Book - Tomlinson Hill

Tomlinson Hill : The Remarkable Story of Two families Who Share the Tomlinson Name-- One White, One Black - by Chris Tomlinson

"Foreign correspondent Chris Tomlinson returns to Texas to discover the truth about his family's slave owning history. Tomlinson Hill tells the story of two families, one black and one white, who trace their ancestry to the same Central Texas slave plantation. Tomlinson discovers that his counterpart in the African American family is LaDainian Tomlinson, one of the greatest running backs in the history of the National Football League. LaDainian's father was the last Tomlinson living on the Hill when he died in 2007.

LaDainian's earliest memories are from the idyllic community built by former slaves on the former plantation grounds. Chris learns that many of the stories surrounding the Civil War and the South that he learned as a child are simply untrue. He finds family letters that detail the mix of brutality and meager kindness that his relatives used to maintain order. He then compares and contrasts what the two families experienced at Emancipation, during Reconstruction, through the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the Civil Rights era, and ending the day LaDainian's father died. Tomlinson Hill is more than a history of two families; it tells the story of America and how slavery still shapes our society. And it ends with the fulfillment of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream that one day the sons of slaves and the sons of slaveholders would meet in brotherhood."

summary & image from WorldCat

*******

JHT comments

Very, very interesting book. Initially I read it because of the family history story. I became intrigued by the history that was lived by the two families.

For six years , author Chris Tomlinson worked in war zones in Africa and the Middle East –  “Every conflict I covered included an element of bigotry. In South Africa, I covered the end of apartheid, a political system based on the supposed inferiority of blacks. In Rwanda, I reported on the country’s recovery from genocide. In Somalia, the most homogenous nation in the world, bigotry was based not on clan, but on sub-sub-clan. I found that in every instance the bigotry was based on a human drive to divide ourselves up in order to hoard power and privilege. Science tells us that race, tribe, and clan have nothing [to] do with biology - -they are inventions of society.” (p 2)

“… after six years covering death, I was growing weary. In addition to war, I’d also covered earthquakes, volcanoes, and a tsunami. I could feel my nerves fraying, and my readiness to throw myself into horror evaporated.” He learned a fellow reporter died in a plane crash as he returned from a story Tomlinson assigned him to. “He was the twelfth friend I’d lost to the job, and I’d hit my limit for sorrow.” (p 350) I appreciate the reporters and journalists who put themselves in harm's way in order to keep the rest of us informed. Tomlinson moved to Texas in 2007, worked part time for Associated Press, and started writing this book.

I like this description of how our peace can be shaken when we learn something that shows us we haven't come as far as we thought or hoped. Loreane Tomlinson, hearing about something that happened to her young daughter -“A lot of times, when we look around, we think that we’ve come so far, and we have. Then somebody would come along and steal that peace that you had, that things are changing, and we’re making a difference.” (p 311) 

The author skillfully relates opportunities available to the white Tomlinsons and the black Tomlinsons at various points in the families' stories.

Martin Luther King dreamed that one day "the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood." Chris and LaDainian Tomlinson met together in brotherhood as they explored the history of their intertwined families. 

**********

The author is about my age. I contemplated what was different and what was the same for blacks and whites in small town London, Ohio compared to small town rural Texas where the story takes place. We didn’t have separate schools, separate drinking fountains, and so forth. I don’t ever remember thinking anything about a person’s color. Sadly, I have to admit that I don't recall noticing that my black friends didn't go to the community swimming pool and I don't recall it was discussed at home. 

My mother precipitated the integration of the pool sometime in the mid1960s when she told the people at the pool that one of the T... girls, who was in Mom’s 4-H or some such group, was coming to the pool with the rest of the club for a class – perhaps a Red Cross course. Mom essentially said, "This is what I’m going to do. There won’t be any trouble, will there?” There wasn’t. The next day black kids showed up at the pool and the public pool was integrated and truly public for the first time.   In 1968, after I moved away and was starting a family of my own, a cross was burned on my parents' lawn in London. This came about due to interracial dating my siblings were involved in.

Joe and I had interesting experiences with race when we served as missionaries in The Bahamas. We could go for days without seeing any other white people. Oftentimes we were the first white people in a Bahamian's home. The children often asked questions about color and inquisitively felt our hair and our skin. One little girl was very puzzled as she stroked my skin and finally exclaimed, "You have sprinkles on your arm!" She'd never seen freckles! Our black brothers and sisters cautioned us about words and which ones we could never speak even though we heard them using the words.


Bahamians didn't talk in terms of black and white. They used a wider range of colors to describe complexions - bright (light complexioned including white), to brown, to dark, to dark, dark. Conchy Joe was sometimes used for whites. This refers to the pink color inside a conch shell. My Bahamian sisters periodically asked me if I couldn't do anything else with my hair style. In great contrast to them, I wore my hair the same way - all the time.


Before our mission we would have described ourselves as colorblind. A more accurate description might have been we noticed color but it made no difference to us. During our mission we became so immersed in the work and the culture and identified with the people in a way that we truly ceased to even notice color. We became truly colorblind.


We are thankful for our deep and trusting relationships with our Bahamian brothers and sisters - and for all they taught us.