I was born and raised in Knoxville, TN, and I am the child of two clinical psychologists.
My father, Joshua Williams, is from Brooklyn, NY, and—like any decent Jew brought up on the streets of Flatbush—he was a fully formed radical leftist by junior high.
Here is a photo, once printed in the New York Times, of my dad at a protest in the 1970s. Admittedly, he both protesting and selling buttons, but the kid had to eat, okay? (My dad left home at 14, so he was pretty much on his own at this point.)
My mother, Laurie Williams, grew up all over the United States because her father—my grandfather, Fletcher Thompson—was in the FBI. In fact, Fletcher eventually became an Assistant Director of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover.
Image: My grandfather Fletcher, grandmother Ruth, mother (green purse and shoes) and her siblings, and J. Edgar Hoover.
If you think this is a complicated inheritance, just wait. You have no idea where this is headed; I promise.
My point is that where and even more so whom I come from probably has a great deal to do with who I am and what I do.
For example, my maternal grandmother, Ruth DeLoache Thompson (Fletcher’s wife for more than 73 years) was the grandchild of South Carolina enslavers.
Knowing this, I have always felt an ethical and moral responsibility to contribute to work reckoning with the history of slavery in the United States.
Images: My grandmother Ruth holding my aunt Jennie, after whom I am named; my grandmother and her people’s homeplace, Saluda, SC; a reference to an overseer bearing my grandmother’s maiden name in the WPA interview of Rachel Sullivan. (I do not know if this overseer was kin to me, but he might as well have been.)
And then, of course, there is the history of the FBI and my grandfather’s role in it to consider.
Before I delve into that, however, I should tell you what makes all of this so very complicated and so very painful. I adored my grandparents. I was especially close to my grandfather, but I loved and—in some ways—revered both of them.
Fletcher and me and his and Ruth’s 70th anniversary celebration dinner; Ruth opening a Christmas present from me (earrings I had made for her), Fletcher and a very young me.
[introduction line about FBI blah blah blah blah blah cointelpro] blah blah blah
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Fletcher was born in 1921. mother dies goes to live with grandparents who were born in 1851.
I don’t know much about my grandfather’s grandfatehr, but i knkow this. he wa a boy when the war broke out etc etc I don’t know much about my grandfather’s grandfatehr, but i knkow this. he wa a boy when the war broke out etc etc I don’t know much about my grandfather’s grandfatehr, but i knkow this. he wa a boy when the war broke out etc etc I don’t know much abo ut my grandfather’s grandfatehr, but i knkow this. he wa a boy when the war broke out etc etcI don’t know much about my grandfather’s grandfatehr, but i knkow this. he wa a boy when the war broke out etc etc
Anyway, shortly after learning about my grandfather from Oliver…
blah blah memphis
