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Debbie Nathan

Debbie Nathan is a journalist and native Texan who recently discovered that her Jewish great-great-grandparents in the antebellum South owned two slaves. She writes about immigration, race, language, and sex as motifs of cultural anxiety (and sometimes as cultural joy).

circa 1955:  American humorist and author John Henry Faulk (1913 - 1990), narrates the history of early America in a still from the television program,'They Call It Folk Music.'  (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Hearing Harriet Smith

In the University of Texas library, our writer found a previously unknown audiotape of an interview with a woman who'd been born into slavery.