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 So
many books, and so little time! Fortunately, the author appeared
at a seminar sponsored by the Smithsonian Resident Associates
Program to discuss her book and how she came to write it.
Adele Logan Alexander knew she wanted to write her family's
story after her mother died in 1993. That is when she began
to piece together the scraps of family memories and photos,
stories that started with the birth of her great-grandfather,
John Robert Bond, in 1846. Born in Liverpool, England to an
Irish famine refugee and a black dock worker, he lived there
until 1862, when he immigrated to the United States at age
17 and joined the Union Navy. While recovering from battle
wounds in a Tidewater hospital, he met and married Emma Thomas.
She was a 'contraband' from a nearby plantation, earning a
living selling fruit and vegetables to the sailors at the hospital.
The story follows their lives, and the lives of the next two
generations of the Bond family, up until Emma's death in 1926
at age 80.
Alexander details their lives and their substantial accomplishments.
Among Bond descendants are businessmen, Harvard graduates,
turn-of-the century women who earned Ph.D.s, and military heroes.
She also describes their acquaintances, who include Archibald
Grimke, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. DuBois. Woven throughout
the Bond family story are the political and social issues of
the day, such as the little-known Washington D.C. race riots
of 1919; the rise of Jim Crow; and the pervasive and persistent
limitations faced by middle-class African Americans. This,
in spite of the fact that members of this family fought in
the Civil War, the Spanish American War, and World War I.
Modern America tends to dwell on the Frederick Douglasses,
Michael Jordans, and Oprah Winfreys, but here Alexander depicts
an "average" African American family, how they struggled and
achieved what all families want to achieve--education, success,
and happiness. These are the reasons Robert Bond, and all immigrants,
came here, whether they were from England, Africa, Poland,
China or Mexico.
While the book just touches on the Civil War, these issues
emanate from the Civil War. In spite of sharing the same history
and the same sacrifices, African Americans still do not share
the same opportunities. This book reminds us that the Civil
War was the Second American Revolution, freeing slaves as well
as the immigrants who came after the founding fathers, whether
they came willingly or not. The Bond family history is our
history.
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