The House at the End of the Road

In 1914, in defiance of his middle-class landowning family, a young white man named James Morgan Richardson married a light-skinned black woman named Edna Howell. Over more than twenty years of marriage, they formed a strong family and built a house at the end of a winding sandy road in South Alabama, a place where their safety from the hostile world around them was assured, and where they developed a unique racial and cultural identity. Jim and Edna Richardson were Ralph Eubanks’s grandparents.

Part personal journey, part cultural biography, The House at the End of the Road examines a little-known piece of this country’s past: interracial families that survived and prevailed despite Jim Crow laws, including those prohibiting mixed-race marriage.

Please join the New America Foundation for a conversation with author W. Ralph Eubanks on his new book and a broader discussion about the changing nature of race in America and the idea of a post racial society. Moderating the conversation is Dayo Olopade of the Root.

Participants

W. Ralph Eubanks

Author, The House at the End of the Road
Fellow, New America Foundation

Dayo Olopade
Washington Correspondent, The Root