9 minute read
Finding Our Kin
Capturing the African American narrative
STORY BY AMELIA BLADES STEWARD
Capturing the narratives of our ancestors can be challenging especially when the stories were not passed down or recorded. But for awardwinning author Carole Boston Weatherford and her son, illustrator Jeffery Boston Weatherford, the challenge enabled them to create a personal and deeply moving book, Kin: Rooted in Hope, about their enslaved family from Talbot County, Maryland that has just won the American Library Association Coretta Scott King Author Honor.
Carole’s poems capture voices ranging from her ancestors to Frederick Douglass to Harriet Tubman to the plantation house and land itself that connects them all. Jeffery’s evocative black and white scratchboard illustrations help carry the story from the first mention of a forebear listed as property in a 1771 estate inventory to his and his mother’s homegoing trip to Africa in 2016.
The two recently brought the book, Kin, home to Talbot County after connecting with Cindy Orban, Alumni and DEI Coordinator, Lower School Librarian at The Country School, and Scotti Oliver, Assistant Director of the Talbot County Free Library. Orban, who was already familiar with Carole’s other award-winning children’s books, said his first reaction after reading the review copy Carole sent hi, was that “it was so impactful to realize that this place, where my own roots are deep, holds the pain of so many enslaved Africans.”
“I felt I had to pass this book along somehow,” Orban said. “The book has to be known by all those of us who live here and have walked these roads and made this place our home.”
Orban then helped to promote the book locally at the 2023 Frederick Douglass Day event in the fall in Easton; working with Dana Newman, Director, and Scotti Oliver, Assistant Director of the Talbot County Free Library (TCFL), who share her passion for the book. A group of community partners planned and organized an event in February during Black History Month at the Avalon Theatre in Easton for the general public to hear the author and illustrator speak. The day before, the Avalon Theatre hosted an event for 7th and 8th graders from Talbot County Public Schools in St. Michaels, The Country School, and Saints Peter and Paul Middle School, as well as for homeschoolers. In addition, Kin: Rooted in Hope is being integrated into the history and English curricula for 7th graders at The Country School moving forward. The publisher, Simon and Schuster, has created an extensive curriculum guide for Kin that is available to educators at no cost.
“It’s so important for our students to understand the connection to slavery in our community,” Orban said.
Carole shares that as a child, she learned that her greatgreat-grandfather Phillip Moaney, whose portrait hung on the farmhouse wall, had been enslaved. She later learned from a historical marker that her great-great grandfather Isaac Copper served in the U.S. Colored Troops. During Reconstruction, both ancestors co-founded all-Black villages — Unionville and Copperville in Talbot County. She scoured the enslavers’ ledgers, receipts and prescriptions; slave ship databases and captain’s logs; and studied material culture, archeology and the landscape before she and Jeffery began the book.
“When the Civil War erupted, there were 4 million enslaved in the United States,” Carole explained. “Think of all the Black stories, all the American stories, that remain untold. In writing this verse novel, I felt an obligation to my ancestors and to my offspring to pass it on. . . I think it’s important to bring Kin home to the place where it is
set because I think it will resonate with people on the Eastern Shore.”
The publisher, Simon and Schuster, wrote: “The narrative unfolds through poems that span five centuries and are told in multiple voices, from the various people to the land itself. This approach allows readers to walk in the footsteps of multiple figures, and to witness history through their eyes. The book features about 40 illustrations, and its backmatter includes personal notes from both the author
and illustrator about their research and artistic processes, as well as a bibliography.”
Writing and illustrating the poems was no easy task as Carole pointed out, “The people who are depicted have never had their voices heard before. And of course, these are their voices as they have spoken to and through me and to and through Jeffery through his artwork.”
The two set out to show the entirety of what life was like on Wye Plantation, particularly in Long Green, a community of about 300 enslaved people who were part of a “Kin” community — multiple generations of family who lived on the plantation’s grounds.
“The Wye Plantation was so big and so many operations were on it,” Carole said. “I wanted not only to depict people’s jobs but also to reflect their humanity. Although they were viewed as property by the system of enslavement, they were human beings in full. So, it’s really a time capsule of what it felt like to live in that time.”
“I wanted to shine a light on my family, but also some of their contemporaries whose voices were also marginalized and muted during their lifetimes and who never had their stories told.”
Jeffery shares that the two work largely apart on the projects.
“Her writing is amazing,” he said. “So it’s like watching a movie. I just pick the best scenes out of the movie to draw and eventually illustrate. Because this book is specifically about our family, it puts a different energy into the book. It’s a different level of connection and even intimacy that you have access to as you’re working.”
He explains that scratchboard, which is used to illustrate the book, is a subtractive technique in which artists use metal instruments known as nibs to scratch the surface off the top of the scratchboard paper to reveal lightness underneath.
“Scratchboard is a very meticulous design and execution process,” Jeffery said. “One illustration may be drawn up to three times before the final illustration is scratched. That is also true of digital scratchboard which I used for the first time in this book.”
“I wanted to render high-contrast portraits and atmospheres and a
dynamic sense of emotion while at the same time evoking the past.”
Bringing the book back to Talbot County, Carole hopes it will generate discussions about what enslavement was like in this area. She said she hopes it provides another lens through which to view the antebellum experience in Talbot County and Maryland.
“The takeaway for me from the whole book is that knowing your history is generational wealth,” she said. “I hope people will be inspired to know their history, trace their family tree, talk to some of their elders, and write down some of their stories.”
Jeffery added: “I want people to start the process of unearthing their family roots and start the conversations with their parents, their grandparents, and their great-grandparents, if possible, to capture that chain of information that is still available. You have to do the hard work, being willing to run through those brick walls and get bumped around in the dark to bring this information to light.”
Orban and Oliver hope to expand the book’s reach on the Eastern Shore. The TCFL has many print and audio copies of Kin for library circulation. The book is also in its Talbot County Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Book Club.
“The library is a place for everyone in the community to access books that allow the reader to immerse themselves in a perspective, experience or story and to look at the world through a different lens,” said Newman. “This then opens up readers to engage in conversations with family, friends and neighbors about experiences, cultures, histories, and viewpoints that may differ from their own. The poems in Kin not only allow readers to hear stories about enslavement, empowerment, and freedom but they also seed hope and can be used to start powerful family and community conversations.”
To date, Carole and Jeffery have done a presentation at the Dorchester Historical Society on African American genealogy. Easton Economic Development Corporation, Talbot County
Economic Development and Tourism and Dorchester County Tourism are all committed and active partners with the project.
“They have been working with us to get the word out about the program through their channels, suggesting options for promoting the program, advising on grant funding, and bringing other partners into the fold,” Orban said. “What we know from them is that visitors to our area are eager to learn more about the history of African Americans here on the Eastern Shore. We all recognize the value that this powerful story of family and heritage brings to all and that should be known by all; those of us who live on the Shore and those who come here to visit.”
Future events in the community include a show of Jeffery Boston Weatherford’s art from Kin at the Academy Art Museum in March 2025. Mark Leone, who supervised the dig at Wye House in the early 2000s, is also planning a presentation on his findings.
“What I feel in my head, my heart, and deep in my soul, is that these ‘stories’ that Carole and Jeffery tell; these lives that we are privileged to witness through the powerful verse and stunning art must be known and felt by everyone so that we may all recognize and come to understand, as much as it is possible, that the enslaved and the enslavers were all human beings whose truth must be known – especially for us who live here,” Orban said. “There can be no thought that ‘this didn’t happen here,’ because it did. As a lifelong reader and librarian at my school for over 32 years, this work has grabbed and held me like no other.”
Kin has also received the 2024 Claudia Lewis Poetry Award for Older Readers from Bank Street College of Education in New York City.
To learn more about Carole Boston Weatherford or Jeffery Boston Weatherford, visit CBWeatherford.com.
Kin Partners include Talbot County Free Library, The Country School, Avalon Foundation, Talbot County Public Schools, Talbot Historical Society, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Easton Economic Development Corporation, Frederick Douglass Honor Society, Maryland Public Television, WHCP FM 91.7 Music Discovery and NPR for the Mid-Shore, Monica Davis, Academy Art Museum, ShoreRivers, Talbot Arts, Talbot County Economic Development and Tourism, and Dorchester County Tourism.
