My Podcast Interview with Gene Stowe, author of Inherit the Land

 My fascination with technology (particularly the Internet), and love of African American books led me to develop - thegrits.com - an Internet community for black readers of all ages from 2001-2010. This online community was a readers' playground because it consisted of author interviews, book reviews, reading guides, book promotions, interactive book chats, virtual book tours, and literary podcasts. The podcasts I produced with my business partner, who was a Computer System Analyst and Software test engineer in Virginia, were my favorites!

One podcast that caught the attention of some of my genealogy friends was a podcast interview I did 17 years ago with educator/journalist, Gene Stowe, about his debut nonfiction narrative, Inherit the Land: Jim Crow Meets Miss Maggie's Will, published by the University Press of Mississippi.

What made this book such a fascinating read was the legal fight that took center stage when two wealthy white sisters, Sallie & Maggie Ross, in Union County, North Carolina bequeathed their eight hundred acre estate, hundreds of dollars in cash, and two of the family's three gold watches to a black man (Bob Ross) and his daughter (Mittie Bell Houston) that they raised as their own during Reconstruction. As soon as the contents of their will became public, hundreds of Ross cousins sued to break the will on the basis that its bequest to black people just proved that both sisters were mentally incompetent. The verdict given by an "all white jury" is remarkable in light of the troubled racial history of the Jim Crow south!  

I hope you enjoy Gene's conversation with me below about Inherit the Land. And if you've read this book, or you're aware of this famous North Carolina court case, let me know what you think!

 

Liv Taylor-Harris · On The Air with Gene Stowe author of Inherit the Land