ABOUT THIS BOOK

Documents conversations between two southern writers and friends whose families were intertwined in slavery

Legacies of Slavery commemorates a story of racial reconciliation in the South. Writers, educators, and friends Frye Gaillard and Myra Davis-Branic discovered a shared family history of slavery in Eutawville, South Carolina, where Davis-Branic’s family was enslaved by Gaillard’s family.

In 2024, the University of South Alabama’s Kern Jackson moderated three conversations with Davis-Branic and Gaillard in Mobile. These conversations are presented here in an edited format. Davis-Branic and Gaillard discussed their intertwined family history and what they each learned from research into their ancestors. They relay origin stories and the role of a key grandparent who greatly impacted their lives. They also talk about their own trajectories in a historical context, the issue of slavery in their families, and the legacy of slavery for their children and families.

The book concludes with short excerpts, one from Davis-Branic’s book Cornbread My Soul: The Davis Family of Eutawville, South Carolina, and one from Gaillard’s family history, Lessons from the Big House: One Family’s Passage Through the History of the South, a Memoir. Legacies of Slavery stands as a powerful and unique documentation for all who are interested in how two southern families, bound by slavery in the past and now by friendship and a degree of understanding, have found some measure of redemption.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Myra Davis-Branic is an educator in South Carolina and author of the books Cornbread My Soul: The Davis Family of Eutawville, South Carolina, and 28 + 1: People to Talk About for Black History Month. She is a member-scholar on the Speakers Bureau for Humanities Out Loud, a project of Humanities South Carolina.

Frye Gaillard, former writer in residence at the University of South Alabama, is the prize-winning author of more than thirty books, including, with Nancy B. Gaillard, Lessons from the Big House: One Family’s Passage through the History of the South, a Memoir and A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s. He is a member of the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame.

Kern Jackson, director of the African American Studies Program at the University of South Alabama, regularly facilitates conversations about family history and identity in relation to the larger context of slavery and racial justice in the American South. He is coproducer and coauthor of the script for the award-winning documentary Descendant about the last slave ship, Clotilda.

REVIEWS

“Legacies of Slavery candidly and lovingly reveal personal insights and family perspectives on a history that few have dared to tell. These heart-wrenching, soul-cleansing conversations lay bare the truths and atrocities of slavery in the American South. his is the kind of storytelling that avoids the niceties and the anger that often well up in race-related discourse and opens the door to more conversations addressing the painful truth about ourselves, our families, and our shared history.”—Charles Ghigna, author of The Lost Book of Life: New and Selected Poems

“In an era in which discussions of the nation’s oppressive history have been labeled “divisive” or “woke” or simply fabrications, Myra Davis-Branic, an African American writer and educator, and Frye Gaillard, a white writer and educator, have done something remarkable: engaged in thoughtful, respectful, poignant dialogue about their shared history—Gaillard’s ancestors once owned Davis-Branic’s forebearers. These compelling conversations are a balm for our troubled times.”—Cynthia Tucker, Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist

“In the South, only brave folks dare talk about slavery or the ensuing racialized systems that followed. And only very brave folks accept the South's whole truths of genius and stupidity, opportunity and oppression, conceding that many American identities can exist at once. Myra Davis-Branic, Frye Gaillard, and Dr. Kern Jackson must be very brave indeed. These scholars dare to write about our country's complicated racial history from perspectives both personal and historical without obfuscation or apology. And in doing so, they summon the ultimate hope for healing and progress.” —Jaqueline Allen Trimble, Alabama Poet Laureate

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Foreword by Ellen Burton Harrington

Introduction by Frye Gaillard

The Conversations

First Conversation: Myra Davis-Branic, Frye Gaillard, and Kern Jackson

Second Conversation: Frye Gaillard and Kern Jackson

Third Conversation: Myra Davis-Branic, Frye Gaillard, and Kern Jackson

Excerpts from Frye Gaillard with Nancy B. Gaillard Lessons from the Big House: One Family’s Passage through the History of the South, a Memoir and Myra Davis-Branic’s Cornbread My Soul: The Davis Family of Eutawville, South Carolina

Afterword by Rachel Gaillard Smook

Closing Thoughts and Acknowledgments by Myra Davis-Branic

About the Contributors