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Contact: Reshma Melwani
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“Together, Tom and Sharon allow us to be spectators of their story—witnesses to their
discomfort, humiliation, and fear—in order to educate us and thus contribute to healing a
nation in the throes of racial upheaval.”
—Joy Angela DeGruy, PhD, author of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome
“Sharon and Tom take us on a heart-opening journey of awakening. As a nation, we owe them a
deep bow of gratitude as they help us navigate the deep divides of race and otherness.”
—Belvie Rooks, Co-Founder, Growing A Global Heart
Gather at the Table:
The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery
and a Son of the Slave Trade
By Thomas Norman DeWolf and Sharon Leslie Morgan
Foreword by Joy Angela DeGruy, PhD
On Sale: October 9th, 2012
“I don’t spend a lot of time around white people. They scare me,” confesses Sharon Leslie
Morgan, a black woman from Chicago’s Southside. Despite her trepidation, Morgan, a
descendent of slaves on both sides of her family, agrees to embark on a journey toward racial
reconciliation with Thomas Norman DeWolf, a white man from rural Oregon and a descendent
of the largest slave-trading dynasty in early America.
In Gather at the Table, DeWolf and Morgan speak candidly about racism and the unhealed
wounds of slavery. “The legacy of slavery,” they write, “is a combination of historical, cultural,
and structural trauma that continues to touch everyone in American society today.” Schools,
neighborhoods and churches are as segregated as ever, they note. Health disparities between
black and white people remain significant and African Americans are overrepresented in prisons
and underrepresented in colleges. Racism is more subtle now than in the past, but it still exists,
the authors argue. “To be blunt,” DeWolf writes, “it is clear to me that systems remain in place
in the United States that benefit white people and inhibit everybody else.”
Committing to cross the threshold into each other’s personal space, they meet and spend time
with one another’s families and friends, with Morgan noting: “Tom’s world is glaringly white.
Mine is very black.” Over a three year period, the pair travel thousands of miles through twentyone states in the Deep South, Midwest, and North, to visit ancestral towns, cemeteries,
plantations and antebellum mansions, working towards healing the wounds of racism.
For Morgan, thinking about race has been part of her daily existence. “I have been trained to
look at almost everything through the prism of race,” she writes. “I have a whole deck of race
cards I can play at a moment’s notice. I have an ever-present, oppressive feeling that never
allows me to be totally comfortable.” Morgan tells of being the granddaughter of two white
women, the only white people she did not fear. Her paternal Italian grandmother and maternal
Scots-Irish grandmother both married black men in the 1920s and lived in and were fully
accepted into all-black communities in Chicago after being shunned by their white families. For
Morgan, traces of her grandmothers can be seen in her nearly white skin, but being white, she
admits, is not something she ever wanted to be. “I don’t actively claim my white ancestry
because my white ancestors did not claim me.”
As her journey with DeWolf unfolds, Morgan reflects on the wounds she inherited from slavery,
leaving her fearful and at times paranoid. “White people appear to live inside a cocoon of
safety,” she writes. “My life was surrounded by violence.” Recalling the horrific story of her
mother’s gang rape by black men, Morgan believes that slavery has a great deal to do with the
violence that is endemic in the African American community. While visiting DeWolf and his
family in the overwhelmingly white city of Bend, Oregon, Morgan recounts her feeling of
discomfort when surrounded only by white people. “I expect to become a victim. I expect to be
looked at, pointed out, and singled out—especially if I am the only black person in town,” she
writes. Growing up in a racially segregated neighborhood within Chicago, Morgan and many
within her community openly feared that the day would come when white people would block
off the exits from the projects and force black people onto trains headed to concentration
camps.
Unlike Morgan, whose life has been largely shaped by race, DeWolf has chosen to enter the
space of race. “The privilege I possess as a white man makes it easy for me to remain blissfully
unaware of the negative impact I might have on others,” he writes. But rather than remain
ignorant, DeWolf is willing to confront the damage he has inherited from the past. He shares
with readers his direct connection to James DeWolf, the patriarch of a family responsible for
importing at least ten thousand human beings from Africa into slavery. “…Because of that
legacy,” DeWolf writes, “I believe we have a responsibility to acknowledge, speak out, and work
to repair it.”
DeWolf’s journey with Morgan allows him to fully recognize the privilege he possesses as a
white man. While searching for ancestral records at a courthouse in Tompkinsville, Kentucky, he
uncovers his records with ease, even discovering a century-old handwritten note belonging to
his great-grandparents. DeWolf’s genealogical supremacy creates tension between the pair.
“Every find in African American research is a precious miracle,” Morgan notes. “On that day in
Kentucky, I was seething at Tom for being so cavalier, so entitled, so dismissive.” Tensions
bubble up yet again when DeWolf looks for ways to facilitate difficult conversations about race
without scaring off most white people. Reminding him that her people were enslaved by white
people, Morgan resents that things always need to be framed so that white people feel
comfortable.
Ultimately, DeWolf and Morgan’s journey allowed them both the possibility of moving forward
from the historic trauma of slavery in a new way. Healing will happen and change will occur,
they believe, “when people start listening to one another, looking truthfully at their ancestral
experiences, recognizing the privilege that exists for white people and the horrible oppression
that still takes place for people of color because of it.”
About the Authors:
Thomas Norman DeWolf, author of Inheriting the Trade, is featured in the Emmy-nominated
documentary film Traces of the Trade, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and on
the acclaimed PBS series POV. DeWolf speaks regularly about healing from the legacy of slavery
and racism at conferences and colleges throughout the United States.
Sharon Morgan is a marketing communications consultant and a nationally recognized pioneer
in multicultural marketing. An avid genealogist, she is the webmaster for OurBlackAncestry.com
and is a founder of the Black Public Relations Society.
Gather at the Table
Thomas Norman DeWolf and Sharon Leslie Morgan
$25.95, Hardcover & E-Book
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1441-7
eISBN: 978-0-8070-1442-4
October 9, 2012