Interview with Bettye Kearse by Rey M. Rodríguez

Dr. Bettye Kearse, a retired pediatrician, is a descendant of an enslaved cook and her enslaver, and half-brother, President James Madison. Bettye is the author of the multiple award-winning memoir The Other Madisons: The Lost History of A President’s Black Family (Mariner Books, 2020), which took some thirty years of research and writing and inspired a documentary film.  This memoir is an intimate work of narrative nonfiction that discovers, discloses, and embraces a more inclusive and complete American story. The Other Madisons' take-away message is that America's enslaved people possessed inner strength, hope, skills, and talents, qualities that were passed down to their descendants, including those alive today and those to come in the future. 

 Bettye holds 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 School of Medicine. She completed her internship and residency at Boston Children’s Hospital then practiced general pediatrics in Boston for more than thirty years. 

 Writing and spreading her book's message are Bettye's passions. Her writing has appeared in multiple well-regarded magazines, journals, and anthologies, including the New York Times and TIME Magazine. 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, M.I.T., and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. 

Dr. Bettye Kearse, thank you so much for being part of the Storyteller's blog of the Chapter House Literary Journal for the Institute of the American Indian Arts. Welcome. 

Thank you for inviting me. 

As an author why did you write, “The Other Madisons: The Lost History of A President's Black Family? And how did you get into writing? 

I've always liked writing. I started writing in elementary school and used to get 50 cents to write other kids' writing assignments. 

There you go! 

When I was in Junior High, I told my English teacher I wanted to be a writer; of course, she was very enthusiastic and supportive. But I come from a family of physicians, so, while my parents never discouraged me from writing I didn’t take it on as a profession until later. It's just that my father was a doctor. His father was a doctor, and my uncles, and so being doctors was what we knew. I used to go to my dad's office and act like I was his office girl, and so I was surrounded by medicine. I even went on house calls with him. I didn't forget about writing. It's just that I lived in a world of medical practice. I became a pediatrician, which I loved, but I have always felt that writing something that mattered was my life's purpose. 

Who are some of the authors that have inspired you? 

Well, of course, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. I've read everything that she's written. My favorite living writer right now is Jesmyn Ward. She is a primarily novelist, but my favorite book that she wrote is a memoir called “Men We Reaped.” To become a writer, I took lots and lots of writing classes, but I really learned to write by reading good writing. 

Before we get into the book, tell me about your background, because it's extraordinary. 

My undergraduate degree is from the University of California at Berkeley. My degree is in genetics. I then went to graduate school at NYU. I had the time of my life in New York. I got my master's and PhD in biology, but my research was all in genetics. And after that, I worked in a lab for maybe 2 or 3 years, but I discovered that's not my personality. I didn't like being isolated in a lab, so I got into medicine, which suited me a whole lot more than a lab. During these years, I was writing but I didn’t start writing The Other Madisons until 1990. I was still practicing full-time. I had my own practice, so I was trying to take care of patients, pay the rent, deal with insurance companies, and manage parents. 

What was it like being at Berkeley when you were there? 

It was tumultuous. At times, I couldn't even get onto the campus. The police were everywhere trying to take control of the situation, and I don't know if they succeeded or not. We eventually got back to class, but the free speech movement was in full force. Some of the anti-Vietnam protests were still going on. It was a difficult time. I wanted to go to school and do my genetics, but I also was very concerned with the issues that were bringing all these people together in protest. 

There must have been a tremendous tension between wanting to study and the need to protest. 

Well, the police did everything they could to keep us away from the campus. So, the studies were disrupted for days at a time. I don't know what the professors did, but this was before we could hop on to Zoom and resume studies. I think everybody finished their coursework by the end of the semester. 

You leave Berkeley, and you go to New York City and how was that?  

I grew up in Oakland, which has a very close-knit Black middle-class community, and the expectations were pretty strict and very clear. I wanted to be my own person. And so I went to graduate school, not so much to get an advanced degree, but to have an acceptable reason for leaving home and being able to go my own way. I lived in the dorm for the first year, which was acceptable to my parents, and then I got my own apartment. Little by little. I broke away from the restrictions of home and did my own thing. Yes, I went to class. I was good about going to class. I was good about doing all my work, but I made sure that I didn't have any classes on Wednesday afternoon. That's when we could get cheap tickets to Broadway shows. The matinees cost a dollar or something like that. It was a wonderful time for exploring what it means to be an adult. All these gifted people were right there. I went to the jazz clubs. I had season tickets to the ballet. I saw famous modern dancers like Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder. Yes, I went to the museums. I went to Broadway shows and saw Alvin Ailey. 

Wow! 

Yes, for the first time, in Brooklyn.  It was an expanding period in my life. I was there for five years.  

New York City seems that it was a resonant source, meaning something behind the writing that informs it without you knowing about it. Is that fair to say? 

Yes, that's a good way to say it. Yes, you soak it in, and it becomes part of who you are. 

All right. Well, let's get into the book. You get a visit from your mom and she's going to discuss with you your new role in the family. How do you pronounce the word for storyteller?  

Yes, so there are two words. One is “griot,” which refers to the male African storyteller or oral historian, and the “griotte,” which refers to the female African, oral historian. 

Tell me about that moment when you got the call that your mom was going to come to visit you. 

Well, she told me why she was coming to visit and that she was bringing me the box of family memorabilia. This box is the most treasured item in my family. It contains generations of photographs and letters between family members—all kinds of documents like birth certificates, death certificates, marriage licenses, and land deeds. Then, there are newspaper articles and various items, like sewing samples, that my great aunt had made. It is a collection of evidence that our family has been here for generations. 

And then please explain your family’s connection to the Madisons.  

According to eight generations of family oral history, I descend from President James Madison and one of his enslaved cooks, who was named Coreen. 

And then tell me a little bit about Mandy. 

Mandy, who's my favorite character in the book. 

Yes, I get that sense from reading the book. 

Mandy was my family's first African ancestor in America, and she was captured from the coast of Ghana, sometime in the middle of the 18th century. We don't know exactly when. She ended up in Virginia, probably Fredericksburg, where she was purchased by James Madison, Sr., the future President's father. Later, she was brought to Montpelier, which was the Madison plantation. 

Words matter in this story, and there are certain euphemisms that your mom would use to refer to rape and sexual assault. 

Yes. 

I apologize for bringing up these words, but they do matter, right? Because you wrestle with them in terms of how you characterize the story and its importance of being tied to a President who did these horrible acts, on one hand, and yet is considered one of the fathers of our nation, on another. 

Well, my mother never used the word rape or at least I never heard her use the word. She probably did not use it, because it's a very painful word. She used the word “visiting,” which meant, the master went from cabin to cabin “visiting” his enslaved property. The general term at the time was called “trespassing.” 

Hmm. 

This term referred to white men who were not the master “trespassing” on the master's property, that property being the master's enslaved women. 

So, we have the term “visiting,” which may be unique to my family. I haven't heard it elsewhere, but the term “trespassing” was a commonly and widely used term for rape during the antebellum era. 

It's important to clarify because there are so many people trying to erase this history. Let's go back and talk about the Middle Passage. It was an extraordinary feat for Mandy to survive it.  

Well, she was captured while she was alone on the coast of Ghana. They took her to a slave castle, which were fortresses where the enslaved people were held until they were put aboard ships for transportation to the New World. Those ships were dreadful and horrible! They were vessels of misery. Many people died. Many people got sick. Many people were maimed. Many women were raped on the ships. Many were thrown overboard.  

The closest I have come to being able to capture that experience was by going to an exhibit in Baltimore, Maryland, at the Great Black Figures in Wax Museum. In there, they have a replica of a slave ship. 

The exhibit only scratches the surface of what a horrendous, miserable, brutal experience it was for those people. This exhibit shows a fully dressed captain, or somebody, on the ship hovering over a nude Black woman. She's terrified and trying to ward him off. It's the prelude to a rape.  

In another exhibit, there's a bunch of little boys, sweet little boys, all chained together and huddling together in one area because the women were separated from them. The men were often held under guard, because the crewmen were afraid that if the African men discovered what was happening to their women and children that they would have revolted. In a museum, they recreate the sounds and have the exhibits, but you don't smell all the feces, vomit, pus, blood and everything that actually was in these slave ships. You don't feel the rocking. You don't feel the splinters from the shelves the enslaved people were on. You don't feel the rats crawling across your legs. Most importantly, I knew I was going to get out of there. I knew I could leave anytime I wanted and go back to my safe life. 

Knowing all that, I still felt very upset. 

Hmm. 

You know, being in this replica, and I knew it was a replica of a ship like my ancestor Mandy had been carried away in, and so I came out, very much aware of how strong she was. How determined she must have been to live. And then I remembered one of her sayings, which is to be “fighting mad.” So it can give you strength to be fighting mad. So she was probably pissed off as could be about being stolen. That anger and determination kept her alive, and she gave birth to Coreen, and on and on to me and my daughter and my grandchildren. Through her powerful anger she was able to have descendants and to pass on her legacy. 

Your book is more important now than ever because so many books are being banned from bookshelves and libraries. 

It's terrible. 

You talked about anger, but there's also a concept of hope, right? She must have had some hope. You write in the book about Christianity. 

We wholeheartedly believe in the tenets of Christianity, which is that Jesus came to save all mankind, not just those who were white or those who were Black. It offered, a sense of hope to enslaved people and their descendants, including those of us today who are battling racism. 

I've been to many Black Protestant churches, and there's nothing like it. 

Nothing, right? 

No, there's nothing like it. It is the music, and it is the joy. I go to a very nice church here in Santa Fe. There are no black churches in Santa Fe, so I attend a very progressive, modern church. The pastor is wonderful. I once said to the pastor, because she's quite a musicologist and the choir sings a lot of different kinds of music, such as African American music, traditional African American spirituals or gospel, “Well, the choir always sings it well, but this time they sang it right.” This choir, with all their beautiful voices and their training, finally got into the feel of the music. They did it right. 

That's why I think your book is so important because it comes from a certain source that only you can tell given your experience and background. Moving on, can you tell me about how you missed having an experience with the Black community in the South since you grew up in the Bay Area. What is it that you missed? 

This one is going to sound strange, but I miss a closer connection to Jim Crow and slavery. Now, why would I miss that? I miss it because it's at the foundation of who I am. African Americans are, and what their lives have been like within this country is inextricably tied to Jim Crow. 

I grew up in a sanitized environment. Yes, there was plenty of racism in the Bay area, but it was nothing like Jim Crow. Nothing. I felt more removed from the generations before. I felt removed from my ancestors. Some of the traditions in the South are a lot stronger than in the Bay Area. In my book I describe a friend who came back to the South for a visit and she talks about going from house to house and eating and having to eat. You can't refuse the food that they've made for you, and it's this taking care of each other and loving each other through food. I never experienced anything like that in the Bay Area. Sure when you go to someone's house they are going to offer you something to eat, but it's not with the same feeling that I am taking care of you. 

You use this beautiful word in the book, “kinship.” 

Yes. 

What does that mean to you?  

Well, kinship is a family, and it's your biological family, but it's also your community of like people. 

We need more kinship. Not only within our groups, but as a country. There's this idea of kinship that we need to see in each other more. 

That's absolutely true, but I don't feel at all good about it right now. More and more people are seeing each other as the “other.” 

I'm listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates. He's an amazing writer. I'm actually listening to him on tape, which is great because he reads it, and he's speaking in his voice. He talks about the other, and how the dominant people who have decided who is more human. We are falling more into that mindset that I'm better than you because I'm more human. 

Hmm. 

Which is ridiculous and ignorant. If you know any genetics at all, I’m going back to my undergraduate years, then you know how much more we are alike than we are different, and that's even more true now. The Human Genome Project has shown, without any doubt, that we are well over 90% identical among all groups of people. And there's very small genetic pieces that are different among the different groups. It proves that racism is a social construct, and it has nothing to do with biology. 

Yes, that's why your life story is so interesting because your writing, academic training, and professional training all come together in such a beautiful, powerful way in your story. By reading your book we go on a journey of discovery with you and with ourselves and learn truly important lessons from those Black communities in the South that have so much to teach the nation. We have to see the goodness in each other, and we have to ensure that even through these are dark times, we have to see our mutual beauty. I appreciated your book, at so many different levels because you are able to communicate it a universal story of survival and a way forward. It felt like to me that Mandy is still alive, in a sense, right? 

Absolutely. She's alive in me. She's alive in my daughter and my grandchildren. Yes, she's definitely alive. 

So, they could do nothing to Mandy even though they tried, and they did horrible things. I mean, the brandings that you describe in the book. Horrific. And yet it's important to hear Mandy's story, right? We need to know it. I appreciated those chapters where you write in her voice and she comes to life. 

When you get a chance, go to YouTube and look up my TED talk. One of the things I say is that Mandy knew that no one could ever truly own her. 

Wonderful. Moms and women in general are simply too strong. What advice would you give other people who are writing their memoirs? 

Everybody has an important story. Everybody's story matters, and you have to do it. Stick with it. 

But as you write it, don't forget to put yourself in it. One of the things that took me so long is that I wrote all this beautiful stuff, but it wasn't working because I was protecting myself. 

So if you're writing a memoir, do not protect yourself. Get yourself into the story. It's your story, but you have to be part of your story. You can't tell your story from the outside. 

This is wonderful advice, Bettye. Thank you so much. I hope you'll keep on writing. What's your next project? 

Well, right now I'm working on a biography of the first Black female doctor in the world. Her name was Rebecca Lee Crumpler and she got her medical degree in 1864 in Boston. 

I can’t wait to read it and thank you again for your grace and wisdom.