{"id":59635,"date":"2020-03-22T02:03:33","date_gmt":"2020-03-22T02:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=59635"},"modified":"2020-03-22T02:03:33","modified_gmt":"2020-03-22T02:03:33","slug":"the-other-madisons-the-lost-history-of-a-presidents-black-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=59635","title":{"rendered":"The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President’s Black Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President’s Black Family<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt<\/a>
\n2020-03-24
\n272 pages
\nHardcover ISBN-13\/EAN: 9781328604392
\nHardcover ISBN-10: 132860439X<\/p>\n

Bettye Kearse<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

In The Other Madisons<\/em>, Bettye Kearse\u2014a descendant of an enslaved cook and, according to oral tradition, President James Madison<\/a>\u2014shares her family story and explores the issues of legacy, race, and the powerful consequences of telling the whole truth.<\/p>\n

For thousands of years, West African griots<\/em><\/a> (men) and griottes<\/em> (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<\/em> for her family. Their credo\u2014\u201cAlways remember\u2014you\u2019re a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president\u201d<\/em>\u2014was intended to be a source of pride, but for her, it echoed with abuses of slavery, including rape and incest.<\/p>\n

Confronting those abuses, Bettye embarked on a journey of discovery\u2014of 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<\/a>; below a federal building in New York City<\/a>; and under a brick walkway at James Madison\u2019s Virginia plantation<\/a>. When Bettye tried to confirm the information her ancestors had passed down, she encountered obstacles at every turn.<\/p>\n

Part personal quest, part testimony, part historical correction, The Other Madisons<\/em> is the saga of an extraordinary American family told by a griotte in search of the whole story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In “The Other Madisons,” Bettye Kearse\u2014a descendant of an enslaved cook and, according to oral tradition, President James Madison\u2014shares her family story and explores the issues of legacy, race, and the powerful consequences of telling the whole truth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1245,11,459,17,6940,20,693],"tags":[27628,1135,27633],"class_list":["post-59635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-books","category-history","category-monographs","category-slavery","category-usa","category-virginia","tag-bettye-kearse","tag-houghton-mifflin-harcourt","tag-james-madison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59636,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59635\/revisions\/59636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}