America's Hidden Stories: The Other Madisons
Dr. Bettye Kearse, the author of The Other Madisons is a retired pediatrician who recently published her book The Other Madisons, which is a tale that Bettye Kearse was literally born to tell. As she journeys in search of her deepest, most painful family roots, she unfurls an intensely personal tale that is also a quintessentially American story. Confronting colonialism and cruelty, power and its abuse, the silencing of slaves and the fraught complexity of intertwined nations and individual lives, The Other Madisons crafts a new kind of record, one that illuminates the power of a woman taking charge of her own truth.
The ImageMakers & Influencers Magazine is honored to publish Dr. Kearse’s historic contribution entitled President James Madison’s Only Direct Descendants Are Black, which brings to light that a Founding Father of our nation was also a Founding Father of her African American family.
From the book The Other Madisons
President James Madison’s Only Direct Descendants Are Black
by Bettye Kearse
President James Madison did not have children with his wife, Dolley, so scholars believe he was impotent, infertile, or both. But, the oral history of my family says that James Madison Jr., a Founding Father of our nation, was also a Founding Father of my African American family.
The story told by eight generations of our oral historians is that in 1787, three years after Madison married Dolley, he brought her to Virginia. The only child in tow was her son by a previous marriage. Madison was disappointed. That’s when he directed his attention to the enslaved cook Coreen. Their son was my great-great-great-grandfather, Jim.
When I think back to the time I first heard about the president and his slaves, I see myself as a five-year-old getting more and more fidgety while my mother made fancy dresses for me. That’s when she would give me that look, throw up her hands, and say: “Always remember— you’re a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president.”
This is my family’s credo, the statement that has guided us for more than 200 years, and by repeating it on such occasions, my mother was telling me how proud she was of our ancestry, both white and black. And, she was letting me know how she expected me to behave, the reasons supported by the family stories she had told me again and again. They, and the credo, set the standard for how I should live my life. It should reflect both my presidential ancestry and my pride in knowing that the blood of slaves runs through my veins.
My family’s credo began six generations before I was born. Dolley Madison had just sold her husband’s and Coreen’s teenage son, Jim. As he was being taken away, Coreen pleaded with Jim, “Always remember—You’re a Madison.” She believed the name could help them find each other, someday, but they never saw each other again.
Yet, Jim remembered his mother’s words and passed them on to his children and told them to tell their children they were Madisons. Over the generations, as America changed, words were added, and the credo reminded us that we weren’t just descendants of a president; we were descendants of slaves too.
In the antebellum years, Madison’s name was a tool my sold-apart family hoped to use to find each other, but they died before they got the chance. When freedom came, the name, which now could be officially theirs, inspired my newly freed family to do great things. My great-great-grandfather Emanuel told his eight sons, “Your great-grandfather was president of this country, so make something of yourselves, now that you have the chance. Tell your children and tell them to tell their children: “Always remember—you’re a Madison. You come from a president.”
Emanuel’s sons became carpenters, policemen, aldermen, ministers, barbers, and farmers of their own land. In the early years of his freedom, my great-grandfather Mack was a tenant farmer and the business manager of his former master’s cotton plantation. Mack took cotton to the gin, negotiated deals, and even handled the money. Little-by-little, he put away money, and after nine years, in 1874, he had $192 in gold, enough to buy a ninety-six-acre farm. For the first time in his life, Mack owned something, and not just anything—he owned land. Security, survival, and true independence were within reach. Once the deed was in his hands, he left his former master. The very next year Mack sold the farm for $394 and purchased 200 acres for $400.
Mack and his wife, Martha, had ten children, all born free, but only five lived to adulthood. Three of those five attended college and became teachers, including my grandfather, John Chester, the youngest of the surviving children. I called him “Gramps.” Mack and Martha had been slaves, but they were Gramps’s king and queen. Slaves, he knew, were remarkable people with inner strength, hope, and many talents. To express his pride in descending not just from a president but from slaves as well, Gramps added two crucial words, “African slaves,” to the family credo so that it officially became: “Always remember—you’re a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president.”
Coreen’s words were vital to my family both in a time when we were listed among someone’s property and in later times when we could take a name and then make a name for ourselves. For my freed ancestors, the admonition was an inspiration for pride and achievement—for themselves and for the generations to come.
I believe President James Madison, were he alive today, would be proud of his black descendants, his only direct descendants. We are not only carpenters, policemen, aldermen, ministers, barbers, and farmers, we are teachers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, dentists, doctors, nurses, social workers, engineers, psychologists, masons, railroad porters, salesmen, musicians, artists, and writers. These are a fraction of the many skills that we, like our enslaved ancestors, employ to contribute mightily to the nation that our famous ancestor helped create.