Strange Fruit

“There are black people in town who have the same last name as me, and I never thought about why that might be.” Author Chris Tomlinson says he hears that a lot while touring for his recent book, called Tomlinson Hill: The Remarkable Story of Two Families Who Share the Tomlinson Name—One White, One Black. In it, he traces his family’s history to a cotton plantation in Texas, and reaches out to another Tomlinson family whose ancestors were held as slaves there. Slavery is a topic that brings up strong feelings in Americans, because as Chris points out, it was part of our country’s economic and social as recently as five generations ago. But he says it wasn’t white guilt that motivated his work on the book. “I’m not asking forgiveness for what my great grandfather did,” he says. “On the other hand, I do have an obligation to recognize the privilege that I have because my ancestors oppressed people.” Chris says slavery, the Jim Crow era, and the institutionalized racism that has always been present in the United