Francis Sistrunk is not a name found in most history books; she is well known to neither experts nor the lay reader. But Elizabeth West weaves Francis, her story, and her descendants into the historical fabric of America in this deeply researched study.

Rather than titling it after the Sistrunk family or after the regions of the south—South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi—that the family lived and farmed in, West deliberately focuses on the person of Francis Sistrunk, who lived from 1827 until sometime in the last decades of the nineteenth century. At the start of the book, West emphasizes that genealogies and other historical accounts frequently omit the enslaved. They were not permitted to write accounts of their own lives, and when they are included in records, they are often listed as nameless property. So they must be found, and within the pages of this book, West names Francis Sistrunk and reminds us that “without explicit records noting the names, date of birth, parents’ names, and other personal-individual evidence of existence, the presumption is that we cannot know them.” West turns that assumption on its head by “layering the antebellum records with samplings of post-emancipation records and archives” to tell Francis’s story.

In reading this book, one will certainly learn a lot about Francis, her six children, and the generations that followed her (West herself is a sixth-generation descendant). Tracing the family’s movement across the southern states, West’s impressive research reveals details about land holdings, financial transactions, church foundings, and census records. But this book is at its most engaging when these details are linked to larger societal issues of both yesterday and today. For instance, West discusses the fear of African Americans after the Civil War, challenging any notion that freedom meant safety. She writes, “Francis had to instill in her children an awareness of situations that could be put their lives and fates in the hands of whites who had Page 237 →the full force of the law to wield against them.” This “heightened state” is, of course, still heightened, many generations later, as noted in recent books by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Kiese Laymon.¹ The “talk” that Black families have with their children has a long, painful history. Thinking about this through Francis’s position as a formerly enslaved mother and recognizing that it’s a conversation happening right now in our country is both sobering and deeply troubling.

Another thread that West traces back to Francis is the act of naming. Although it is easy to look at a mother naming a child after a relative or ancestor as a straightforward move to respect or honor that familial tie, West reveals that in Francis’s case, it is much more. She writes, “The lasting imprint of Francis’s connection with Shadrack II is in the name of their son. By naming her son Shadrack, Francis created a family and kinship line for her son and for future generations,” further reminding us that “enslaved people often conferred names to children to help them maintain knowledge of their family connections and origins, especially considering the probability that they may be separated.”

It is surely interesting to read about the life of Francis and the details of her familial history. But what’s moving and engaging about this book is how West uses Francis’s life to teach us so much more about enslavement and the deliberate steps that women such as Francis made to forge community and build families after the Civil War.

Meredith A. Love, Francis Marion University