federal
00:38:52.060representative. So they don't really know each other until she's given to him. And then she ends
00:38:58.300up in his house and he's like, oh, we don't know how the interaction begins, right? We know that
00:39:06.300she's placed in the house and within a year she's pregnant and gives birth to their first daughter
00:39:10.600and he claims you know he's very you know he's open about the fact that this is his child
00:39:17.220right like the surname you said like that both daughters like they have the surname johnson
00:39:21.340yeah adeline and imogene both carry the last name johnson julia does not julia always carries chin
00:39:27.500her brother daniel always carries chin daniel's wife parthine is a chin their their children
00:39:33.340are chins. But so you've got all of these chins on the plantation who are related to Julia, but
00:39:40.180her daughters are Adeline Johnson and Imogene Johnson, and they carry that name until they
00:39:45.360get married. And then Adeline takes her husband's last name, Scott, and Imogene takes her husband's
00:39:51.980last name, Pence. But I mean, how did this, how did this interaction start, right? Was it straight
00:39:58.280up you know sexual assault was it more psychological coercion right was it but it lasted for until
00:40:05.780julia died almost 25 years later and so this becomes a relationship always of unequals right
00:40:12.820always there's an unequal power dynamic he owns her he never frees her but she's able to use the
00:40:20.480situation to the best of her advantage even though she never acquires freedom for herself her0.99
00:40:26.460daughters do. Even though she never gets a formal education, her daughters do. Even though she never1.00
00:40:33.120owns property, her daughters will grow up to get land, money, enslaved laborers of their own. So1.00
00:40:40.860all of the power and privileges that she never had for herself, she's able to, you know, she's0.99
00:40:46.120she was never legally married. Her daughters will have legal marriages, right? All of these kinds of1.00
00:40:50.520things that she's unable to acquire for herself. She's able to use the minimum of privileges that
00:40:56.680she has as the housekeeper and mistress and pseudo-wife of this powerful, wealthy, white male
00:41:03.900plantation owner and politician to navigate a better socioeconomic status for her brother,0.99
00:41:11.020sister-in-law, nieces, nephews, and her daughters.
00:41:14.400Well, that reminds me of in the story of Sally Hemings, where she, I think you mentioned this
00:41:21.900in your book as well, but when she is with Thomas Jefferson pregnant in Paris and she's
00:41:26.520considering maybe staying in Paris or she's going to go back with him, like she and he come to an
00:41:31.260agreement where he says, any children we have together, I will free when they turn 21. So like
00:41:35.660again, Sally Hemings is like, okay, like this is happening and I'm going to, like, I will use the
00:41:42.240situation for the betterment of my children. And now for a quick advertising break.
00:41:47.740Before you knew what a stock was, you traded snacks, cards, turns. That instinct to trade
00:41:53.740didn't disappear. It just grew up. With no minimums, no monthly fees, and 100 free trades,
00:41:59.560TD Easy Trade taps into that instinct. Because you are made to trade. And TD Easy Trade is made to help.
00:42:06.780Want to talk ETFs with the people behind them? Join me, Etienne Jean-Cabouchard,
00:42:11.220on the Upside Ticker Talk. We dive into what's moving markets with timely analysis, trends,
00:42:16.680and answers to ETF questions you've actually been thinking about. Hit play on the Upside
00:42:21.980Ticker Talk and elevate your ETF investing IQ. Welcome to the realms of peril and glory.
00:42:30.600Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale, the paranormal mysteries of liminal London,
00:45:51.800That whole idea of legal status, wedding paper, like, you know, marriage certificate, etc., that's actually a pretty recent phenomenon when we think broadly across human history.
00:46:03.660And so there are, she's doing all the work of a wife, number one.
00:46:10.420Number two, Richard actually calls her his wife, refers to her as his wife in his private letters and correspondence.
00:46:19.840Number three, his friends refer to her as his wife, even if they are not happy about it, right?
00:46:28.040The newspapers refer to her as his wife.
00:46:31.820Again, not always in the most complimentary way.
00:46:35.140But they all acknowledge that she functions, right, in every aspect as his wife.
00:51:40.280Henry Clay's wife catches him, right, in the act with this enslaved woman in the quarters,
00:51:47.700right? She follows him. She suspects that he's up to no good. She follows him to the quarters,
00:51:51.740and she catches him in the act, basically. And all hell breaks loose on the Clay farm.
00:51:57.160So to keep the peace, to make sure that his wife is happy, Clay sells that Black woman and their biracial children together downriver to Louisiana, right? Out of sight, out of mind, get rid of the evidence, keep his wife happy because she's his wife. She's the mistress of the plantation because back then mistress literally, it was like master and mistress, right? As opposed to sexual mistress.0.77
00:52:18.480So his white wife was not just his wife.0.89
00:52:20.280She was the mistress of the plantation.0.70
00:52:21.960And to keep her happy, that's what Clay did.
00:52:24.720Consider how different—so there's Jefferson, who's a widower, right, who takes up with Hemings but never acknowledges her publicly.0.62
00:52:33.040And then there's Clay, who's a married man, who takes up with a Black woman but also never acknowledges her publicly and then sells her and their children, right?0.58
00:53:15.520He transfers large amounts of real estate, like large numbers of enslaved laborers, as well as cash and furniture and all kinds of other things to both of his daughters when they get married, when they come of age.
00:53:27.800So here's—and he's doing it all out in the open.
00:53:30.400He's going down to the county courthouse and he's doing deeds of, like, notarized deeds of transfers of property, right?
00:53:38.420His daughters are getting married openly, like, you know, by, like, ministers of the gospel.
00:53:43.140um there's no um he's not hiding anything he's not hiding anything and so this very openness
00:53:53.140it's a double again it's a double-edged sword right I want to be really careful to understand
00:53:58.460that we talk like there are some people who are like oh he was in love with her this is like a
00:54:02.880harlequin romance I'm like it is not a harlot this is not a romance this is not a romance
00:54:07.540He was always her enslaver. She was always enslaved. He never freed her.
00:54:12.820Do I think he loved his daughters? I do think he loved his daughters because
00:54:16.260love translates into action. So when you look at, right, you might have emotional attachment
00:54:22.080to somebody, but love translates into action. So the fact that he educates his daughters,
00:54:27.800arranges good marriages for them, transfers property to them, also makes sure to transfer
00:54:32.140property to his grandchildren this shows his right practical love and affection for his daughters
00:54:38.660he writes letters talking about his feelings for his daughters particularly when one of them
00:54:44.100you know as you'll read about one of his daughters passes away relatively young and he he is just
00:54:50.560grief-stricken right we don't see this that similar kind of behavior towards julia he certainly i
00:54:56.860think he respects julia um he respects her abilities he respects how those abilities
00:55:02.300translate into him having a certain amount of freedom right and a certain kind of life
00:55:07.460but he doesn't free her he doesn't give her property he doesn't he doesn't legalize their
00:55:13.560marriage right he doesn't do any of those things and he could have and he didn't at the end of the
00:55:19.420day people are like well why do you think he didn't i'm like that was the last remaining
00:55:23.300hold he had over her, right? If he set her free, she could have left him. So if this is really love,
00:55:32.040why would you fear setting them free? The only reason you would fear setting them free is because
00:55:35.980you fear that they're going to walk out on you, right? Because deep down inside, you're like,
00:55:39.620I don't think she really does care about me. I don't think she's here because she likes me.
00:55:43.020She's here because she's forced to be here. Because otherwise, I'd set her free and she'd stay.
00:55:48.780I think he was worried that she would not stay, that she would leave if she had the opportunity.
00:55:53.300And that's why he never did set her free. There was always that last remnant of control. Like, I can I can sell you. I can take your children away from you. Right. I could beat you. I could kill you. I mean, there's all kinds of things. Like, did he do any of those things? No, but he's always maintained that like that level of oversight and coercion.
00:56:14.220and that's where it's such a complex weird i'm gonna say fucked up situation where like they0.56
00:56:22.080because like reading the book i'm just like how do i feel about this and it's like it's so0.76
00:56:27.860complicated because it's like he would go with julia to church um like he would host dinner
00:56:33.120parties and his daughters were there and they're so well educated and they're so well dressed and
00:56:36.100he proudly would be like these are my daughters and like everyone's sitting at a table together0.94
00:56:39.460and I'm like this and everyone like in Kentucky was just like this is fucked up like what is this0.67
00:56:46.020guy doing so it's like like he was doing this stuff where it's kind of like he's like well
00:56:50.560if I just act like this is normal it'll become normal but it's like this was not normal at the
00:56:54.020time like Julia and the daughters were not able to get this level of I'm gonna say respect but
00:56:59.440just sort of acceptance I guess is a better word anywhere other than on this farm like you've some
00:57:05.040examples in your book where like they couldn't like it's this weird situation he is not a hero
00:57:11.460he is not a good guy like julia is in this oh and as the book goes on you you see like he has had
00:57:19.840and does have further sexual relationships with other enslaved women always young always lighter1.00
00:57:25.360skinned um where it's just like oh this guy sucks this guy is a piece of shit there's a power1.00
00:57:30.980dynamic that has just become so clear when you see like every woman right 18 years old or younger1.00
00:57:37.740every woman light-skinned he has a type and there's always that element of master mastery
00:57:43.400and dominance right because he's their owner it's he's he never has parallel relationships0.61
00:57:49.660he never has relationships with people who because i mean of course even white women
00:57:53.940had less power back in the day legally but he never pursues a woman who would be his social
00:58:00.340equal in a lot of in any kind of way yeah because well and the way that you write the book like
00:58:05.760everybody should read the book because there's so much nuance and you have so many examples of
00:58:08.640things but at first like you really you're sitting with julia and what's her experience and stuff
00:58:11.620and then later on you kind of explain and here's what else i learned about richard and you learn
00:58:15.340about the previous relationships and the future relationships and it's like no matter how old he
00:58:19.180gets he's always choosing an enslaved light-skinned woman who is about who's a teenager like he's
00:58:24.180getting older but he's always choosing that same and it reminds me i mean again like the similar
00:58:29.700story that I keep thinking of is like Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, where it's like
00:58:32.840Sally Hemings was the young teenage half-sister of his dead wife who he loved. So it's like,
00:58:37.700there's this weird incestual thing. And then we find out later with Richard, like some of the
00:58:41.840partners he's choosing are seemingly also like nieces or nephews or sisters. It's kind of like,
00:58:47.940okay, these are people who kind of all probably look the same because they're kind of related to
00:58:51.560each other. And so it's all fucked up. It's all weird. I don't want anyone to come away from0.99
00:58:56.140listening to this podcast thinking like wow he was like he was like an early you know like civil
00:59:00.820rights champion it's like no no no julia was incredible and he she ran this farm like one of
00:59:09.640the reasons you're saying like he's like if you freed her she might leave and it's like yeah and
00:59:12.980then your entire everything's gonna fall apart because she's single-handedly running everything
00:59:17.640so capably so well like i don't like this is where i want to like yeah what happens to your
00:59:24.820your hotel, your bar, your taverns, your grist mills, your sawmills, your crops, your home.
00:59:31.040I mean, everything. The academy that you're making money off of from all the tuition.
00:59:36.940I mean, it all goes down the toilet if you don't have her in charge.0.65
00:59:41.360Well, and that's what you see when she dies. Like suddenly has to hire a bunch of people0.68
00:59:43.920to do a bunch of different jobs because she was doing everything unpaid because she was1.00
00:59:47.480enslaved. Exactly. He has to hire a doctor. He has to hire an overseer. He has to be present1.00
00:59:54.540more often he keeps having to take leaves of absence from dc to come home and oversee this
01:00:00.120like basically everything is falling apart after she passes away yeah and this is what i want to
01:00:05.500highlight yeah she's just she was such an impressive person she's in this shitty situation
01:00:11.440comma and how good she was at doing everything like well and i know that a lot of people like
01:00:18.080i actually had somebody like who i know really well read the book manuscript before it was
01:00:22.840published, you know, in order to give me feedback. You know, I circulated amongst some friends,
01:00:27.600you know, who are academics to get feedback. And one of them said to me, like, I really didn't like
01:00:33.720anybody in this book. And I sort of looked at them, my jaw dropped. And they said, no, no,
01:00:38.520like, don't don't get me wrong. It's a really good book. And we need this book. And I'm glad
01:00:42.320you wrote this book. But I don't like anybody in this book. You know, because like, none of them
01:00:47.140are likable characters. Like, you know, Richard is an enslaver. His daughters, you know, grow up
01:00:52.700to be enslavers and they pass you know julia like is you know she's complicit right she she oversees0.98
01:01:00.540enslaved people she disciplines and punishes enslaved people she's not running an underground0.76
01:01:05.620railroad station out of her backyard right she's not harriet tubman like she's not she is she's not
01:01:12.640she's not a heroine right she's a she's a survivor and that's the problem is that survivors engage in
01:01:19.940behaviors that we don't like, right? It's uncomfortable. If someone is a martyr, right,
01:01:25.060a victim, we can get like righteously indignant about what was done to them. If someone is a
01:01:30.100heroine, we can be like super proud of like what they've engaged in. But what do we do with people
01:01:35.160who survive, right? We can understand that they are brought into a situation of victimization
01:01:41.140and they have two choices, right? Or they have certain choices and they choose to survive.
01:01:46.160So they stay, they survive. But in staying to survive, they engage in all kinds of actions that we find morally reprehensible. And so that's what my friend meant when they said, you know, I just, I didn't like anybody in this book. Like, Julia is not likable. The daughters aren't likable.
01:02:02.520Your children certainly isn't likable.
01:02:03.720And I was like, well, it's not about whether or not they're likable.
01:02:08.040It's the fact that there are probably, first of all, to understand the situation Julia was placed into from a very small, from birth, but really from age six on this path, right, on this course.
01:02:20.780So she could have risen up and resisted and she probably, she could have been killed, right, or just sold.
01:02:26.460Or her children could be taken away from her.
01:02:28.300Her children could have been taken away from her, right?
01:02:30.340So she had to look at every single angle of the situation that she was in as a 14-year-old taken away from her mother.
01:02:38.520And she was like, these are, I mean, Black children were right from beginning were socialized by their parents to understand the precarity of their situation, to understand how tenuous every day of their life was.
01:02:51.040That any day they could wake up and they could be sold, their parents could be sold, their spouses could be sold, their children could be taken away from them, they could be beaten.
01:02:58.360And like every step had to be thought with like there had to be great calculation in how they chose to live.
01:03:05.000Right. And so Julia is like, OK, well, I could resist and I could die or I could be sold or my children could be taken away from me.
01:03:12.620Or I could work within the very narrow confines of the life that I've been, the hand I've been dealt and see if I can somehow make it better.
01:03:20.420If not for myself, then for my descendants.
01:03:22.500and so yeah we don't like survivors because we like to think that we would never engage in such
01:03:28.060behavior we don't know what we would have done if we were in her position that's that's a ludicrous
01:03:33.160for us to say that if we were born in 1790s kentucky and we were enslaved that we wouldn't
01:03:38.480we don't know what we would have done we simply don't well and we see later on in your book we
01:03:44.300don't need to get into details like people can read the book to get all this stuff but we do
01:03:47.520see later on um an example of after julia's died um another young slave woman that richard
01:03:54.820takes up with and she tries to leave and how relentless and ruthless he is in bringing her
01:04:01.480back like this is like and so we see like oh why didn't julia try to escape it's like well this
01:04:06.560woman did and look what happened to her like richard is like not a chill guy like this is not
01:04:12.040Yeah, because at the end of the day, at the end of the day, he's very clear that every human being and everything on that plantation is his property and belongs to him and he can do with it as he wants. And that includes sending, you know, a mob, right, a paid mob after his, you know, current sexual partner in order to like forcibly arrest her and bring her back to the plantation.
01:04:35.700so this is the man that julia has been with for 25 years she knows who he is she knows who he is
01:04:41.640better than anybody so you know by the time this happens she's dead but it's like when you ask well
01:04:47.420why didn't she run away well we see what he did when someone tried that she knew that she knew
01:04:53.480who the father of her children was right and so she was like it's like people who say today like
01:04:59.980with domestic violence, right, victims, like, why didn't she just leave? It's like, really?
01:05:07.900Because when women finally make the decision to leave, that's when their likelihood of being
01:05:13.100murdered, like, quadruples, right? Because when they've made that decision and they try to leave,0.98
01:05:20.200that's when the most harm comes to them and those they love. So it is a terrible situation
01:05:27.220to be trapped in right and so there's differences with domestic violence obviously but it's in terms
01:05:34.740of the larger parameters of feeling helpless or powerless or knowing what kind of violence could
01:05:39.540be meted out against you and those you love if you try to escape right so I don't it's not I mean I
01:05:47.320can't I can't I can't judge the way people behaved right how the way then the way someone like Julia
01:05:53.460behaved 200 years ago because I mean I just try to look I'm a historian right the same reason that
01:06:01.140this is not a Harlequin romance right all right that it's that it's not that story I'm a historian
01:06:06.520I look at the sources the ones that are available and I try to like do my very best to like paint
01:06:12.560as clear a picture of we can of the very complicated very difficult messy right situation
01:06:20.460that enslaved women found themselves in.0.92
01:06:33.600because often the stories have been suppressed,
01:06:37.160the sources don't exist or have been destroyed.
01:06:40.200One of the reasons that we were able to recreate Julia's story
01:06:43.180is because her sexual partner is famous, right?
01:06:47.420He's a politician, he's a senator, he's a vice president.
01:06:50.460So there's more information that exists on him than the regular average Joe Smith. And because there's more information on him, we're able to get more information on her and their daughters. And so it's important that we, I think, understand what her life was like, because slavery was not the same for everybody.
01:07:10.580it's slavery yes but people's daily lives look different depending on what state they were living
01:07:17.900in whether it was urban slavery or rural slavery right what position they had in the household
01:07:23.080structure and so it's important to understand the range of experiences that enslaved women
01:07:28.700would have experienced and so understanding julia's life is helpful because it gives us
01:07:34.400more you know more understanding of the kinds of pressures that black women were under right
01:07:40.100the kinds of things that they faced and how the different ways in which they navigated those
01:07:44.860obstacles and situations. And what I find, I find it so interesting. So like just in my American
01:07:52.100Revolution, like episodes, like we talked about Sally Hemings, we talked about Ona Judge. And
01:07:56.160even just between those two stories, you see differences in situations. And then looking at
01:08:00.560Julie Chin, which is like, you know, a bit later, but similar, just kind of like and how different
01:08:05.720her situation was. And I think looking at these specific stories is so important instead of just
01:08:09.780thinking like you know this period of it's like slavery was a monolith and like every plantation
01:08:14.080was like this and every woman's experience was like this where it's like no because people are
01:08:17.880different and situations are different and I think the more that we can look at different specific
01:08:22.700stories like the work that you're doing I think that's part of where it's so important is to be
01:08:26.320like it's not just like this is how it was it's not just like this it's gone with the wind watch
01:08:33.080that there you go it's like this is like there's so much nuance and there's so much fucked up at
01:08:37.960and like all these weird gray areas yeah yeah i mean it it's nuance is like the the great word
01:08:44.960like that is the best word like not like i said not everybody is a celia who rises up you know
01:08:52.780finally after five several years of human trafficking and sexual slavery and murders
01:08:57.140her owner not everybody is a harriet tubman who runs away um not everybody is a sojourner truth
01:09:03.580who earns her who gains her freedom by law and then becomes an abolitionist preacher and a
01:09:09.140feminist speaker right people respond differently and like that's really the story of the human
01:09:15.200condition as historians that's what we're really trying to understand is the the narrative right
01:09:21.000how like the different events that happen but how people responded within those events
01:09:25.640how events over here shape ones over here people over here shape things down here
01:09:30.020understanding the totality right of those experiences asking the questions right being
01:09:35.360critically engaged right um analytically right curious it's important because so much of that
01:09:44.400history is still being played out in the present moment right if we want to understand why our
01:09:50.200society looks a certain way today things didn't just pop up out of nowhere right whether you're
01:09:56.300talking about the education system the economy housing markets financial right you know financial
01:10:03.080systems we write our electoral college right in the united states the only reason that we can't
01:10:09.180understand the way any of those things look in the present moment without understanding what came
01:10:12.980before we just can't and i think it's it's so interesting like what your book does because
01:10:18.580it's looking at this very specific like it's looking at a specific situation it's like one
01:10:21.860woman's life where it's just like she was in this it one place in Kentucky and she really never
01:10:28.240left there um so it's like her where it's just like oh well Harry Tubman was doing this and
01:10:34.780social truth and whatever and they were later on but like even it's like how would she know
01:10:39.500anything outside of this one place where she lived like she was not gonna be there's not the
01:10:44.740internet like she can't watch inspirational documentaries to be like here's how you should
01:10:48.340be behaving it's like so she's doing the best she can and that's what I try to think like I try to
01:10:51.840extend that to everyone I look at when I'm researching, it's like, everyone's just kind
01:10:55.400of like looking at the, we can judge now, but like when you're in that situation, like everyone's
01:11:00.100making the best choices they can. And for her, and you make this really clear in the book, like
01:11:03.660it's all about her children and like her daughters and just, if she had run away, if she had done
01:11:09.760anything to other than be excellent at running this household, he could have taken that out on0.63
01:11:15.900the daughters and she just wanted their lives to be better than hers. And I think that comes
01:11:19.580through so clearly. Yeah. I mean, I'm glad that you said that because I think that to me, it's,
01:11:25.260you know, it's her, it's her love for her children that basically dictates all of her actions and
01:11:30.440her behaviors, right? Whether we like them or not is irrelevant, but we can see, I mean, and I mean,
01:11:36.560she succeeds, right? She succeeds in making a better life for them and her grandchildren and
01:11:41.540her descendants than, than anything she ever acquired for herself. And so I, I think that it's,
01:11:46.920that's what I really wanted to come across in this story is that like how how she you know how
01:11:53.580everything for her it's about family right it's about family it's about legacy and legacies of0.99
01:11:59.240freedom right and upward social mobility right there's very few pathways for black women in the
01:12:06.08019th century and so this is the pathway that she's able to carve out and so we see like her ability0.97
01:12:13.840Right. Her positionality in the household means that she can bring Daniel into the house.0.99
01:12:18.240She brings Daniel's wife into the house. She brings their children into the house.0.99
01:12:22.840Right. So they're all there. All of them are taken out of field work.
01:12:26.180They're all given training. They're all able to take different positions in the domestic staff.
01:12:30.700That also gives them access to education, because as her daughters are being privately tutored and educated by the headmaster of Choctaw Academy, he educates the rest of the house staff as well.
01:12:41.020They take classes together as a group in the evenings.
01:12:44.480And so her positionality leads not only to better, like better, in quotes, jobs for her
01:12:52.320friends, for her family members on the plantation, it also, it gives them the ability to learn
01:12:57.860how to read and write and gives them an education.
01:13:00.100So they develop, right, all of these skills that they wouldn't have necessarily had if
01:13:06.040it had not been for the sacrifices that she chose to make, right?
01:13:09.520right so because again these are things that then they can take out right once you know if they
01:13:15.760acquire their freedom they can get different kinds of jobs there's all kinds of things that
01:13:19.460they'll be able to do that they wouldn't have otherwise so it's it's really it is a story of
01:13:25.480survival it's a story i mean certainly about privilege but it also really see where the
01:13:30.340boundary lines of that privilege are drawn right you can see like what julia is able to do at home
01:13:36.960on her own property at church, which is only two miles away at Choctaw Academy. But you also see
01:13:43.620how clearly the boundary lines are drawn because she never leaves. It's not that she doesn't just
01:13:48.100not ever leave Kentucky. She literally probably her whole life is limited to like about a five
01:13:53.500mile radius, right? Around her house. Like, so when people talk about how much power and privilege1.00
01:13:59.000she had, I'm like, do you realize how small that circle of privilege was? Like it was her, it was
01:14:04.480the plantation, the school, the church. Because anything outside of that, the further away she
01:14:09.920got from the epicenter of her power, in quotation marks, at home, the less power she had. Almost
01:14:16.100immediately it just dropped, right? This is not a woman who's like, you know, moving and shaking1.00
01:14:20.680in Lexington or Louisville or Washington, D.C., right? She and her daughters never go to those
01:14:27.400spaces right their their privilege is contained to really a very very small area around their house
01:14:35.520and so I think that we have to understand like how as much as Julia was able to do how limited
01:14:41.960it also was when I find also what a fascinating part is of your book and you write about it in
01:14:47.700a book that how this was for you as well like so moving to meet her present day some of her present
01:14:53.240day descendants like both people black people and also white people but i really liked um in
01:14:58.500your book you talk about sort of the i thought especially after sinners like just that movie
01:15:04.200like just really got me reading more about like um the color line and people passing and stuff
01:15:08.740and just like wanting to know about that so showing how her descendants some of them had to
01:15:13.800leave and maybe change their name to be able to especially when laws were passed where the one
01:15:19.500drop rule and stuff so can you talk about what it was like um meeting her descendants and
01:15:25.580just to see the ripple effect of her life and like the sacrifices she made and how that's
01:15:32.180manifested in these people who are around today like I find that I've never come across a book
01:15:36.440that has that element in it yeah I had never thought when I started working on this project
01:15:41.960that I would meet like descendants of the family it really hadn't occurred to me um I know I'm a
01:15:47.360historian. I'm a historian of slavery and Black women. I research dead people, right? And try to
01:15:53.680understand how the past impacts and shapes the present. But I had never thought about talking
01:15:57.680to real live human beings like librarians and archivists, yes, right? But actual descendants,
01:16:03.040I was like, what? Right? And it was amazing to me when I did, when those relationships were
01:16:11.140brokered and the introductions were made and I began developing those relationships with
01:16:17.000members of the family, it was just really, it was kind of heart-wrenching when I, you know,
01:16:22.420I did all of these interviews with them after I built, you know, spent time, built relationships.
01:16:27.040They were, a handful of people agreed to be interviewed by me and go on the record,
01:16:30.480which was really wonderful. And I think that that really is one of the richest parts of
01:16:34.220the book is being able to talk about, right, those connections between the past and the present.
01:16:39.860some of the descendants identified have always identified identified as black and they sort of
01:16:47.460knew the general outlines of their history if not the specific details it was still something that
01:16:53.360people didn't necessarily want to talk about because it was like having to acknowledge not0.89
01:16:58.100only slavery but sexual assault and rape and all of these things that black families obviously
01:17:03.100didn't want to talk about because they're painful and uncomfortable but what was also right really
01:17:09.140important and kind of like heart-wrenching for me was when I met the descendants of the family who
01:17:14.080have always identified as white, right, and have been white for multiple generations who had no
01:17:19.340idea growing up that their lineage traced back to Richard Mentor Johnson and an enslaved Black
01:17:26.000woman. They had no idea that they had any Black heritage in their family at all. They just thought
01:17:32.420that their family was like white and had been white like for generations. And it wasn't until
01:17:38.160they were fully grown people like married with children of their own like 40s 50s 60s that
01:17:44.960they're uncovering the truth about their lineage that they're related that they're descended from
01:17:49.540not only a vice president but from his enslaved black wife uh and you know because at at some
01:17:57.160point in the late 19th early 20th century we don't know exactly when um but folks cross like
01:18:04.580cross the color line and they don't just cross the color line sort of like externally but you
01:18:10.800know in terms of like legal documentation right um census records things like that they actually
01:18:17.260begin they stop telling their children and grandchildren the truth about their heritage
01:18:21.820and that knowledge is literally lost and some people do it by moving away some people move
01:18:28.380to other states they move to other like even just across the river to ohio and they move just far
01:18:32.980enough away that they can quietly, right, stop telling their kids and grandkids, like, the truth
01:18:38.900of who they are. But there are other people who continue to live right in the area, in, you know,
01:18:44.360in Lexington, in Georgetown, in this area, and they just stop talking about it, right? They just
01:18:50.980stop telling their kids, they stop telling their grandkids, and history can be lost very quickly.
01:18:55.940That's the thing. It can be erased, twisted, warped, changed, and lost within a generation.
01:19:00.860and that's why and that's what's so dangerous right about not exploring not telling the whole
01:19:07.580truth because it only takes one generation for the for the knowledge to be lost and then
01:19:14.340it can take centuries for it to be recovered and so it's the late 20th century before these
01:19:20.380folks begin to actually uncover who they are like literally boxes in attics
01:19:26.880ancestry yeah boxes and addicts ancestry.com all kinds of like things that kind of come together
01:19:34.980and so that's why i thought it was really important to i mean to really get their stories
01:19:41.020in order for us to understand the depth of erasure right the depth of anti-blackness
01:19:47.540in this country right the depth of violence against black people that it's so severe
01:19:52.560right the anti-blackness is so all-encompassing that you have members of the family at a certain0.73
01:19:59.060point who say it's Jim Crow it's segregation there's so much violence right there's lynchings
01:20:05.020right the Klan is running you know the show there's no protection for us anywhere so the
01:20:11.700best thing that we can do is to cross the color line and change like some of them like you said
01:20:17.040change their names leave move to other states and hide who they are for the rest of their lives0.62
01:20:22.100because the alternative is acknowledging your Blackness
01:20:27.800and then potentially losing everything you have,
01:20:31.200losing your medical license, losing your home,
01:20:34.440losing the ability to send your kids to certain schools,
01:20:37.180losing the right to vote if you're a man.