Author Karen Branan will be discussing her new book, “The Family Tree,” on Wednesday at Flyleaf Books. The book details her extensive research into a long-ignored lynching in Georgia — conducted by her own family. Staff writer Paige Connelly spoke to Branan about how often we look at history through “white-colored glasses.”
The Daily Tar Heel: Can you briefly explain your book “The Family Tree”?
Karen Branan: The central focus of the book is the lynching of a woman and three men in 1912 in Hamilton, Georgia, by members of my family — my great-grandfather, the sheriff of Hamilton at the time; my grandfather, who was his deputy, allowed this to happen, and what I discovered was what I call an ‘all in the family’ lynching …
I spent 20 years researching this lynching because there wasn’t a lot of available evidence, so I needed to get evidence. Over time, I gathered quite a lot of evidence, actually, and some of my best research came from Wilson Library, right here at the University of North Carolina.
DTH: I know this specific event inspired you, but other than that, what inspired you to write about this story now?
KB: Well, there were numerous things. I interviewed, I did an oral history with my maternal grandmother in 1984, a couple of years before she died, and at the end of it — it was a rather lengthy interview — and at the end, I kind of popped in a question I had really not even thought to ask, but I changed my mind. I said, ‘What is your most unforgettable memory?’ and she said, without batting an eye, she said, ‘The hangings,’ and I said, ‘What was that?’ and she said, ‘Well, they hanged a woman and three men in our town, in Hamilton, when I was a young girl, and I didn’t want to go, but everyone else was going, so I saw it.’ She did not mention that it was — she said they had been found guilty — so I assumed this was a judicial execution, so only weird thing about it in my mind was that the woman was hanged and they were all hanged out of doors, but I assumed there had been a court trial. I also assumed that they were all white, so I didn’t pursue it at the time.
Later, when I discovered that I was about to become the grandmother of a racially mixed child, I became very fearful for a reason I could not pinpoint. It made no sense because I had been working for racial justice most of my adult life, and I lived in the North, and I had raised my son to be non-racist, and suddenly, I was terrified, and I was terrified for all four of us — the child, the mother, my son and myself. And so I was guided in many ways to go back into history and see if I could get some answers to some questions that had popped up even in as early as my childhood. My father told me some rather disturbing stories of racial violence, so I began. I was an investigative reporter, and I had been investigating other people all my life, and I thought, 'It’s time to investigate my own family.'
DTH: What do you think people can learn from this book, and what do you want them to take away?
KB: I want people who don’t know very much about Southern history to know just how horrendous it was for African Americans and to also see that it was not a potentially good deal for whites either. We’ve made a lot of progress, but we still have a very long way to go, and I think in the book they’ll see some parallels.
