Edward Ball (1) (1958–)

Ball's engrossing text revealed my incredible ignorance about slavery in America. Since childhood, I've had this mental image of white men walking through African jungles and knocking native Africans on the head and loading them on ships. I was totally unaware that selling slaves was an African business that made its black merchants wealthy. Since publication of Slaves in the Family, television documentaries and other books have brought the truths of slavery in America into homes and show more schools. Ball traveled to Africa and interviewed the still-wealthy descendants of African slave merchants, spoke to the descendants of slaves in America, and met with his black DNA cousins who descend from Ball's own slave-owner ancestors. This is certainly one of the most important books ever published about slavery in America. show less

Very well written. I was immediately engrossed in this story of a rich and relatively privileged black family in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Each family member on whom Ball focuses is brought to life through their unique experiences and occupations: undertaker, abortionist, orphanage- and brass-band maanger, and artist. The family's reach spans many sectors of American culture and better-known American history, and I felt a spark of excitement when I read about their brushes with more show more familiar personages and events. I'm looking forward to reading Slaves in the Family. show less

Several generations of author Edward Ball’s South Carolina forebears were large slave-holding rice planters. Ball grew up hearing stories about the family’s past, and as an adult he became interested in locating descendants of persons who had been enslaved by the Ball family, at least some of whom were likely related to him by blood. Many of the Ball family papers survive and are dispersed among several archival repositories. Ball was able to trace several slave families back to the show more first African arrival.

Had Ball written this book just a decade or so later, it might have looked quite different. Genealogical DNA testing companies were in their infancy at the time Ball was writing this book. DNA testing might have confirmed Ball’s suspicions about the paternity of some of the persons enslaved by Ball family members. Several years later, Ball wrote The Genetic Strand in which he uses DNA to explore family mysteries. I want to read this book to see if it sheds more light on the lives of those who are profiled in Slaves in the Family.

This is an important book for many reasons. The author wrestles with the legacy of slavery for both descendants of enslaved persons and descendants of their enslavers. It’s also a history of rice plantation culture, a history of Charleston, and a history of South Carolina during the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. I found it a little hard to follow as the structure is only somewhat chronological. The chapters alternate between a chronological history and contemporary memoir of Ball’s meetings with descendants of Ball slaves. I noticed quite a bit of repetition in the narrative that ought to have been edited out of such a long book. I read the paperback edition, from which the author’s account of his visit to Africa has been removed. show less

A huge study that tries to map the familial paths taken by the author's ancestors, some of whom were slaves owned by his other ancestors. Ball is descended from an old, formerly very prosperous Charleston family. He uses the extensive archives of the family's lives and business dealings to connect the troubling family histories to today's descendants. He writes that we cannot be responsible for the past, but that we must be accountable. Bell's way of being accountable is to pursue the show more writing of black people's histories, and by contacting descendants of the Ball slaves to gather their stories and hear their conclusions on slavery's legacy.

The people he interviewed have a range of responses: some angry, some interested, some sorrowful. Some thank him for his efforts, regardless of their own emotions about the past. Most seem to be moved by learning more about their own family's histories. This book was unusual to me in that Ball wrote the physical and affective details about the interviews he conducted. Although the author appears to be composed in these interviews most of the time, even in the face of anger, I thought this was an attempt to keep the writing from focusing on himself rather than on the black Americans he speaks with. It served as an attempt to let the interviewees' own questions and statements be, to not dismiss them through his own fear or guilt. This made the book a model piece of research, in my mind. Ball doesn't flinch when he writes of his archival research that documents people as chattel, and he doesn't flinch when he tries to understand how a white American could take accountability for how the past may have benefited him as a descendant of early Americans, and disadvantaged other descendants at the same time. show less