A Long Overdue Family Reunion

Back in the day, you were deemed a subordinate class if you had even a drop of Black ancestry in you. Perhaps there was some truth to that ... not being lower class, not being denied rights, and not in discrimination ... but in identification.

Because the Castle clan ... now also the Freeman clan, and distantly, the Jones clan, and other last names through marriage ... was almost a completely Black now. The white blood contributed by Cassandra, by Delilah, by Debbie ... all that had faded over the years. In the African descendants, from Debbie, it was almost completely Black, deep ebony hues. Delilah's descendants had settled in Detroit, where it'd been clear that they didn't intermix anymore. Only in one of Cassandra's descendants, where one of them was mocha skinned, the product of another drop of white blood, could Elizabeth see a hint of what had been.

Even her clan was destined to darkness. Katie and Emily were playing with their distant Black relatives, and the locals, the Jones kids, the progeny of Samson. And Aaron ... that boy was already prissy.

Elizabeth smiled at her distant cousin, the mocha skinned one.

"I found this in an old book my Momma had hung onto," she said. Elizabeth looked, intrigued. It was a draft, unsent letter from Cassandra to Debbie.