The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President’s Black Family by Bettye Kearse

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President's Black Family by Bettye Kearse "A Roots for a new generation, rich in storytelling and steeped in history." —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review "A compelling saga that gives a voice to those that history tried to erase...Poignant and eye-opening, this is a must-read." —Booklist In The Other Madisons, Bettye Kearse—a descendant of an enslaved cook and, according to oral tradition, President James Madison—shares her family story and explores the issues of legacy, race, and the powerful consequences of telling the whole truth. For thousands of years, West African griots (men) and griots (women) have recited the stories of their people. Without this tradition, Bettye Kearse would not have known that she is a descendant of President James Madison and his slave, and half-sister, Coreen. In 1990, Bettye became the eighth-generation griotte for her family. Their credo—“Always remember—you’re a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president”—was intended to be a source of pride, but for her, it echoed with abuses of slavery, including rape and incest. Confronting those abuses, Bettye embarked on a journey of discovery—of her ancestors, the nation, and herself. She learned that wherever African slaves walked, recorded history silenced their voices and buried their footsteps: beside a slave-holding fortress in Ghana; below a federal building in New York City; and under a brick walkway at James Madison’s Virginia plantation. When Bettye tried to confirm the information her ancestors had passed down, she encountered obstacles at every turn. Part personal quest, part testimony, part historical correction, The Other Madisons is the saga of an extraordinary American family told by a griot in search of the whole story. About Bettye Kearse In 1990, Bettye Kearse became the family griotte when her mother brought the box of family memorabilia to her. Bettye asked, "Why now?" The answer was: "I want to give you plenty of time to write the book." In recounting the struggles, perseverance, and contributions of eight generations of Bettye's family, THE OTHER MADISONS discovers, discloses, and embraces a more inclusive and complete American story. Her writings have appeared in the BOSTON HERALD, RIVER TEETH, ZORA, MENTAL FLOSS, IMAGEMAKERS & INFLUENCERS MAGAZINE, OpEdNEWS, TIME MAGAZINE and the anthology BLACK LIVES HAVE ALWAYS MATTERED. THE OTHER MADISONS earned an International Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Book Award. Bettye's research received extensive coverage in the WASHINGTON POST: www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/lifestyle/dna-madison/ Bettye was born in Tucson, Arizona and grew up in California. She has a B.A. in Genetics from the University of California, a Ph.D. in Biology from New York University, and an M.D. from Case Western Reserve University. Before retiring and moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico, Bettye practicedB pediatrics in Boston for 31 years. Bettye's favorite foods are nuts and truffles. When a choice must be made, it depends on her level of self-indulgence. Website: bettyekearse.com

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. 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. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show dot com. Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast.

We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to go see the video version of this at youtube. fortune's chris foss hit that bell notification button go see us at goodreads.com fortune's chris foss also you can see us in all the different groups we have on linkedin facebook instagram all that sort of stuff wherever we're the chris foss show today we have an amazing honor to have this author on our show i was super impressed and super diligent to try and get her on the show to share this amazing story that she has of a lost history, if you will. Her name is Betty Kearse. She is the author of the book, The Other Madisons, The Lost History of a President's Black Family. And this book's pretty interesting and extraordinary because of, well, the historical context of it. She is a writer and retired pediatrician living in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

According to her family's oral history, she is a descendant of the enslaved cooked Corrine and Corrine's enslaver and half-brother, President James Madison. For more than 200 years, her family's credo, Always Remember, You Are Madison, You Come From African Slaves and a President, has been intended to be a source of inspiration and pride, but for her, it echoes with the abuses of slavery. Her deeply personal memoir, The Other Madisons, reveals the obstacles she confronted while becoming her family's oral historian one determined to tell the whole story in recounting the struggles perseverance and

contributions of eight generations of family this story illustrates that enslaved africans possessed hope and inner strength by which they survived and talents by which they contributed mildly to America. Her book has garnered strong reader and editorial reviews. It earned an International Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society Book Award for Nonfiction and Outstanding Book Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. The Other Madison was listed by the Smithsonian Magazine as one of the top 10 history books of 2020, best history books, I should say, and by Kirkus as one of the best nonfiction books of 2020. She joins us right now. Welcome to the show, Betty. How art thou?

I am great, Chris, and thank you for having me on your exciting show. And thank you for coming. It's an honor to have you. I've been watching a lot of different videos and different things and interviews you've been doing on this. So we are honored to have you. Can you give us your plugs, your dot coms, where websites, where people can find out more about you and order up the book? My website, the easiest way to find my website is theothermadisons.com. It's also under bettykears.com, but it's a bit tricky to spell, but go to theothermadisons.com. There you go. You should be able to find easy. You can order it up on Amazon or wherever your local books are sold. Wow, that sounded like an

ad there, didn't it? It does, but I'm glad you said something about wherever your local bookstore, wherever your local books are sold, or whatever you said. Sold like 20 times. That's the first time I've ever banged it, just I've ever hit it. That's because I always try to encourage people to go to their local bookstores, the independent bookstores, the independent bookstores, because they're really struggling, especially right now, you know, during the pandemic. And for generations, they have really served our communities well in a number of ways. I want those bookstores to keep going.

Definitely. And plus, eventually you guys are going to be able to tour once this coronavirus is over and do the whole book tour thing with these bookstores again. And hopefully you guys will come back and see us too as well. So hopefully all the authors that have been on the show in the last year won't forget about us. So what motivated you to write this book? This is an extraordinary thing that you've taken and written. What was the motivation or the basis behind this book? I've known the story about President Madison having a child, one of his enslaved people, but it wasn't until 1990 that my mother turned over to me an old cardboard box that was filled with family memorabilia.

And when she did, that meant it was my turn to take over the role as the family historian. So I had heard these stories since I was about five years old. But it wasn't until 1990, and I won't say how old I was then, but that's when it became my job to make sure that the stories were preserved and the archives in this box, these answered in her slight text and draw, I wanted to give you plenty of time to write the book. that unless these stories were written down, there was a risk that as what our ancestors experienced during slavery and what her grandfather, her father, and she herself had experienced during Jim Crow became part of the distant past, that our family would become comfortable with our lives and forget our family stories. So I wrote a book of family stories, but that's not the end of the story of the book. Just the beginning, I imagine. Some of the beginning is like hundreds of years ago, but your story is starting to put the book together.

But let me ask you this, because this is interesting to me. So why did she, why did she think that you were good for, or that you would be writing the book? Did she, was there, had you written stuff before? Did she, or did she just feel like it was that time?

Actually, it's both. I always loved to write. And even when I can remember in junior high school saying, oh, I want to be a writer. But I don't have any writers in my family. I come from a family of doctors. So I became a doctor. You know, it wasn't that my family was discouraging me from being a writer. It's just that they were doctors.

And that's how they knew best to support and direct me. Very interesting. Very interesting. So give us an arcing overview, just like a big general sort of big picture of the book and the story of it. The book actually starts with, let me say, the family story actually starts with my family's first African ancestor in America and our first oral historian. And I'm going to term for an ancient West African tradition of oral history. And the term griot are the female oral historians, and the term griot, which is spelled G-R-I-O-T, are the male oral historians. This ancestor was, as i was saying she's our first african ancestor in america and our first griot so she was captured off the court coast of ghana

and somehow survived the horrendous middle passage and ultimately was purchased by James Madison Sr. in Virginia. And the family story goes that she ended up working on a remote small cotton field in a huge tobacco plantation. And because she could pick cotton so fast, she attracted the attention of James Madison Sr. That's the way the story goes. I can't imagine that how she picked cotton actually was his motivation for ending up forcing himself on her and having a child. But at any rate, they had a child, my great-grandmother, Corrine,

who became a cook on the Madison Plantation, for lack of a different, harsher term, of James Jim was sold away because Dolly Madison, James Madison's famous wife, found out that Jim and one of her nieces were in love. And so she sold Jim. And as he was being taken away, Corrine pleaded with Jim, always remember, you're a Madison. And she said that because she believed that the name would help them find each other again someday, but they never saw each other again. That's one of the heartbreaking cases of, I'm reading cast right now. I'm almost done with the book cast. And that's one of the heartbreaking cases is the destruction of family,

the separation of families that would never see each other in the different things that would take place. So this is really interesting because is there, was this a hard thing to go back and trace? You had the lineage of the memorabilia that had been saved and working with the Madison, I imagine there's a foundation or some sort of group that oversees his estate. I do work with Montpelier, which is James Madison's former plantation in Virginia. And I work with the staff and I've been going back and forth since 1992. Two years after this, I became the griot. And when I really started my research, I think they've been tremendously helpful. And I've been looking for evidence of Jim, and I have not been able to

find him yet, although I have some really good clues that have come up within the last six months or so. But I have found evidence of Jim's son, Emmanuel, who was my great-grandfather. And, of course, I have evidence of the generations after that. So now you're descended from Corrine, so they haven't found the other separation when he was sold off and stuff. And so as you go through the book, it took you about 30 years to write this, didn't it? It did. That's a long time to write a book.

It's a very long time. And I keep saying to myself, this doesn't make sense. 30 years. But I couldn't stop. And it really felt like it was my life's purpose. And it turns out it was, in it was my life's purpose. And it turns out it was in fact my life's purpose. But it took a long time because I had this tremendously rich material to work with. So I had the family stories and I had the box of family memorabilia. So the task for me was to figure out how best to write this story.

And so I first wrote it the way my mother intended me to write it, which was sort of a straightforward family history. But the story is much more than just my family's story. So I had a writing mentor at the time, and he thought if you turn it into a work of fiction, your family can become fictionalized characters that can then speak for other families and their ancestors. I wrote a whole book of fiction. So this is my second whole book. But then I was in a very rigorous writing class at Radcliffe in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and they simply did not like my fiction. They said it was flat. The character stayed on the page. It didn't evoke any emotions, but I had written a prologue that was about how my mother heard the stories and how I came to the stories, which was like a mini memoir. So they said, write the whole book like that. And I, kicking and screaming, I wrote the third book,

which is the memoir. And that seems to be the best way to tell the story because I can give a historical perspective, but I can also put myself in it and give my own take on those stories and the history. I think it's really interesting because I'd always heard about tribes having this oral historian because there was a time where humans didn't have the ability to write

or put stuff on a computer, stuff like that. So I guess there would be in different tribes, there would be the person that would be the historian, and they would be the person, like you mentioned, the griot, and they would keep track, or the griot, they would keep track of all the things that were there, and then eventually i suppose they'd have to sit down with somebody and be like you're going to be the guy who's the next historian take that over and so it's a really interesting introspect into our history of humans and how we record things or how we tried to record things

back in the day yeah many cultures have uh traditions of oral history. It is probably best known and probably the families because quite often there were no names recorded in documents. And as we mentioned earlier, families were torn apart. And then when that happened, sometimes names were changed. And when I was doing my research, I was so surprised at how many times there were fires in courthouses. You know, this was especially true when I was looking in Tennessee, which was where my great-grandfather Jim ended up, and I was looking for him, I called three different courthouses, and all three said those papers got burned in such and such a year. I just thought this sounds like more than coincidence, but anyway. And the other thing that made it difficult for me in finding Jim and some of my other ancestors was that both James and Dolly Madison had their personal papers burned upon their deaths. Oh, did they really?

Yeah, Dolly probably to protect her privacy and James probably to protect his legacy. But nonetheless, oral history is, I think, important in all families. It's how you get to know who your ancestors really were, what kind of people they were and what their dreams and beliefs and values and goals were and how those influenced who you are, what your dreams and goals and values are. Definitely. Your history is, I think the older I get, the more you wonder about who you are and your history and where did you come from. And so many African-Americans were deprived of being able to track these things, the historical

context of it. And do you have any hope that maybe some of these DNA sort of services can maybe find that lost, that lost, is it, was Jim? The lost? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I have a little bit of hope.

That DNA stuff's pretty amazing. The stuff that they do. Yeah. That would be amazing because you'd probably find a whole branch of people that, you know, descendants and relatives, basically. But this is quite extraordinary. What do you hope most readers take away from this book when they take and read it? Well, all African Americans, but especially our young people, will embrace their slave ancestry because enslaved people were remarkable individuals. They possessed inner strength and a sense of hope. Otherwise, you know, they would not have survived enslavement.

They would have lost track of their humanity, but they never lost track of their humanity. And they also had remarkable talents by which they made tremendous contributions to this country, they and their descendants. And it's important to realize that when enslaved people died, those qualities did not die with them. Those qualities were passed down to their descendants, including those of us alive today. So as I was saying, I hope young people will embrace their slave ancestry and grab on and nurture their own inner strength and sense of hope and their own sense of humanity and their own talents so that they will believe in themselves, even in the face of racism, and make contributions to their communities and to our country.

I'm a big believer that until we wipe out racism, until we come to a resolution, come to sort of reconciliation with our past and our history of the past 450 years in this country, we're just never going to be complete. We're going to keep having these broken moments. Today, as we mentioned in the pre-show, George Floyd's trial is opening today. We've had a lot of extraordinary and painful discussions about those experiences of the last year and stuff. And in talking about that, there was one thing you had where you believe the 1787 constitution contribute to the murder of George Floyd. I'm curious what you think about that.

Yes. Now, what is interesting, what do you call it? A bit of trivia, but very interesting. murdered on May 25th, 2020. And the 1787 convention started on May 25th, 1787. The exact day is just incredibly ironic. But the convention, I believe, or I should say the Constitution that came out of the convention led the groundwork for what happened to George Floyd. So for starters, there's this famous three-fifths compromise in which three-fifths of the enslaved population was counted in terms of taxation and representation. Not the whole population, three-fifths. So it was like three-fif role that enslaved people played in this country from the very beginning. So it minimalizes. And then the other part of that same clause refers to enslaved people as other persons. So other marginalizes them. So it kind of is three-fifths minimalizing, calling them other person marginalizing. Then there are three clauses that empowered the militia or law enforcement.

So one empowered Congress to set up a national militia, and one empowered states. And what they were doing with every, the entire white population was terrified of slave revolts. And nearly every colony had slave revolts and people were killed. And so I think the fear was certainly understandable, but Congress or the 1887, 1787 convention made sure that insurrections would be suppressed by state and federal militia. And then the third part of, I would just say the third clause of the Constitution that I think contributed to George Floyd's murder was that the laws applied to everybody. I should say the protections applied to everybody except enslaved people and especially those who were involved in revolts. So there was no writ of habeas corpus, no need for proof.

So that says to me that Derek Chauvin knew he could get away with it or thought he, let me say thought he could get away with it because I certainly hope he is found guilty. So he was empowered to, as a police officer, he was trained, he was sanctioned to commit this murder. And he knew that there was a good chance he could get away with it. I have a friend who often says, this might upset some people, but I have a friend who often says, if you want to become a serial killer, but you don't want to go to jail, be a cop. I don't mean to throw all cops under that bus. So sorry for my audience. If we're not doing a broad generalization, you're exactly correct. I was just pulling up, I was trying to get Isabel Wilkerson's name on my reference here for cast, but she talks about in this book. And then a lot of people don't realize is some of

the early policing that was that was in the those those days were police officers whose job basically their whole creation of their job was to capture escaped slaves and punish them and do different things along those lines and unfortunately i think you can trace that now to our huge prison system and all this stuff. And like you say, to the officer who, in my opinion, killed George Floyd. He definitely killed him. But I was listening to the opening arguments this morning, and I was just appalled by the defense attorneys talking about basically blaming George Floyd for his own death. Yeah. It's just, I haven't been able to watch it because I would just, my brain would just be screaming at the TV and it's already screaming at the TV. I just, I'm just starting to already

sit in horror of what's going on. But the stuff that you bring up with the original convention, the constitution, the three fifths, all of this stuff was designed to dehumanize, to take people and dehumanize them. Because once you dehumanize people and you put them in a caste system or a lower value and say, this person is not human, this person does not have rights. You bring up a good point because that was the whole point of the constitution was every man is equal. But sadly, in the case of slavery and what we did with it is we dehumanize people. We treated people that we basically treated people as not human. And that was what was wrong and has led us down this horrible lineage that we have that somehow we need to reconcile with. And black people are who built this country. You look at the oligarchies of basically what the Southern, the Southern, the people who are running the plantations, making all the money, that really

was an industry that built this country. I remember we had Ellis Colon, who's a great historian. I don't know if you know him, but we had him on for one of his recent books. And we talked about this in depth about how until the cotton gin came along and automated things, that's really what kind of ended slavery or helped start to end slavery. There was a lot of different iterations of the Jim Crow after that. But until we reconcile this as a country, until we sit down and just look at our past and we go, look, this is messed up, but this has got to stop somewhere. And I don't know if it'll stop with a prosecution with George Floyd. There's so many different intricacies of what we need to do between redlining and everything else. And just between societal levels and personal racial biases and unconscious biases to federal government

programs that are keeping these sort of policies and things in place, we still have a long way to go and won't be survived. I remember we had Eddie Glaude Jr. on and I was saying, Eddie, James Baldwin said all these things about everything that was going on in this 70 years ago. And you could take literally everything that James said and you could put it on today, what's happening today, and it would be true. And I'm like, I really don't want to have 70 years go by and James Baldwin is still telling us stuff that we're just not hearing. So there's that. And I think it's interesting what you say.

To me, yeah, I think it's important for people to own their history and go, we built this country and, you know, we demand better. I think that's something that's important to identify because I think that white people need to do that too. They need to go, look, there's a serious contribution of people to build this country and there needs to be some and I'm not sure the state, but it's not California. I think it's Oakland, Washington, or Oregon. And they're going to pay some reparations to citizens, and I think offer a monthly stipend. How do you feel about that? And is that maybe a road that we should go down based upon your research and your experience? I hate to sound pessimistic, and I think that's wonderful. And I hope that it works there.

But I think they should be prepared for some serious backlash from the white community. Yeah. And that has been the major obstacle, I believe, on reparations on a national level. White people are not going to stand for that. You saw what happened on January 6th over the election when Black people exercised their right to vote and Biden was elected and the previous president called it a stolen election. I think that those people who were involved in that riot were terrified that the status quo of sort of whites having, being better off, let's just put it that way, and being better off than black people. I think that they were afraid that that was in jeopardy and they weren't having it. Yeah.

It was extraordinary to see the Confederate flags in the Capitol. That really made me angry too. I don't think I've ever, I don't think I'll ever live that anger down seeing that in the Capitol. I was like, yeah, the Confederate army didn't make it even that far. And here we are in the thing. So I'm hoping that we're on some better turns, it's better things. But books like yours that highlight the history of our past, our dark past and stuff like that. I know that there's some stuff in the book that was hard for you because you,

tell us of the different places that you went to and journeys you went on to learn more about this book. And then if you want to talk about some of the context of some of the painful things you saw or witnessed too, or were you just gone in a field form? I did a lot of traveling because I felt that I really wanted to understand this slavery thing. It has really never made any sense to me. So I went many times to Montpelier, which as I mentioned earlier, was James Madison's former plantation in Virginia. But I went to Lagos, Portugal, because that was where the transatlantic slave trade began. And what I found there was that there really wasn't an erasure of the role of Portugal in the slave trade. But there was this happened. And one of the things was that I went looking for the slave stockades where people had been chained before being shipped away.

And it turns out the place where those stockades had been was now replaced with a gaudy concession stand. It was just such a symbolic representation of an attitude. So an homage to junk food had replaced recognition of what had happened there in the 15th century and later. And then I went to Ghana, West Africa, because that was where my first African ancestor and our first griot was born, Mandy. And just seeing where people were shackled, beaten, herded, cattle, just was very painful. And I even began to identify as a captured person as I stood where my enslaved ancestor had probably stood herself. So the place was still intact at that location? Elmina, there used to be, oh, probably scores of what's called slave castles along the west coast of Africa. Wow. Only a few of them exist now but i i actually went to

three one was elmina in elmina ghana and then i went to cape coast which is another slave castle in ghana and i went to one in gory island which is in senegal. And those are still standing. They're pretty much preserved. But, and I'm glad that they're still there because their existence enables African Americans like myself to go back to the motherland and really see where their ancestors had been. But that's painful too, because they were, our ancestors were imprisoned there and abused there. I went many places. I went to Baltimore, where there's a replica of a slave ship. And that's's even though it's a replica you still i still got a sense of what it was like to be in the middle passage yeah these the slave ships were not they're not cool not fun uh just poor ships and many people didn't survive the transit because they didn't really

take care of people no they didn't take care of people in fact when the people who died they were often thrown overboard geez and just written off as wastage in fact sometimes they weren't even dead but they were very sick they just throw them off and then their insurance the the shipping company's insurance would cover that wastage. So they weren't valued as people. They were insured, so they were going to get their money back if they died. So they didn't try that hard to keep them alive. And then when she landed, where did she land at? Well, she ended up in Fredericksicksburg and that's where she was purchased

and you know ended up on the plantation and then and then and montpelier that's where the story goes from there so extraordinary there was another story that i heard you say in one of your interviews about there was a plantation owner. I missed the name during the interview, and he had a trap door and different things. Do you want to tell that story? Oh, that wasn't a plantation owner. Okay, so that was the governor of El Nino, a Dutch governor of El Nino. He was a white person in charge of running that slave castle in Ghana and what he did was

because there were very few European prostitutes in Africa he would have his soldiers gather up a group of 20 or 30 prospects, women captives, and had them brought into the courtyard of Bonino just below his living quarters. And so he would stand on the balcony and point to the one that he wanted to rape. And then the guards would dunk her into a cistern of water until she was clean enough for this governor to touch. And then the guards pushed her and shoved her up a stairway and through a trap door that went directly into the governor's bedroom. And then she was raped there. Wow. that went directly into the governor's bedroom. And then she was raped there.

Wow. Just the inhumanity is just extraordinary. It's just so painful. But it's something we need to address. We need to look at. We need to understand more about what we did, mainly so that we learn from that. And we'll go, there is a history.

Unfortunately, when I was raised, and I was talking about this earlier today with someone, a lot of our history is what you can call quote unquote whitewashed. It's, yeah, there was slavery. Yeah, it was a bad thing. And welcome to America. We're here again. And that's not really the whole story. If you go to the lynchings museum and in Alabama, cast has been a really hard book for me to read. I read a little bit at a time. There's lots of sometimes crying or just painful stories that are just so awful that you read about and you just go, my God, what monsters we were. And so it's, but it's important to address. It's important to look at. In fact, hopefully some of these books will become historical things that people need to read about and stuff. So as you go through your family's history, you guys are passing down this knowledge, saving photographs, whatever you guys can. What were some of the really interesting things that you found when you opened up that cardboard box and started digging through it? Before I answer the fun part, let me just briefly address something you just said. You use the term lynching as if it was in the past. I think George Floyd's murder was a lynching that just happened last year.

But to answer the fun part, which is what was in the box. Just all sorts of wonderful things. There were news paper clippings, birth certificates, death certificates, marriage license, college diplomas, high school diplomas, photographs, personal letters, land deeds, just sewing samples, what we call army uniform insignias, just all sorts of things that are evidence, tangible evidence of family members. It's just wonderful to touch something that an ancestor once touched. And find the history and dig around. And I would totally agree with you. We've talked about this on the show before, and it seems like somebody had come on the show in the last year and made that comment. And that basically one of the horrors of the George Floyd murder was we watched him on a day lynching. And that's what we saw for nine and a half minutes and and that invokes the the most terrifying horrific subhuman part of it and then see the

man sitting there fucking smiling the whole time it's just more egregious and it was it happening at a time where we're all forced to watch it and hopefully this will be something that makes us come to grips with racism and and the pain you know there's a lot of different things that have started out of this where we need to like really take a look at racial policies and policing hopefully maybe joe biden and president biden and and his attorney general bring back some of the policies that obama had in i believe in missouri when they had the Brown, but they had, they started working with all the different police departments and there's a contract or something

they would do with them to try and weed out racism. So hopefully that'll get taken care of. I don't know if you want to speak to any of that before I ask you the next question. Not directly, but I do want to make sure that I say that racism is harmful to everybody, not just Black people and other minorities. It is also harmful to racists. Can they only see themselves as having any value by putting themselves above someone else? Don't they have an intrinsic value of their own? Sadly, most of these people, I think, are a little bit lost in their own intrinsic value. Hate is to be the thing, and ignorance,

and all that sort of good stuff, which is another... Did I say good stuff? I didn't mean that good stuff, but they have hate and all that sort of bad stuff, which is more important why we have to try of history. We have to try of real. What is what really happened because these guys are trying to always repaint stuff and there are heritage BS and all that sort of thing. So as you went through a lot of the book, was there anything that stuck out or surprised you? Was there any stories that you found that were just like, oh my God, like an epiphany

moments or just amazing sort of little nuances that you maybe found and came across that struck you? I think there are a few things which are really not related to each other, but one of them going back to the constitution is the term other persons. That is such a loaded term. So I mentioned that on the one hand, you saying other marginalized, the enslaved Africans,

but then it's paired with the word persons. So they're recognized as people, but they're not counted as people. And they're not seen as fully human, as fully deserving of what the Constitution promises in the preamble, one of which is justice. So it's like, how do they balance that? Almost like an oxymoron.

Now, in the title of your book, The Other Madisons, is that an aspect of using the word other? Well, that's the title of my book. And even through the 30 years, that was the working title. And I had always hoped to come up with a different title, but the publisher liked it. is that we're not the recognized madisons we're not the white madisons it is to be clear but in fact we're the only direct descendants of james madison because he and his wife did not have any children so we're not other we're oh wow we're not other, we're dead. Now, of course, Madison's siblings had children, but he did not. So that's kind of a weird title, especially when you put it in the context of the Constitution, because we're not marginal people.

We're important people. And my family, we believe in ourselves. and i think this is important i think i know this is important the i know the family of i think the jefferson lineage is quite huge i think i saw some videos or some pictures where they brought everyone together from the descendants and and took pictures with them and stuff do you see an expansion of what you guys are doing do you ever what's your hope that might come out of this book? Maybe a better addressment of your family's lineage and history at the Montpelier? Or what would you hope more would come from this in an aspect of making this more of a lasting mark on history where we address this and go, this is part of James Madison's history and where

it goes from here. Yeah. Discompleting the whole story. That's all. And Montpelier, the staff is, as I said earlier, has always been welcoming to me and has always helped me in any way they can. And they are committed to wanting to know the whole story. So they have, I can't remember, the summer of 2017, they opened a permanent exhibit that's called A Mere Distinction of Color, which is based on a statement by James Madison himself. And the exhibit emphasizes the important role that the enslaved community played at Montpelier. And it's important that people see that exhibit and

recognizes how, what, for example, for James Madison, he would not have been able to go off to Princeton and study political philosophy if he hadn't had enslaved people there to grow and pick the tobacco, to make an income, to make them rich, that he could spend all of his time. Instead of out in the fields, he could spend his time in the libraries. And if he hadn't been able to do that, we wouldn't have had our Constitution. Yeah, we would have a really probably different history and future. That's a really important point. I think more and more we need to address this sort of history with what we do. I think more and more needs to be taught without the whitewashing because I've learned just over the last year alone, we opened up the show last March to all authors

before that was just more sleep business. And we didn't, and then of course, when the George Floyd murder happened, we, that became a real topic of discussion, social justice on the show and different authors that we had on as well. And it's just, still to this day, in 2020, we're still dealing with these problems, having them.

2021, we're still dealing with these problems and having them. And somehow as a nation, we need to learn, and as a humanity, that rising tide lifts all boats, that we need to lift everyone up instead of operating off this scarcity of the other and down to the other person is bad and I'm good. And these caste systems that Isabel Wilkerson described in her systems and then eradicating the whole intricacies of different areas of prejudice, whether from federal systems or from

the college entrance things and different ways that are unfortunately put into place, even what we see now with the filibuster in the Congress. And I learned a lot this year, understanding about Jim Crow and how some of these statues were built and why they were built. And you start learning about all the different things and you're just like, holy geez, it's just, there's so much of it needs to be fixed and woven and repaired and some sort of reconciliation given. Is there anything as we go out out you want to touch on in the book that we haven't talked about that's important to you? I would just like to mention, I've already said that enslaved people were remarkable individuals, but I would like to focus on the women for just a second. of women's history month but i just thought how did how were these women so strong that they

were able to be raped have a child and then have that child sold away and then continue with their lives. I'm sure that many of them were devastated. They had the inner strength to keep living. Help build this country. And then of course, pass down the try and track as much history as they possibly could and pass it down and arrive at this point today so that their history can be told and so that we can pay some respect to that. So I think it's quite an extraordinary story.

So, Betty, thank you for sharing this with us today and being with us. It's a real honor to have you. And I encourage everyone to go buy the book and check it out. Betty, where's the best place people can find you on the interwebs and find out more about you? Look at my website, theothermadisons.com.net.org. The Other Madisons. And then to purchase the book, try to go to your local independent bookstore. And if you just can't, it is available on all online booksellers, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell's, whatever. There you go. And the paperback just came out.

Oh. So the paperback came out Tuesday, a year after the hardback came out. So it's available on paperback. It's available on Kindle, audiobook. There you go. Order it up. Check it out, guys.

Share it with your friends and family. It's really important we understand the history of what we do. I often say the quote, the one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history. And that's why we just end up in this cyclical hellhole of where we're just,

why is everything always broken? That's pretty sad. Yeah, so we need to learn and we need to educate ourselves with folks like yours who are historians who are teaching us more. Thank you very much, Betty, for spending time with us today. We certainly appreciate it. Thank you, Chris. I so enjoyed our conversation.

As did I. Thank you. And we'll look forward to seeing you again when you come out with book two, the rest of the story. Or hopefully there'll be an expansion of more of the lineage and discovery maybe that you have. I want to write a young adult book so that young people can read it for themselves. There you go. We'll have you on for that, too. So there we go. Okay.

I look forward to it. Thank you. Thank you very much, Betty. Thanks, Amonis, for tuning in. To watch the video versions, go to youtube.com there we go. Okay. I look forward to it. Thank you. Thank you very much, Betty. Thanks for tuning in to watch the video versus go to youtube.com for just Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification button.

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