The Other Madisons

Biographies & Memoirs

synopsis

Synopsis

For more than 200 years, Bettye Kearse’s family credo “Always remember—you’re a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president” has served as a source of pride and inspiration. But Kearse doesn’t know why the credo should make her proud. For her, it resounds with the abuses of slavery. In 1990, when her mother turns over to her the old box of family memorabilia, Kearse becomes her family’s eighth-generation griotte, the oral historian. To confront the discomforting parts of her family’s story, she begins a journey of discovery—of her ancestors, her country, and herself. She travels to Lagos, Portugal, where the transatlantic slave trade began; to Ghana, West Africa, where her family’s first African ancestor in America, and their first griotte, was born; to Baltimore, Maryland, where a replica of a slave ship sits in a museum; to James Madison’s plantation where three generations of her family lived in bondage; and to Bastrop County, Texas, where her enslaved family resided when Emancipation came. Kearse learns that wherever African slaves once walked, history had tried to bury their footsteps and silence their voices. She also learns that slaves possessed hope and inner strength, by which they survived, and talents, by which they contributed mightily to America. Then they passed down those same qualities to their descendants, including those alive today. Kearse decides to give voice to the stolen Africans and to encourage African Americans to embrace their slave ancestry so that they, too, to contribute mightily to America.

bio

Author Biography

Bettye Kearse, a descendant of a slave and President James Madison, is a writer and retired pediatrician living in Santa Fe, NM. Her commentary “Our Family Tree Searches for Branches” appeared in the Boston Herald. “Destination Jim Crow,” a personal narrative published in the fall 2013 issue of River Teeth, was listed as a notable essay in The Best American Essays 2014 and nominated for the 2015 Pushcart Prize. In March 2020, TIME Magazine published her article "I Feared My Enslaved Ancestors Had Been Dishonored in Death." Her essays "Slavery on Wall Street" and "America's Hidden Stories: The Other Madisons" appeared in May 2020 issues of Image Makers and Influencers Magazine. She is the author of the memoir, The Other Madisons: The Lost History of A President's Black Family (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. March 24, 2020). Her website is www.bettyekearse.com. .

website

Author Insight

"Visiting," A Euphemism for Rape

Two of my enslaved ancestors were raped by their enslavers, but the word "rape" has been avoided by generations of the women's descendants. The word evokes pain and shame. Many members of my family are more comfortable referring to the unwanted sexual encounters between the enslaving men and their enslaved women "visiting."

Book Excerpt

The Other Madisons

I never heard my mother use the word sex. For her generation, people born in the early 1900s, sex outside of marriage was a sin. In the 1950s and ’60s, when I was growing up, there were topics no one talked about in public. Television, film, newspapers, and radio followed a code of morality too. It was a world without social media and the internet; unlike today, images and language steeped in sex were not ubiquitous, and privacy was not obsolete.

For my mother and other black women who had escaped the Jim Crow South, and for those who had not, there was also the multigenerational memory of the predatory white male. African-American mothers faced the quandary of how to maintain modesty and decency while warning their daughters about unwanted sex.

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Bettye Kearse

The Other Madisons

Synopsis

Author Biography

Author Insight

"Visiting," A Euphemism for Rape

Book Excerpt

The Other Madisons

Comment on this Bubble