Uncle George and Me: Two Southern Families Confront a Shared Legacy of Slavery

by Bill Sizemore

In Uncle George and Me, author Bill Sizemore tells the story of his slave-owning Virginia ancestors, their slaves, and those slaves' descendants--a story that lay buried by a century of denial and historical amnesia. Its threads run through the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Great Migration, the struggle for civil rights, and the crippling legacy of slavery that still plagues the nation today. In microcosm, it is the story of Virginia and the South. In telling it, Sizemore hopes to advance an essential, if painful, national conversation about race.

Genres: Nonfiction

149 pages, Paperback

Published September 5, 2018

Reviews

[Margaret Elder · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I read the recent obituary of George Sizemore, a W War II vet and son of a slave in the county next to my own in Southside Virginia, I immediately ordered this book and began to read it with delight. The author, who grew up in a nearby town, is a good writer. He is only one year older than I, and we have many similar memories of the Civil Rights Era in Southside Virginia. However, unlike the author, I grew up knowing well the African-American families who lived near me and count as friends, then and now, the African-American students in my high school class. My childhood playmates and workmates were almost totally African-American. He admits that he had known African-Americans only as domestic workers in his home, as grocery deliverers, etc. in his youth where my youth was spent working in tobacco fields and vegetable gardens alongside those who didn't share my last name but were landed neighbors or tenants. The author only in recent years became aware that his ancestors had been slaveowners; embarrassed with this knowledge, he sought to find folks with his last name, to get to know them, and to apologize for his family's past. Much of his material is correct, and he has done a good job gleaning information from many sources, relating events in neighboring counties when they suit his purpose and content. However the book is not really about the relationship he had with George Sizemore, but it is about his own journey to get to know the African-Americans with his last name. He even had the people he found get two types of DNA testing to see if they were kin genetically (They weren't). Toward the end of the book, he mentions so many names of contemporary people that it becomes confusing to the reader and leaves one with the impression that he made many acquaintances but perhaps few true friends. To its credit, this is a memoir, not a history book, and it is ordered chronologically as he tells the stories he gleaned of the years of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Great Migration, and the present. While he does a good job of making one aware of the plight of African-Americans throughout the decades, he fails to mention that white farmers were often landless tenants as well, that women were considered property and unable to vote until long after all men were, and that physical punishment for misbehavior of children and wives was also a common practice. Especially in the first half of this work, it is an interesting read, especially for fellow Southside Virginians. I appreciate the author's candor, and he was only interested in one particular family, so not seeing and reporting the entire picture of farm life in our area is excused. I wish someone would write the complete history of farm life in Southern Virginia. This is not it, but the book is short, an easy read, and much of it is interesting.

[Ellen Rennels · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing book and absolutely a must read for anyone living in Virginia and probably anyone living in the southern states. Written by an award winning journalist, the writing style is pretty sparse and to the point so it's a quick read but extremely thought provoking. It's Civil War time history that most of us have never heard and really need to hear, especially now in the throes of heightened racial awareness. Documentation is excellent using primary sources with so many jaw-dropping quotes. Be aware that the title is somewhat misleading as there isn't a direct connection between the two, and I think the only weakness of the book is part of its strength, and that is using so many interviews with people and the reader gets confused about relationships. But frankly it is unimportant. The history, and details of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the experience of black Americans is crucial as moronic politicians and rabid conservatives are turning their sites backwards to ignoring the history. Wish I could wave a magic wand and make this required reading in all Virginia high schools.

[Jane Mulkewich · Rating 4 out of 5]

A white journalist / investigative reporter is embarrassed to admit that he spent sixty years on this Earth without a clue that he was descended from slave owners. Then when he found out that his great-great-great-grandfather Daniel Sizemore owned at least sixteen slaves, he continued to investigate. He interviewed members of a Black Sizemore family who were from the same area of Virginia, and traced their family tree to a Daniel Sizemore who had been enslaved by the white Daniel Sizemore. He was somewhat surprised to find that DNA testing showed no matches between the two families. "The DNA tests, of course, tell us only about the two Daniel Sizemores and their progeny. There were more than a dozen other Sizemore slaves, and I have been unable to locate any of their descendants for testing." An interesting and informative history of two families in the context of the legacy of slavery.