Amid this racially tense culture in Virginia and America, a thought-provoking book has been written by Bill Sizemore, retired reporter for the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk and a journalistic friend.
“Uncle George and Me: Two Southern Families Confront a Shared Legacy of Slavery” (Brandylane Publishers, 149 pgs., $18.95) is a story about Sizemore’s slave-owning ancestors, their slaves and those slaves’ descendants. In a way, it’s the story of the old South and the new South within the context of one extended family.
Raised in the small segregated community of Clarksville, Va., with its segregated schools, churches, clubs and public accommodations, Sizemore explained, “I had virtually no contact with African Americans, and I had only the vaguest awareness that there were any who shared my surname.”
Of course, that changed for Sizemore, Clarksville and the rest of Virginia as integration brought a newly defined culture to families and the region. The whole racial picture came into focus for Sizemore about a decade ago when he discovered that his great-great-great grandfather Daniel Sizemore was a slave owner.
A tobacco farmer in 1860, Daniel Sizemore farmed about 500 acres off the banks of the Dan River in Mecklenburg County. Since the earliest days of the Virginia colony, tobacco dominated the economy, and tobacco plantations or farms such as Sizemore’s were part of that market. Author Sizemore discovered his ancestor owned 16 slaves who worked his tobacco fields.
Using his reporter’s research intuition, he found that the African American Sizemore families, living not far from his family homestead were, in fact, descendants from those same slaves.
There have been other such books written in the past 20 years, but the key difference between those and Bill Sizemore’s is the size of the farms. The other books, including Edward Ball’s “Slaves in the Family,” written in 1998, involved large plantations with hundreds and perhaps thousands of slaves. Far more common, Sizemore stresses, were “smaller unremarkable farms like my ancestor’s with fewer than 20 slaves.”
His search for slave descendants brought him to George Sizemore, or Uncle George, as his family called him. When located in 2010 he was a “very rigorous 91-year-old, (who) was happy to discuss his family history. His father was Ben Sizemore, born into slavery in 1858 and eventually fathered 11 children — Uncle George was the 10th in line.”
Thus began many visits between Bill Sizemore and Uncle George as the life of the African American Sizemores began to unfold, and the writer could relate to their shared legacy. Bill Sizemore has written a chapter about Uncle George in a new volume, “Slavery’s Descendants: Shared Legacies of Race and Reconciliation,” edited by Jill Strauss (Rutgers University Press, 280 pgs., $24.95).
Another Conspiracy Theory
My apology for making another deviation from my stated book review “policy.” A new book, written by Mark Shaw, has absolutely no connection with Virginia, but holds an intriguing new focus on the John F. Kennedy assassination, and I want to mention it.
“Denial of Justice: Dorothy Kilgallen, Abuse of Power, and the Most Compelling JFK Assassination Investigation in History” (Post Hill Press, 350 pgs. $30) comes at this historical event from a different perspective. Older readers may remember Kilgallen as one of the stars of the CBS television quiz show, “What’s My Line,” but often forgotten is the fact that she was a Pulitzer-Prize nominated, top-notch investigative reporter and Broadway entertainment columnist.
After Kennedy’s death, Kilgallen focused much of her attention on the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald and his killer, Jack Ruby. Like Shaw’s earlier volume, “The Reporter Who Knew Too Much: The Mysterious Death of What’s My Line TV Star and Media Icon Dorothy Kilgallen,” this book stresses his belief, backed by research and interviews, that she died in 1964, not as a result of police-proclaimed suicide or drug overdose. Shaw, soliciting much more research, believes Kilgallen’s death was because she was about to reveal significant information regarding Kennedy’s assassination — possibly divulging an assassin other than Oswald.
Shaw’s work is intriguing and adds more good biographical information about the star reporter. For those JFK conspiracy theorists, it is a volume not to be missed.
Beer Barrel Polka
It’s hard to finish mowing the grass or working in the yard without coming in and wanting a beer. Lee Graves, an author, former journalism colleague and beer devotee has written a marvelous account of “Virginia Beer: A Guide from Colonial Days to Craft’s Golden Age,” (University of Virginia Press, 384 pgs., $24.95).
From the days of the Jamestown Settlement, beer has been an important drink in the Old Dominion, and Graves takes the reader on a remarkable jaunt through brewing history. A gifted storyteller, Graves writes enthusiastically about the current craft beer brewing rage and Virginia’s role in the dynamic saga.
Pick up a can, sit back in an easy chair — sip, read and enjoy!
Have a comment or suggestion for Kale? Contact him at Kaleonbooks@gmail.com.
