Stagione 1
Early Groundwork: Part Two
Early Groundwork
Ellen
This episode contains historically racist language that may be offensive for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Jill continues to dig for evidence of her black relatives and immediately encounters the stumbling block for every researcher of African American families in enslavement: black lives were largely unrecorded and unwritten before the 1870 federal census; the first time people emancipated with the Civil War are listed with full names, ages, and places of birth. There are problems associated with the fallibility of human memory: names passed down through oral traditions by Jill’s grandmother Ellen, for Anita’s mother and grandmother, do not line up with the paper trail. Jill decides to try and answer the larger question: why did the Hemmings family chose Boston over other American cities with larger African American populations? Jill’s explorations of the family’s neighborhood in Boston’s Beacon Hill reveal a long and rich history of the presence of free African Americans; a unique community of people associated with the long struggle for freedom and equality.
“In genealogy, you start with yourself and work your way backwards…” In March, 1997, Jill Sim writes an email to Vassar College, which had graduated both her grandmother and great-grandmother. Jill learns from Vassar’s Alumnae Association that her great-grandmother Anita Hemmings is considered the first African American graduate of the school. This prompts Jill to reach out to the New England Genealogical Historical Society (NEHGS) in Boston to learn something about Anita’s background, and her parents.
In Episode Two, we look at the childhoods of Jill Sim's grandmother, Ellen, and her two siblings, Andy and Barbara, raised as solidly white middle class after their parents, Dr. Andrew and Anita Hemmings Love, make the decision to leave Boston and pass as white.
On June 18, 1994, Ellen Love, a former Broadway actress, dies from a fall in her hotel room. Jill Sim, her granddaughter, and researcher, writer, and host of the Fade to White Podcast, learns that her white grandmother had a black grandfather. The discovery will lead Jill on a thirty-year personal journey to uncover the full story of her white family’s rich black history. Music Notes: Original Music by Al Sim: "Mystery 3" "Mystery 1" "Cold Case Blues" "March of the War Gods" "No One I Know" (Instr.) "Surveillant" "1970s New York Percussion Break" Fair Use: Sample: Tommy Edwards, "It's All in the Game," 1958. Saint Saens, Le Cygne, from Carnivaux des Animaux, 1886. Max Bruch, Scottish Fantasy, Op.46, 1880. Other Incidental Music, Courtesy Pixabay Free to Use Music: "Sad Background Music" - Sound Gallery by Dimitri Taras "Blue Ridge Mountain" - Acousticeeg "Up With the Sun" - Primal House Music