Monroe Dispatch - No Struggle, No Progress

Virtual Book Talk: Saturday, February 5, 2022 at 3pm at Northeast Louisiana Delta African American Heritage Museum, 1051 Chennault Park Dr., Monroe, LA 71203, 318-342-8889, http://www.africanmuseummonroe.com , and books will be on hand to purchase. According to eight generations of family oral history, Dr. Bettye Kearse, was born in Tucson, Arizona and grew up in Northern California. She has a B.A. in Genetics from the University of California at Berkeley, a Ph.D. in Biology from New York University, and an M.D. from Case Western Reserve University. She is a writer, retired pediatrician, and a descendant of an enslaved cook and her enslaver, President James Madison. She is her family's oral historian and the author of the acclaimed memoir, "The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President's Black Family." Dr. Kearse's writings have appeared in multiple well-regarded magazines, such as the New York Times and TIME. Her engagements include television, multiple podcasts and radio shows, James Madison's Montpelier, the Afro American Historical and Genealogical Society, the American Bar Association, Harvard University, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. This book, "The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President's Black Family" took her traveling around the United States to Ghana, West Africa, and Lagos, Portugal. It took some thirty years of research and writing and rewriting. It is both a personal family history and an homage to millions of silenced, invisible African Americans. This memoir is an intimate work of narrative nonfiction that discovers, discloses, and embraces a more inclusive and complete American Story.