In defiance of his middle-class landowning family, a young white
man named James Morgan Richardson married a lightskinned black
woman, Edna Howell. It was 1914 in south Alabama. Together they
eventually built a house at the dead end of a road in a rural black
community. If you came there to do the Richardson family harm, you
faced Jim Richardson's rule of justice, represented by a
double-barreled shotgun. And at the end of the road, there was only
one way out.
"The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three
Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South"
examines how one pioneering interracial couple developed a love and
a racial identity that carried them defiantly through the Jim Crow
years. Through interviews and oral history collected from both
sides of the Richardson family's racial divide, as well as archival
research, "The House at the End of the Road" probes into the core
of the issue of race in early twentieth-century America. At the
same time, it takes the lessons of the past and places them under
the scrutiny of a contemporary world adjusted to DNA ancestry
testing, a more flexible sense of racial and ethnic identity, and a
tolerance and acceptance of the racial ambiguity that laws
prohibiting Jim and Edna Richardson's marriage sought to
eliminate.
Jim and Edna Richardson were Ralph Eubanks's grandparents. Now,
decades after interracial marriage became legal, Eubanks takes
readers on a journey back to his grandparents' house at the end of
the road where he reconstructs their life and times and seeks
lessons for America's multiracial future.
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