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The Other Madisons : the lost history of a president's Black family

2020

Title:	The Other Madisons : the lost history of a president's Black family
Author:	Kearse, Bettye, author.
Copies Available in CU:	4 (of 4)
Current Requests:	0
Format:	Book
Publisher, Date:	Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2020]
	x, 253 pages : genealogical table ; 22 cm
Summary:	"A descendant of a slave named Coreen, and-according to oral tradition-her owner, President James Madison, finally shares her family's story."-- Provided by publisher.
Contents:	The new Griotte -- The box -- Family stories -- Footsteps -- Living history -- Destination Jim Crow -- The dentist -- Beads -- The castle -- The museum -- "Visiting" -- Sanctuaries -- In search of the President's son -- Elizabeth -- Free! -- Gramps -- New York memorial -- The plantation's tale -- History. Heritage. Memory.
Subjects:	Madison, James, 1751-1836 -- Family. Madison, James, 1751-1836 -- relations with African Americans. Madison family. Mandy, active 18th century. Coreen, active 18th century. African American families -- History. Racially mixed people -- United States. Slaves -- Virginia -- History. Freedmen -- Texas -- History.
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN:	9781328604392 132860439X

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Summary

"A Roots for a new generation, rich in storytelling and steeped in history."

--Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

"A compelling saga that gives a voice to those that history tried to erase...Poignant and eye-opening, this is a must-read."

--Booklist

Winner of the International Afro American Historical and Genealogical Society Book Award

Winner of the Outstanding Book Award from the National Association of Black Journalists

Winner of the 2021 Library of Virginia's People's Choice Award --Nonfiction

2021 Bronze Medal Winner of the Reader's Choice Book Award--Nonfiction/Memoir

One of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of the Year

One of Smithsonian Magazine's "Best History Books of 2020"

One of Good Morning America's "7 Books to Read for Presidents Day," by Alexis Coe

One of Parade's Best Memoirs to Read this Year

In The Other Madisons, Bettye Kearse--a descendant of an enslaved cook and, according to oral tradition, President James Madison--shares her family story and explores the issues of legacy, race, and the powerful consequences of telling the whole truth.

For thousands of years, West African griots (men) and griottes (women) have recited the stories of their people. Without this tradition Bettye Kearse would not have known that she is a descendant of President James Madison and his slave, and half-sister, Coreen. In 1990, Bettye became the eighth-generation griotte for her family. Their credo--"Always remember--you're a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president"--was intended to be a source of pride, but for her, it echoed with abuses of slavery, including rape and incest.

Confronting those abuses, Bettye embarked on a journey of discovery--of her ancestors, the nation, and herself. She learned that wherever African slaves walked, recorded history silenced their voices and buried their footsteps: beside a slave-holding fortress in Ghana; below a federal building in New York City; and under a brick walkway at James Madison's Virginia plantation. When Bettye tried to confirm the information her ancestors had passed down, she encountered obstacles at every turn.

Part personal quest, part testimony, part historical correction, The Other Madisons is the saga of an extraordinary American family told by a griotte in search of the whole story.

Trade Reviews

Library Journal Review

Retired pediatrician Kearse, her family's eighth griot (storyteller/historian/genealogist), traces her lineage over two centuries: "Always remember--you're a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president," her predecessors instilled. The fourth U.S. president, James Madison, never had biological children with wife Dolley. He did, however, according to Kearse's griot ancestors, father a son with his enslaved half-sister, Coreen. Enhancing the meticulous, often disturbing, history she tenaciously uncovers, Kearse also writes in the imagined first-person voice of Coreen's mother, Mandy, the family's African progenitor, kidnapped, transported, owned, and raped by Madison. Karen Chilton reads Kearse's peripatetic explorations (through Ghana, Portugal, Lagos, and, of course, Madison's own famed Montpelier) with solemnity and gravitas; her convincing presentation never falters. VERDICT Will satisfy listeners seeking historical enlightenment. Libraries should provide easy access to this title in multiple formats.--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

Publishers Weekly Review

Essayist and retired pediatrician Kearse traces her family's history from the antebellum South to present-day California and Boston and investigates long-standing claims that she and her relatives are descended from U.S. president James Madison in this evocative and probing debut. According to family legend, Kearse is the great-great-great-great granddaughter of the founding father and an enslaved woman named Coreen. Writing in the African tradition of the griot (oral historians and storytellers who serve "as human links between past and present"), Kearse begins her inquiry with a box of heirlooms including "a smudged copy of an 1860 slave census" listing her great-great grandparents and their 10 children. She pays a visit to Madison's Montpelier estate in Virginia, where archaeologists are in the midst of excavating the kitchen where Coreen once cooked; travels to slave trading centers in Lagos, Portugal, and Ghana; imagines the wrenching ordeals of her first ancestor to be brought from West Africa to America; and relates her mother's experiences growing up in Jim Crow--era Texas. Though Kearse's attempts to establish a genetic link to the president--who had no "acknowledged offspring"--are met with "roadblocks," she succeeds in portraying her family's tenacious rise in social standing across eight generations. This moving account asks essential questions about how American history gets told. Agent: Kim Witherspoon, Inkwell Management (Mar.)

Booklist Review

In the grand tradition of oral history, West African griots and griottes used the power of storytelling to pass down family tales from generation to generation. When Kearse's mother delivered a box of carefully curated familial artifacts, she became her family's newest griotte. Kearse set out not only to be the first griotte to commemorate her family's story in written word but to also find solid evidence to support her family's motto, "Always remember--you're a Madison. You came from African slaves and a president." According to lore, their lineage could be traced back to a slave named Coreen and President James Madison. Kearse's journey to set the record straight was riddled with obstacles and took her around the world, from Lagos to Virginia to Ghana and New York. The result is a compelling saga that gives a voice to those that history tried to erase. Kearse deftly alternates between chapters detailing her experiences and accounts told from the perspective of their family matriarch, a West African slave called Mandy. Poignant and eye-opening, this is a must-read.

Kirkus Review

An African American pediatrician--turned--historical detective investigates her family's history--and, by extension, that of America. "Always remember--you're a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president." So her mother told Kearse, who opens her account with invocations of the West African griot tradition of storytelling and oral history. That tradition found a place in slavery-era America because most slave owners did not allow enslaved people to learn to read and write. James Madison was different: He allowed his mixed-race son, Jim, to linger within hearing of education lessons. Given well-documented events at nearby Monticello, that Madison had such a son is a surprise only because he had no children with his wife, Dolley, which led many scholars to assume that he "was impotent, infertile, or both." Evidently not. Enriching that history not just with stories, but with more tangible historical evidence, Kearse visits the plantation, speaking with archaeologists, historians, and the descendants of slaves, reading widely, discovering the long-unknown burial sites of ancestors. She also traveled to Africa and Portugal--for, as her grandfather had told her mother, "our history goes well beyond America's boundaries." That Jim was educated did not spare him from being sold, always aware that he was the son of a president. So, too, with the descendants, enslaved and then free, who carried the Madison story to new homes, to be incorporated into the narrative of Madison's life, as Sally Hemings is in Thomas Jefferson's. On that note, Kearse writes searchingly of Madison's language in crafting the Constitution, in which the words "slave" and "slavery" did not appear but that spoke of "other persons"--acknowledged as humans, that is, but still left out. "I understood that this omission," writes the author, "was why oral history was essential to African Americans having knowledge of how crucial we have always been to what this nation is." A Roots for a new generation, rich in storytelling and steeped in history. (b/w illustrations) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Table of Contents

	Prologue	p. 1
	Mandy	p. 5
1	The New Griotte	p. 11
2	The BOX	p. 27
	Mandy	p. 35
3	Family Stories	p. 37
4	Footsteps	p. 51
5	Living History	p. 63
6	Destination Jim Crow	p. 73
7	The Dentist	p. 93
	Mandy	p. 103
8	Beads	p. 107
9	The Castle	p. 117
10	The Museum	p. 125
11	"Visiting"	p. 133
	Mandy	p. 153
12	Sanctuaries	p. 155
	Mandy	p. 163
13	In Search of the President's Son	p. 165
14	Elizabeth	p. 173
15	Free!	p. 183
16	Gramps	p. 199
17	New York Memorial	p. 209
18	The Plantation's Tale	p. 213
	Mandy	p. 227
19	History, Heritage, Memory	p. 231
	Mandy	p. 243
	Acknowledgments	p. 245
	Image Credits	p. 249
	Resources	p. 251

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