The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family by Rachel Jamison Webster

Episode Date: April 22, 2023

Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family by Rachel Jamison Webster A family reunion gives way to an unforgettable genealogical quest as relatives reconnect across lines of color, culture, and time, putting the past into urgent conversation with the present. In 1791, Thomas Jefferson hired a Black man to help survey Washington, DC. That man was Benjamin Banneker, an African American mathematician, a writer of almanacs, and one of the greatest astronomers of his generation. Banneker then wrote what would become a famous letter to Jefferson, imploring the new president to examine his hypocrisy, as someone who claimed to love liberty yet was an enslaver. More than two centuries later, Rachel Jamison Webster, an ostensibly white woman, learns that this groundbreaking Black forefather is also her distant relative. Acting as a storyteller, Webster draws on oral history and conversations with her DNA cousins to imagine the lives of their shared ancestors across eleven generations, among them Banneker’s grandparents, an interracial couple who broke the law to marry when America was still a conglomerate of colonies under British rule. These stories shed light on the legal construction of race and display the brilliance and resistance of early African Americans in the face of increasingly unjust laws, some of which are still in effect in the present day.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. For 13 and a half years, it'll be 14 August, we've been doing this show. And we have nothing better to do, clearly, with our time.

And we have some of the most greatest minds that come on the show. None of them are me. So, as always, we'll be talking about an amazing author and her latest book that comes out March 21st, 2023. But before that, we have to shame you with the plugs. Of course, refer the show to your family and relatives. Tell them to go to youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss, goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss. The big LinkedIn group, LinkedIn newsletter, follow that silliness over there and everything else. She is the author of the amazing new book, as I aforementioned, out this month, or actually March 21st, 2023.

I'm still in March. I'm just dragging this year, man. I'm just not accepting it. I'm about two months behind, I think, at this pace. The newest book came out March 21st, 2023, Benjamin Banneker and Us, 11 Generations of an American Family by Rachel Jamameson webster she's on the show joining us today to talk about her amazing insight and research in this book it took her years to compile

and is an integral part of the history of america america integral part of america as they say uh if you're not throwing away bud light these days i don't know there's a joke there's somewhere people move on uh rachel webster is a professor of creative writing at northwestern university and the author of four books of poetry and cross gender genre genre writing she is taught writing workshops through the national urban league chicago public schools gallery 37 and the pacific northwest college of art she's got more college writing workshops through the National Urban League, Chicago Public Schools, Gallery 37, and the Pacific Northwest College of Art. She's got more college than I clearly have because I can't even pronounce genre.

She's been working to bring diversity and anti-racist awareness into creative writing curricula. Rachel's essays, poems, and stories have been published in outlets including Poetry, Tin House, and the Yale Review This is her first non-fiction book And she lives in Evanston, Illinois With her husband and daughter

Welcome to the show Rachel, how are you? Thank you, great Great to see you, Chris How are you? Well, you're the only person who ever says that Because most people aren't great to see me Or happy to see me

But that's another story I don't know There's a joke somewhere So give us your dot coms wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs and get to know you better oh that's great yeah rachel jameson webster dot com that's my website i'm also on facebook and instagram under my name there you go so congratulations on the new book these are always fun fun. What motivated you to want to write this book? Well, it is a story about America, as you said. And I grew up in a little town in Ohio, so in kind of a small rural town, and didn't really think I would ever write about where I was from.

I grew up definitely thinking about myself as an American. My family thought of ourselves. about myself as an American. My family thought of ourselves. We identified as Americans proudly. And then, you know, as the political divisiveness sort of erupted around 2015, 2016, I started thinking that I would like to start analyzing and reflecting on the place I grew up. Right around that time, I was at my cousin's wedding, talking to another cousin who mentioned something about our mixed race ancestry and our long, our many generations of African American ancestry. Right. So that came out of the blue. I didn't know anything about this. And my parents, we had just recently gotten my father a Ancestry.com package for Christmas. So I asked to see his results. And of course, Ireland, Northern Ireland or Northern Europe was colored in. and so was Senegal and Gambia. So there it was.

There were a couple different avenues of information pointing me to the fact that although my family, we had always thought of ourselves as very American, we had passed as white. We had denied the part of the ancestry that was African American. Wow. So I thought, yeah, right. So I thought that was interesting and something to explore. So give us like a 30,000 foot view of the book. What do you kind of find and what readers are going to see inside of it? Great, thanks. So basically the stories go all the way back to the late 1600s. And one of the ancestors that we descend from was the sister of Benjamin Banneker. Benjamin Banneker was this amazing figure. I didn't learn about him in school. So that was another moment of humility and realizing how much I hadn't been taught about American history. But here he was this black scientist. He was a free person of color, born in 1731.

And he ended up becoming a self-taught scientist. He was an astronomer. He published best-selling almanacs in the revolutionary era. And he helped survey Washington, D.C. So because he became famous in his lifetime, people took the time to record his family stories and his ancestry, which means we could go all the way back to the late 1600s to his grandmother, Molly, who was an indentured servant from England,

a working class, poor working class woman from England. And she had children with Bannacar who was kidnapped into slavery from Senegal. So I tell the stories of the ancestors. Each historical chapter is a story of the ancestors or one of them or one generation. And then the present day chapters are conversations between me and my cousins. So I had, this is another part of the story, but I had a long pause before I knew how to write this as a book, because I felt that it was very ethically complicated and problematic, and maybe not even possible to write this book well as a white person who had not grown up in black culture. And luckily, as I was in that debate, my cousin Edie

got in touch with me and said, we need to talk about our family. And so my conversations with my black cousins who are also descendants of the same family those are every other chapter so it's sort of a chapter in the past than a chapter in the present wow and everyone gets to contribute and and talk about the experience of of being black and and and going through the generations of family yes exactly wow no. Wow. Oh, go ahead. I was going to say, this is reading from the PR thing. In 1791, Thomas Jefferson hired a black man to help survey Washington, D.C., and that was Benjamin Banneker.

And this gentleman was a mathematician, writer of Almanacs, one of the greatest astronomers of his generation. This guy's brilliant. He does everything. I'm reading the Wikipedia page. I can't even say Wikipedia. This guy's an astronomer. He's writing almanacs.

He's a surveyor. He's a farmer. He's like the Renaissance man, Jack of all trades. Exactly. And him mapping out, I guess, Washington, D.C. and doing all this stuff was integral to our whole history. Exactly. So he helped to survey the Capitol. He was the assistant to Major Ellicott, who was a good family friend. The Ellicotts were Quakers.

And so they were able to see past his skin color and see his brilliance. And he was very good friends with this family who kind of marveled at his intelligence and his brilliance. He was well known in his area of Maryland, but that's how he was able to be hired and sent to Washington DC to help survey the Capitol. Wow. And this, this, uh, works out pretty good for him, and it's a great thing. You know, is this one of these stories we've had a number of authors on in recent years that, you know, they found that certain stories, whitewashing might be the proper word for it, where black people and some of their achievements and stuff were left out of history books.

And it seems pretty prevalent this was kind of a thing going on for the past couple 200 years and thankfully now some of these stories and and some of that is being righted i suppose as best it can possibly be given um these people aren't alive anymore but uh uh i think it's there's an importance to that right where we start shining a light on black history and, you know, because their story is integral to our story. It is all of our stories. It's all of our story.

Exactly. And to not see it as a separate history, but to see it as American history. Exactly. That's important. And I do think it's very exciting to see how many of these stories are being brought up into consciousness now. And Benjamin Banneker, it's extraordinary. His journal, his manuscript journal is in the public domain. You can go to the Maryland Historical Society and see his notes, his astronomical notes, the poems he wrote, he recorded his dreams. And then you can also see his almanac. So he was well known in his time.

And I, as I said before, I didn't learn about him in school. Many black people that I talked to are more aware of Benjamin Banneker, but he's often given a sentence in the history books or a very quick mention. And yet there is more documentation of his life than people even realize. So it's been exciting. I felt like that was that was a central aim of this book is to share his story and sort of give him his rightful place with the founding fathers. Partly because it's a self actualized story. He was self taughttaught, and he not only was hired by Thomas Jefferson to help survey the Capitol, he then corresponded with Jefferson and called Jefferson out on his hypocrisy as an enslaver who wrote about freedom,

which is sort of where we are as a country, where we're wanting to root out these foundational hypocrisies he was doing that at the time so he's a really good guide in speaking truth he was ahead of his time by a few hundred years so there you go good for him but he probably made maybe jefferson consider some of the issues and problems or way in his mind a little bit better? I hope so. Jefferson did write back right away. He wrote a very respectful letter in return, and he promised to send Benjamin Banneker's almanac because Benjamin had sent him a copy of his almanac. And Jefferson promised to send it to the head of the Academy of Sciences in France, which was the foremost intellectual

institution of its day. So Jefferson did want it to be recognized as evidence of what was possible for African people. And that's where, yeah. Well, I mean, this is a tough era to become self-educated too. I mean, you know, you know, you didn't have, I don't know if he had access to libraries or how was he able to get access to any sort of training or knowledge or you just figure it out on his own? I think he spent a lot of time observing nature.

I know he did. He also was able to go to two years of Quaker school and there was a school in the area that didn't discriminate in terms of color. So he was able to go to two years of Quaker school. And there was a school in the area that didn't discriminate in terms of color. So he was able to attend. And his schoolmaster was so impressed with him that he would lend him books. And then I believe he also purchased books on his own because there are accounts of his library in his cabin. So I think he was probably doing anything in his power to borrow books and to read books and to teach himself. There you go.

Now, the title mentions 11 generations of an American family. How does the 11 generations play into the book? Well, it's sort of I would be the 11th generation. So all of us alive now are grappling with where the country is in this moment and looking at what we're going through now. And then it goes all the way back to the generations that I mentioned, Benjamin and his sisters, but also his parents and his grandparents who were brought here when this was just a conglomerate of colonies. It wasn't even a country yet. So I thought it was really interesting to think about what they were witnessing as the idea of America was taking shape

and what we're witnessing now as we're sort of in a revision period for what this even means. And then because we have these great human stories, it also became a way to think about racism and to look at how racism and the racial constructions were written into law. And we're still living with those outcomes. Yeah. Jim Crow and other things you know it's i think it's an important time and it's important time to have books like yours and education uh to tell these stories to bring them to light um so that we can understand that you know i i grew up with that with that uh whitewash uh sort of experience in school a lot of stuff we weren't

taught um and of course i really wasn't into history. I flunked it a number of times, but I learned some stuff in there in spite of it. But we grew up with this whole image of the John Wayne and, oh, I conquered everybody because everyone was bad. And that whole narrative that kind of was the theme through a lot of his movies.

And I think he suffered from a bit of racism himself, if I remember correctly. But, you know, being in a time now where we're trying to reconcile that history, we're trying to tear down some of the ugliness that we've had, you know,

the things that statues are put up under Jim Crow. You know, a lot of people are tossing about, do we, do we, do we keep up statues of our founding fathers because they revolved in racism or anything else but i think it's a healthy discussion to have i do too and i think it has to become more and more complex you have to look at people were a

product of their time but there are also things that we were made to think of as natural that were not. They were completely constructed. So just to stay with Benjamin Banneker's story, throughout history, he's had people who have doubted his abilities or doubted him. And yet we have things on paper that he wrote. We have books that he he published but his cabin was burnt down on the day of his funeral so he's a bit suspect exactly and familiar so there is this the whitewashing includes a violence to it that will eradicate people's color's intelligence, their contributions, and so then there isn't as much of a paper trail, right? And so it's a very complex situation,

and it's been going on since before the country was even a country. Yeah, I remember we had one. Who was President Madison's wife? Dolly? Was it Molly? Dolly, I think. Dolly, Dolly. I believe after, wasn't it after he died or when they both died, she had everything burned,

like all the notes, all the records and stuff, if I remember correctly. Wow. We had an author on that talked about that. And so there was a bit of this stuff, like you you mentioned going on of trying to erase history and whitewash history and i guess one of the problems was uh she may or may not have and this author said that uh it had that they were trying to hide the fact that they'd had a mixed family that jason madison uh our fourth u.s president for those of you who are millennials, uh, or Gen Z years, uh,

uh, I kid the Gen Z years, um, the, uh, but go back to school. Uh, the,

uh, you know, she was trying to whitewash the history where they had mixed family. And I guess there's some DNA that proves otherwise, um, that they got into, but yeah, there was a lot of this going on. Very hateful,

very ugly, very dark part of our history. But I think it's a lot of this going on, very hateful, very ugly, very dark part of our history. But I think it's important that we shine a light on it and go, hey man, let's come to reconciliation with the contribution of African-Americans and what they did to our country. Everybody else, we need to recognize everybody else.

We did some ugly stuff in this country. We were still doing it in the 1950s when we, you know, set up internment camps for the Japanese. You know, and we're still kind of struggling with it. I mean, you see how we're struggling with it in, you know, George Floyd and other things. I mean, recently there was a young black gentleman who was shot just for knocking on the wrong door. Thankfully, it looks like they're prosecuting that. But I think these discussions are really important because they shine a light on these. And we need to sit down and have these conversations, I think. Thank you. I do too. A central method in the book

is conversation. It's me having conversations with my cousins. And I really believe in that. I believe in showing that and understanding that these conversations won't be easy. They won't be perfect. We'll all make mistakes. And yet, it's so important. And I'm so glad you took the conversation to the Dolly Madison story, because I do think that one of our central denials in this country is how related we are. We are very interrelated. And that was, you know, the central discovery of this book is that just like my family left out our black history and our family history, the country left that out in their origin story. And then I had this incredible opportunity to get to know my cousins and have a fuller, truer history.

And for us to acknowledge each other as relatives. And there is a lot of that to be done. There were a lot of mixed race families and old families in this country do have cousins across the color line. very painful because it was almost always white enslavers, male enslavers having unconsensual sex with their, their own enslaved women. And so there's a lot of pain. And yet I think to be able to acknowledge that pain and acknowledge that reality is, is just central to figuring out how we go forward. There you go. I mean, in our Constitution, it says, we the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,

perfection is never achieved. So we're, you know, for what, 200, almost 50 years, we've been on a journey to try and find a perfect form of democracy, the republic, and who we are as a nation, our identity, and we'll probably always be on that journey. But, you know, the better we can come, the more we can work, the more, and who we are as a nation, our identity. And we'll probably always be on that journey. But the better we can come, the more we can work, the more, as you mentioned, we can converse. Do you have any stories or things you want to share? Maybe something you surprised you in the research, in some of your relatives and their contributions

to the story. Thanks for asking. Yeah, there were so many moments that felt like beyond synchronistic or beyond what we could have planned. So we started to get in a flow of working on this book together. And we would be, we'd be thinking about something and one of the others would be as well. And we'd call and we'd just sort of be on the same page. But one of the most powerful moments like that is I was supposed to talk to Robert, who's one of the main contributors to the book. And again, they all shared their own stories, but they shared their research as well about the family, which is why I was able to do many years

of research in a few years. In any case, Robert and I were supposed to talk on January 6th, and I was working on the chapter about Benjamin Banneker surveying the Capitol. So I was doing all this research about the Capitol, about Pennsylvania Avenue, followed the line of the Star of Sirius, which was Banneker's favorite star. So I'm doing all this writing. And right at the time Robert and I were supposed to talk, all of a sudden I hear from the other room, my daughter's on Zoom with her social studies class. And the teacher says, put on the TV. This is history happening right now. And it's the insurrection of the Capitol. Here we are. I have been writing for two days about the design of the Capitol and about these men standing there visualizing a Capitol devoted to freedom. And in real time, we are watching this, you know, other people who believe that they're protecting freedom. I don't agree with

that. Storming the very Capitol. And I was able to be on the phone with Robert, who is a Black man in his 70s, my cousin, and we were processing what this would look like if those were Black Lives Matter protesters. Yeah. And how different. And so there were so many moments where I would be thinking that I was writing history, but it would sort of rear up into the present moment and it would feel like I'm seeing this repetition, this repetition of racialized violence

or the same symbols being trotted out, the same anxieties being on display. So there were moments, that's kind of a dark story. But it's true. It's something we have to face. Yeah, there were moments too they felt like confirmation, like, okay, we're supposed to be working on this book right now and if any healing is possible or any sort of awareness we're going to come to it together

by having these conversations yeah it's it's something that we have to because we've never sat down and reconcile it i would say is is the reason we're reliving it you know one of the most we've had a lot of authors on who wrote about the day in fact we have the capital police officer that day on uh for his book and um when i saw i mean i was horrified i was in high anxiety i mean my heart was i finally had to just go lay down because I'm like, I'm going to have a heart attack. Um, I was so just enraged internally. Um, and, um, so when I saw the, the, the Confederate flag in the Capitol, which had never gotten that far in the first civil war, if it's interesting i reference it that way but um to see that flag in the capital just was a glaring just a blow just just just a shock that jesus we've never reconciled this whole thing these people are still on the losing side of that thing trying to make it

work and to me that was that was probably the most significant sign. I don't know. There's so many different things that went on that day. But to me, that was like, this has not been reconciled. We have not dealt with this. We have not faced this. We have not faced the ugliness of the thing. And we still have people that think it's really cool to be on the traitor side

of what really was a traitorous, uh, attack on America when it came down to it and they lost. And I, and somehow we built a lot of statues. I mean, it was part of Jim Crow and, and,

uh, and some people that were trying to intimidate black people and keep the, uh, dream alive of the Confederacy and, and all that crap. Um, you know, they, they built these statues everywhere and turned these guys into celebs and we kind of slept through it a little bit but turns out we knew that they knew what their wink and nod was about i didn't even realize it until i you know i'm like what's going on wait no wait where did this come from

and you know but it was an important thing because i think they made it shine a light on more of us that hey this isn't reconciled. And that's why stories and books like yours, I think, are important. The only thing man can learn from his history is man never learns from his history. And thereby he goes round and round. So until we sit down and reconcile the stuff and deal with it, you know, hopefully we can keep from having some sort of another crazy insurrection or some guy who almost takes democracy away from us. I agree. I heard you say the first civil war.

Yeah, that kind of slipped, but maybe it's appropriate. I don't know. It was kind of a mini civil war, really, when it came down to it, the second one. Yes. And I'm not sure we're through it, honestly. I think that we still have people, militias and people who are nursing this insecurity and hatred and violence. And so we are living in really interesting and really difficult times. But I saw that the same way. It felt like just the ugly subconscious sort of boiling up in the country. So I hope, I hope.

At the same time, you know, I've been getting so many notes since this book came out just about three weeks ago from people who have similarly multiracial ancestry. And they're thanking me because they haven't known how to talk about it or how to reach out. So that gives me some hope that there is a desire to bridge some gaps and to increase humility and understanding among European Americans or what we would think of as white Americans to really open a space for this deeper understanding there you go you know and and and hopefully stories like this make us realize hey we are we're one people we're american i want to take away people's identities and cultures and ideologies and stuff that they've been raised with but we we do all need to come to the conclusion

that hey we're all americans we all need to come to the conclusion that, hey, we're all Americans. We all need to get along, in the famous words of that one gentleman. Why can't we all get along? And so stories like this realize that our past, our history, our future is integral to getting along and working together and realizing that we are, you know, really an American family, as the book title of your book says. And so it's a small tide pool of the bigger ocean of what America really is and what got us here. And, you know, and facing your demons is the best way to resolve them. So that's kind of the area that we're in right now yeah exactly

there's a lot of white fear there's um and and it it needs to be faced definitely i've seen i've seen republican little ladies say uh we treated them black people horribly for 200 years if they get power they're going to treat us horribly or Or if, you know, the Mexicans come and they take over voting, you know, you see this white fragility over some sort of perceived white scarcity that somehow losing power will, you know, it's, it's the old scarcity mindset, you know, when really we need to realize, especially with the beauty of America and, and the foundation of what we're about,

that anybody can win or succeed here. Their dreams can come alive, you know, read off the Statue of Liberty, and that a rising tide lifts all boats. And that's really the story of America when it comes down to it, or it should be. But as always, we're, you you know working to form that perfect union and it's always going to be the yinz and yangs as president obama put it where we're always going to

be trying to zig and zag and find where we need to go i believe zig and zag was the quote he used so there you go anything more you want to tease out about the book before we go um well it was just such an honor and a pleasure to tell the stories. And even though it sort of centers on Benjamin Banneker, there are a lot of good stories about women in here as well, because part of what I wanted to do was upend this individualistic narrative that we get and sort of the great man model of history and really look at the fact that we're all a part of our contacts, our families, our community. And so it was fun to discover these heroic women. So his mother was an herbalist and a healer, a business woman, and she actually went to court to argue for the freedom

of her children. And then his, yeah So, I mean, really brave women. And then his grandmother, Molly, who came from England, she was sentenced to die for spilling a bucket of milk. So her story really illuminates the hardships that were happening to working class people in Europe who were coming here, you know, with nothing. And so she only escaped the death penalty because she knew how to read. So she came here as an indentured servant and then partnered with an African man. So I think we have always had these heroic stories with us. We have more than just a story of

suffering once we start opening it up and there were a lot of heroic women in the line too that i got to learn from as i wrote the book yeah well without that foundation i mean he could probably couldn't have pulled off some of the things he did and and uh i mean certainly if you've got smart parents you know they help you maybe guide you down a pathway to be smarter my parents were smart so clearly something wrong happened in my training, but there's that, but no, this is great.

And it's a beautiful story. I, I didn't even know about this gentleman and I learned so much about how, you know, the history of, of Washington DC and laying it out. And certainly he's got more going for, he had more going for him at a young age than

i do now so props to him you have a much bigger audience probably well i mean you know but i mean he didn't have zoom so you know that's yeah the the almanac was like the iphone of its day there you go he was all about the latest technology like you. Yeah. And writing books and stuff like that back then, that was like no small feat. He didn't have Amazon. What was it that we use for the writing the book? Amazon. He didn't have chat GPT.

Yeah. Now he just, I'm going to the chat GPT that AI is going to take over the show next week. And so you're just, people are just going to come on and talk to a bot, which I've had some people tell me is not going to be that the show next week. And so people are just going to come on and talk to a bot, which I've had some people tell me is not going to be that much different. Well, it's been wonderful, Rachel,

to have you on the show. Thank you very much for coming on. Thank you. It's been great to be here. There you go. Give us a.com so people can find you on the interwebs and get to know what your story is better.

RachelJamesonWebster.com There you go. And folks, order up the book wherever fine books are sold because uh alleyway bookstores can be dangerous and you might need to take a shot i don't know what that means it just sounded always good uh you can order it wherever fine books are sold benjamin bannaker and us 11 generations of an american family and you should learn about his history it's pretty cool i was going through his Wikipedia. I don't think he wrote it, but maybe he did.

I don't know. Wikipedia's been around for a long time. But it's really interesting. And this intertwines with Thomas Jefferson and part of the history of our country. So it's important. The more you know, as it were. Thanks, my audience, for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss, youtube.com, Fortress Chris Foss,

and all those crazy places on the internet where the kids play. Thanks for tuning in. Be good toreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss, youtube.com, Fortress Chris Foss, and all those crazy places on the internet where the kids play. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. And that should have us out.