Start Reading The Family Tree: A Lynching In Georgia, A Legacy Of Secrets, And My Search For The Truth Narrated By Karen Branan Formatted As Bound Copy

working on a family cemetery project, I've started to confront the uncomfortable fact that my relatives are buried in what in some ways is a Confederate cemeterynot officially, but in terms of the number of former Confederate soldiers buried there, including two of my greatgreat uncles.
I was born and grew up white in Tennessee, so, almost inevitably, this is part of my heritage, and I've begun to contemplate what to do to repent for my ancestors, who were too poor, in the main, to own slaves themselves, but who nevertheless partook of the racism that made slavery and Jim Crow possible.


Reading The Family Tree by Karen Branan is part of the process of educating myself about how others have faced similar issues, and it's a valuable part of that.
The book is a bit of a wild ride in a couple of ways, First, the history that Branan describes and that surrounds thelynching of three black men and one black woman in Harris County, Georgia, is astonishingly brutal, complicated, and emotionally fraught.
Branan describes learning about her own relatives' numerous connections to this event and many other related events and how this changes her view of people she thought she knew and that she loved such as her grandfather, who was the sheriff who failed to effectively protect these prisoners who were in his care.


The second way that the book is a bit wild is in its organization, The book moves back and forth through the history of Harris County, the state of Georgia, and what was going on in Washington and elsewhere back and forth through time across the traditions of slavery and the vicissitudes of the Jim Crow era and around and around all these interrelated families.
It can be hard to keep it all straight, and this annoyed me in the first several chapters of the book, But I finally came to see that as part of the pointit was a wild time and all the people, events, laws, and constantly shifted and created conflict and confusion.
I finally just sat back and read through it impressionistically instead of like a lawyer, I read it emotionally instead of analytically, I let it hit me how messed up it all was, how unhappy everyone was, the extent to which racism and brutality were the sick air that everyone breathed,

And that is what Branan's book does well, She captures the pervasive air of silence and shame that hung over white peopleeven those who wanted on some level to change, even those who had black lovers and friends.
Perhaps her most important point is that the white people who were passive and, perhaps, even those who lynched black people, were ordinary, She claims that the were not "monsters," but people who did "monstrous things, " I could quibble therewhat else defines a "monster" other

than monstrous deeds But what I think is important is that she captures how schizoid the whole culture was and often remains.
She captures how race and class intersected, She captures how innocence or guilt was not the issue in lynchings but, instead, how the lynchings served to paper over miscegenation and disenfranchisement and often whiteonwhite crime, But Brenan also makes it very clear how even those whites who participated in this hell were ashamed of their participation, of their own lawlessness, of their own racism,

Branan brings up our current moment and the resurgence of white supremacy at the end of the book, but it's impossible not to think about that the entire time you read it.
There was a way in which it made me feel hopefulif people could change at least somewhat during and after the terrible times that she describes, then we can, too.
We can recover from this time we're living through, On the other hand, I felt sad that the markers of shame among virulent racists seem to be fewer, And while Branan describes a righteous Christianity especially Methodism that led the way to repentance for the sins of slavery and brutality after slavery, we currently have an oftenperverted Christianity that advocates for sins like racism and violence.
I see how the whites and blacks of Jim Crow ended up there, but I don't see how on Earth we ended up where we are today, This was a difficult book for me to read, partly because as nonfiction historical fiction, some of the text is detailed and dry, but mostly because the subject is horrifying.
I cannot think of anything worse than a lynching, This author, Karen Branan focuses on the lynching of four African Americans three men and one woman in, This was the first, but not the last, lynching of a woman in Georgia, And, as an aside, she was innocent, The historical data is very well researched and takes the reader through the violent Georgia past through the growth of the KKK and the NAACP, As late as, although there were no more lynchings in Georgia, the state led the nation in executions, withof those being black, This was a rough journey for the author who discovered that she shares “a murderous heritage, as well as a biracial heritage” with villains, bystanders and victims, She ends with: “As I bring this book to a close, America is once again aflame with racial violence and discrimination, There is no question that, as a nation, we have yet to honestly face our history and to trust embrace African Americans as fullfledged citizens and members of our human family.
I believe this is the only way we can heal, as individuals and as a nation, ” One step forward An honest book that not only dives into the history of the author's kinship, but surrounding towns and Georgia as a whole, I found the storyline a bit rough to stick with at first, but Branan truly had a way to tie it all together and make sense of it all, What a fascinating and healing process that still has open wounds and room to grow, We could all read this book as if we are reading our own family story and history, I highly suggest if you are reading this review, this book, or are just looking into opening your mind and heart, I implore you to look for your local Coming to the Table chapter.
The more we discuss the past openly, the more we can change our future, Entirely too much speculation and overly dramatic theorizing to truly be considered a nonfiction book, The author seems so intent on demonizing her own family and the town they came from that she never offers any real proof that the lynching victims were actually innocent of the crime.
Its pretty amazing that she can find such detailed accounts of what the townspeople were doing and even thinking during the lynching overyears ago, but can find no evidence of who actually killed Norman Hadley.
Im in no way condoning the lynching, but I would like a few more hard facts rather than conjecture and assumptions, The book is riddled with inconsistencies and errors that never should have made it into print, Theres one sentence toward the end of the book that borders on ridiculous and makes me really question the authors credibility: “Not so long ago, the eightytwoyearold had been found on his parlor floor, beaten to death with chains, my mother told me, by a motorcycle gang that was blackmailing him over his homosexuality.
” This is referring to Rev, Alex Copeland and is completely false, It may have been speculated by gossip lovers, but it was never a known fact that Rev, Copeland was a homosexual and, in my opinion, an attempt to out an old man in such a public way overyears after his death is not cool at all.
Easily done research would also reveal that he died at agein a nursing home, Given this egregiously false statement, I cant help but wonder how many other things in this book were not factchecked or as wellresearched as they should have been, Karen Branan has found a way to connect Georgia's disturbing history of lynching to a very personal story about her own family, She unearths past traumas living just below the surface that, without anyone wanting to acknowledge it, have deeply impacted so many lives, She also has many uncomfortable conversations with her own family and community about race and complicity, the kind many of us have been having lately, Very interesting but hard to follow which family members were which a pedigree chart with the family and relationships laid out would have helped keep track, Sandwiching the lynching tragedy ofindividualsfemale,males with the author's own family history, this story details one small Georgia town's ongoing fight to keep the horror of its past hidden.
Branan's storytelling draws you in and her fight to honestly examine the part her own family played in this injustice is courageous, Read alongside Cone's "The Cross and the Lynching Tree" or Xendi's "Stamped from the Beginning," one will see clearly how poorly we've handled our nation's foundation built on the bloodshed of the innocents Native American and African American.
In the tradition of Slaves in the Family, the provocative true account of the hanging of four black people by a white lynch mob inwritten by the greatgranddaughter of the sheriff charged with protecting them.


Harris County, Georgia,, A white man, the beloved nephew of the county sheriff, is shot dead on the porch of a black woman, Days later, the sheriff sanctions the lynching of a black woman and three black men, all of them innocent, For Karen Branan, the greatgranddaughter of that sheriff, this isnt just history, this is family history,

Branan spent nearly twenty years combing through diaries and letters, hunting for clues in libraries and archives throughout the United States, and interviewing community elders to piece together the events and motives that led a group of people to murder four of their fellow citizens in such a brutal public display.
Her research revealed surprising new insights into the daytoday reality of race relations in the Jim Crowera South, but what she ultimately discovered was far more personal,

A gripping story of privilege and power, anger, and atonement, The Family Tree transports readers to a small Southern town steeped in racial tension and bound by powerful family ties.
Branan takes us back in time to the Civil War, demonstrating how plantation politics and the Lost Cause movement set the stage for the fiery racial dynamics of the twentieth century, delving into the prevalence of mob rule, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the role of miscegenation in an unceasing cycle of bigotry.


Through all of this, what emerges is a searing examination of the violence that occurred on that awful day inthe echoes of which still resound todayand the knowledge that it is only through facing our ugliest truths that we can move forward to a place of understanding.
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