Annette Gordon-Reed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in history and the National Book Award for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, is featured in her hometown paper, the
Houston Chronicle.
Al Brophy covers the story. It begins:
At the impressionable age of 6, Annette Gordon-Reed strode through the doors of Anderson Elementary School in Conroe.
It was 1963, and the first-grader knew exactly what she was walking into. At a school with 800 pupils, she was the only black student enrolled.
“I was very conscious of the fact that this was a big deal,” said Gordon-Reed, who won a Pulitzer Prize this year for The Hemingses of Monticello, a historical account of the enslaved family that became part of Thomas Jefferson's family in 18th-century Virginia. “It made me think very early on about race in ways that I might not have if I'd been in an all-black environment.”
