Charlotte Chatfield: Veteran. White female ancestor's black child, 1871.

10/29/20 • 73 min

Charlotte shares stories about her white great-great-great-grandmother who had a child with a black man and descended from Revolutionary War patriot William Lindsey Durham whose grandson is the namesake of the city in North Carolina; and her Welsh ancestry, descending from free people of color of Chatham County, North Carolina who trace back to patriarch Moses Myrick of Wales. She talks about growing up in the small close-knit community of Pittsboro, North Carolina; dropping out of NC A&T and enrolling in a pharmacy technician program at Durham Technical Community College; joining the U.S. Navy where she learned air traffic control; the strain of being in the military on her marriage; earning a bachelor's in Computer Information Systems; her career in clinical trials working as an associate director at a major pharmaceutical firm managing reported adverse events; meeting her second husband in the Navy; traveling to Anglesey, Wales with white American genetic cousins, after having only met online, that descend from Moses Myrick; Welsch townspeople assuming her white husband was a Myrick instead of her; visiting Bodorgan Hall, where the Welsh hosted a garden party for descendants at the Myrick estate; wanting to know more about her European H1 haplogroup and her hair since she was always questioned about her unusual combination of having brown skin with long silky hair; discovering three Revolutionary War patriots starting with her great-great-grandmother Luevinia’s death certificate, that named her mother Mary Pendergrass, who was white, and father Abe Horton, who was black; Mary's mother Martha Durham, descendant of Revolutionary War patriot William Lindsey Durham; not learning in school that there were free people of color prior to the American Revolution and instead only learning about slavery and the Civil Rights movement; joining DAR to document her family history; her patriots Matthew Durham (William's father) and “Chatham John” Pendergrass, ancestor of Mary's father; her frustration due to the individual submitting her DAR application not including her supporting documentation explaining the nuances of being a black applicant with the unusual circumstance of Luevinia being the child of a white woman and a black man, causing a delay in approval; Luevinia marrying a black man Rob and the couple residing on Pendergrass property in Orange County, North Carolina; Rob holding a great deal of land; enjoying DAR's outreach to veterans; the importance of representing people of color to which DAR is also of service; accepting DAR amends with Marian Anderson; her DAR membership providing validation since her family was here before the American Revolution, “I cannot be told to go back to Africa, our history is messy but that's what makes us Americans"; serving as a chapter officer; having a different outlook knowing she descends from a white woman; having a "Reese Witherspoon chin" like Luevinia; connecting with a white Pendergrass relative but descendants of Luevinia's white half siblings not being interested; searching for Luevinia's black brother Madison; "it's funny how we are at each other's throat with the unrest...we are all related". Read Charlotte's biography at www.daughterdialogues.com/daughters
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Bianca Alexander: Global educator, principal. Creole colorism, classism.

Bianca talks about leading schools in the Middle East; and her Creole culture in which cousins intermarried to remain fair complexioned and preserve their culture, her grandmother deciding to passe blanc (pass for white), being adamant about not being African, and being shunned by her family because she had less European features than her siblings and associated with blacks; and her family's Creole social status and wealth attained in the Cane River, Louisiana community by former slave Marie Therese Coincoin who owned land and slaves resulting from a plaçage relationship with Frenchman Claude Thomas Pierre Metoyer. She shares stories about growing up in Bedford Heights and Cleveland, Ohio; not knowing that she was black; not being in the same social class as her peers due to parents’ divorce; earning a bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education/French and master’s in Instructional Technology from the University of Akron; her interest in developing the minds of students to explore other cultures; her independent study in France; earning a master’s in education law to protect rights of special needs students; working in Saudi Arabia as a resource teacher for students with special needs, relating to classism in their society, and not being seen as an American; working as a principal in Kuwait; frustration with U.S. schools not being equipped to address the social and emotional needs of disadvantaged students; serving as the principal of an Indian American school in New Mexico; her mother not identifying as black but instead American and her father's family preferring that he would have married a white woman; always knowing her grandmother, Lucy Couty, as white in contrast to her Negro certificate; family sending her grandmother to a Negro school apart from her siblings, who had European features, because of her more black features; family pressure on her grandmother to marry white but her instead having relationships with black men; defining Creole as the food, the Catholic church, and consanguinity; the Creole Native American, African, German, Spanish, French, and Jewish peoples creating a mixed-race group of people who lived peacefully within their isolated community while under French and Spanish rule; the Creole class hierarchy dictating that whites sit behind them in church; dating dark skinned black men in defiance of her family’s directive to not marry a black; Claude Thomas Pierre Metoyer’s Revolutionary War service; her family's history not being the traditional negative narrative of slavery; joining the DAR to preserve her grandmother's legacy after she had been rejected by both blacks and whites; embracing her African, European and American Indian heritage; "I am American before I am anything but even before I am American I am Christian"; feeling the DAR is a beautiful organization; “being American isn't about race but where you were born"; the necessity to identify with other black DAR members. Read Bianca’s biography at www.daughterdialogues.com/daughters
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Daughter Dialogues season one: Reflection

Announcing the end of season one, Daughter Dialogues will return on the 1st Thursday of February at the start of Black History Month. This episode includes observations in review of season one, listener comments and shout outs to social media followers, podcast statistics, announcements of live virtual events to interact with the Daughters and the official acceptance of Daughter Dialogues for deposit into a Harvard library, and a season two preview. Hear the reasons behind the decision to break the series into seasons and how it is not a podcast but instead a research project; how the oral histories shift our thinking about how this nation was formed and to view black people in the United States as more than simply victims of slavery but instead provide a richer narrative to American History; common shared experiences among the Dialogues: feeling the pain of ancestors, painful rejection or denial by white descendants of ancestors, friendships formed with white descendants of ancestors and their enslavers, setting the record straight in their family history, complex struggles with racial identity because of color of skin and the context behind decision to pass for white, white men with black women who were often enslaved in 1700s and 1800s providing a different narrative of how white men took care of their black families and passed down their property to them, white women with black men in the 1800's, people of color owning slaves, free people of color who were pioneers and prominent members of society starting their own schools and churches, descending from and family impact on historical figures, Daughters making history in their own right and accomplishing things not necessarily associated with black women, and Daughters as survivors; media coverage received during season one including NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, African Ancestry, and WTOP- Washington D.C.'s top news radio interviews; a breakdown of listener groups; comments from white DAR listeners: "widen the lens through which I view the world", "these stories move me to tears...this is the kind of history I want told", "I want to be a part of the work to explode negative stereotypes with unexpected stories", despite their past family history of slavery "these ladies hit the ball out of the ballpark"; comments from non-DAR member black listeners: "these are stories people need to hear’, "there's so much more to them than their patriot", "I like to hear the generational perspectives from the women in their 20s to 90s"; "it’s not just you alone but others have shared experiences"; shout outs to social media followers for the top number of shares of Daughter Dialogues posts; geeking out on numbers: Daughter Dialogues episodes have been downloaded a total of 8,000 times over past 4 months and placing it in top 40% of podcasts among 30+ million episodes available; top cities and countries in which listeners are located; the launch of live events in January during which listeners will be able to meet the Daughters and ask questions live; announcement: Daughter Dialogues has been officially accepted for deposit at Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute, arguably the world’s largest archive devoted to history of both individual women and women’s organizations; season two preview: meet the very first recognized black member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Karen Batchelor, who joined in 1977 and was also the subject of a final Jeopardy! clue!
Meet more Daughters at www.daughterdialogues.com/daughters
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