Acknowledgments

Since starting research on my Confederate descendants, I have had much more than a village’s worth of help.  So there are many townspeople I want to thank. 

First among them is Karen Orozco Gutierrez, whose great grandfather was enslaved by my great great grandfather.  Five generations later, we traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, together to do research in the archives. “Daring to Face the Past,” published in the September, 2020, issue of Smithsonian, tells the story of this trip and of the discovery we made in the archives.

The historian Karen Nichol Shield offered Karen and me her perspective and advice on our work and on the character of my great great grandfather.

My friend Eric Foner, whose books in the subject area number well into the double digits, made good on his promise to save me from major historical mistakes. (Any that may have crept in are mine alone.)  

My husband Peter Petre and our daughter Caitlin patiently read numberless drafts of Confederates in My Closet and “Daring to Face the Past,”  My friend Laura Shapiro read an early draft of the stories on this site; she said the best thing you can ever say to a writer:  “Keep going.”

Other friends offered editorial counsel, pep talks and reading suggestions, including Paul Critchlow, Patty McCormick, Benjamin de la Piedra, Caitlin VanDusen, Sarah Lazin,  Alison Relyea, Beth Rashbaum, Margo Jefferson, Niesha Davis and Diane McWhorter.  My sister, Jane Banks, deserves a medal for not disowning me when I wrote about an episode in her past she would sooner forget.  She has since become a stand-up comic, so I hope she will consider it as material.

This website would not exist without my friend Filippo Ciampini, whose art direction was more inventive than anything I could have imagined.  I thank him for both his patience and his vision.