Archives for 2021

A Question of Freedom – Wm G Thomas III

(Oct 2021) This book landed on my radar because it’s written by historian William G. Thomas III, brother of my husband’s law partner Sandy Thomas, who is the global managing partner for Reed Smith LLP.

It’s a tremendous work of scholarship. It is also a story well told with plenty of plot twists. The meticulous recounting of court cases, depositions, legal records, and oral histories is skillfully woven into the riveting stories of people, families, and history that have not previously been explored in such depth.

Willam Thomas discovers in researching the subject of Georgetown University’s sale of their slaves to fund their college back in the 1830s that his family also owned slaves in the same area of Prince George’s County, Maryland. His journey of discovery unfolds as he meets descendants of the families he writes about who sued for their freedom in the late 18th century to the mid-1800s.

It was emotional for me to read about the very real trauma, injustice, and cruelty suffered by families who were enslaved. That injustice was perpetrated by white families like the author’s and my own who accepted the institution of slavery as both a legal right, an economic necessity, and part of the natural order of life.

The book delves into the plantation system, the economy of tobacco and cotton, the vast holdings of Jesuit priests, banking instruments that allowed the mortgaging of human beings as property, the recessions and market collapses that fueled the expansion of slavery in the south. These concepts are brought to life through the stories of individuals with names, extended family histories, and accurate details captured by legal cases and property inventories that included enslaved people as assets.

The legal wins in the early freedom suits set up some branches of a particular family for generations of success as they flourished in Maryland and northern states. The failures of the legal system to see enslaved people as people with fundamental rights relegated others in those same families to a life in the deep south with generations of poverty and struggle. The Jesuit priests who bartered the souls of 292 people have much to answer for.

William Thomas has written an important book that is so fundamental to understanding the trajectory of our country’s history around slavery and the intractable racism that impacts all of us in our daily lives. He has also uplifted the stories of courageous people that history rendered invisible up to this point. The Queens, Mahoneys, Bells, Duckets and so many others deserve their place in our country’s founding story.

This is one of those books that I wish was on everyone’s reading list. It’s part of a journey of understanding, acknowledgment and healing. And our country desperately needs to be healed.

by Catherine Read

Violins of Hope – Richmond Exhibit 2021

(July 2021) Dr. James A. Grymes, a professor of Music History at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, has brought forth such a well researched and well told story of violins that survived the Holocaust, even when many of their owners did not. It is fascinating and horrifying, an emotional retelling of what happened to violinists – famous and not – during a period in history where Jews were savagely exterminated all over Europe. In some instances, these violins saved their owner’s life and that of their families.

I read this book in preparation for interviewing Dr. Grymes for a show I host called Inside Scoop. The upcoming collaborative exhibition called Violins of Hope is taking place in Richmond, Virginia, from August 4th to October 24th. The violins in this exhibit were played by Jewish musicians in camps and ghettos during the Holocaust and ended up in the hands of Amnon Weinstein of Tel Aviv, a second generation craftsman who repairs violins. The stories of the instruments, their owners and how they came to be in Amnon Weinstein’s shop makes for riveting reading.

There is so much I was not aware of regarding the role that music played during the Holocaust. There were camp orchestras at many concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, where work details left in the morning to the music of the orchestra and returned in the evening greeted by the same music. Providing music for soldiers spared the lives of some musicians who were given extra food or lighter work assignments. Dr. Grymes has focused his book on telling detailed stories of musicians from Germany to Romania, the Ukraine to Norway. There is a great deal of significant history woven into the telling of these very personal accounts. I learned so much.

Bronislaw Huberman, Ernst Glaser and his wife Kari, the boy partisan Motele Schlein, Feivel Wininger and his baby daughter Helen. Their lives mattered and Dr. Grymes has sought out their stories as a way of preserving their memories the way their musical instruments have been lovingly preserved.

Amnon Weinstein lost over 400 members of his family. His parents refused to speak about the loss of their parents, siblings and extended family during the Holocaust. Yet Amnon, who learned violin repair from his father Moshe [who was taught by violin maker Yaakov Zimmerman] finds hope in restoring and sharing these violins. He observed that while Nazis did not survive beyond WWII, these violins have. “These instruments are a testimony from another world.”

Although Nazis did not survive beyond the defeat of Germany, fascism lives on all over the world and is on the rise. For the 15th consecutive year, there has been a decline in global freedom. Teaching history – fully and truthfully – is important in helping each new generation understand we are not immune to the basest, darkest and cruelest instincts of human beings. Evil is never truly eliminated, it is kept at bay, and only the greatest vigilance prevents another Holocaust in a different iteration from happening again.

I highly recommend reading this book and then making plans to visit the Violins of Hope in Richmond Aug. 4th thru Oct. 24th at the Virginia Holocaust Museum, The Virginia Museum of History & Culture and the Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia. There will also be a series of concerts in collaboration with the Richmond Symphony Orchestra where these violins will again bring comfort and joy to those fortunate enough to hear them. More information can be found at www.ViolinsofHopeRVA.com

by Catherine Read

The Three Mothers – Anna Malaika Tubbs

(Feb. 2021) What a wonderful book! Anna Malaika Tubbs has chosen to profile three incredibly important women and she has done it well. Researching women who did not leave behind nearly the body of work, personal history and accomplishments of their three famous sons was a challenge. It was as challenge well met, and stories well told. This book is a good read. And so enlightening.

Tubbs profiles three Black women most of us know little about: Alberta Williams King, mother of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther, Jr.; Louise Little, mother of Malcolm X; and Emma Berdis Baldwin, mother of writer James Baldwin.

Louise, Berdis, and Alberta were all born within six years of each other, and their famous sons were all born within five years of each other, which presents beautiful intersections in their lives. Because they were all born around the same time and gave birth to their famous sons around the same time, and two of them passed away around the same time, I reflect on Black womanhood in the early 1900s, Black motherhood in the 1920s, and their influence on the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Each of these women truly deserves to be known in their own right. They were strong women who all three valued education and were educated themselves. Tubbs connects their lives with sociological and historical factors of the time that impacted the trajectory of their lives and those of their children. There is so much here that deserves to be pondered, discussed and centered in our discussions of how to create communities – and a country – where Black families thrive.

One of the greatest shocks of this book was learning that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s mother Alberta was assassinated while playing the organ at a Sunday service on June 30, 1974. She was gunned down in Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta in front of a packed congregation, her husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr., her sole remaining child Dr. Christine King Farris, and several of her grandchildren – one of whom tackled the 23 year old gunman. The assailant was captured, tried and sentenced to death. “This was later reduced to life in prison, in part at the insistence of King family members who opposed the death penalty. He died in prison of a stroke in 1995.”

The fact that I did not know this speaks volumes about the erasure of Black women in American history. More importantly than how Alberta King died, however, is how she lived. All of these mothers deserve to have their stories told. Their legacy was how they navigated a life where the odds were stacked against them and raised children who had an impact on this country and in this world.

Anna Malaika Tubbs has done us all a great service in doggedly pursuing this project. Time has already started to erase the scant evidence of their lives and left the author to piece together their narrative from what little was left behind for her to find. Sadly, the women themselves were not interviewed in person while they still lived. Tubbs makes the case for why Black women’s stories need to be captured and written down. Not just for the sake of posterity, but so their families know where they came from and what shaped the women who brought them into this world.

I’m so grateful this book was written so that I could read it.