**PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A VIRTUAL PROGRAM THAT WILL TAKE PLACE VIA ZOOM. Registrants will receive a link to access the Zoom Meeting via email.** 

According to the oral history passed down through eight generations of her family, retired pediatrician Bettye Kearse is a descendant of the enslaved cook Coreen and her enslaver, and half-brother, President James Madison. Dr. Kearse tells her family's story in the acclaimed memoir -- The Other Madisons: The Lost Story of a President’s Black Family -- and the subject of a soon-to-be-released documentary film. Join Bettye to learn what it means to be an African American descendant of a slaveholding president and how that meaning evolved over eight generations of her family. Bettye will also discuss the obstacles -- both internal and external -- she confronted while becoming her family’s oral historian, determined to tell the whole story.

The Other Madisons has garnered strong reader and editorial reviews. It earned an International Afro American Historical and Genealogical Society’s Book Award for Nonfiction and was listed by Smithsonian Magazine as one of the top ten best history books of 2020 and by Kirkus as one of the best nonfiction books of 2020.

Register directly on Zoom HERE. Sponsored by the Friends of the Tewksbury Public Library. Presented in collaboration with Libraries Working Towards Social Justice. This program will also serve as the library's monthly Genealogy Group meeting.