Leslie Stainton is the author of the new book Scarlett: Slavery's Enduring Legacy in an American Family. It focuses on her own family history. Her other books include Staging Ground. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Q: What inspired you to write Scarlett, and how was the book’s title chosen?
A: I always knew that my ancestors had “owned slaves,” as we used to say. I was told that the Scarletts were “good slaveholders.” Decades later I learned, of course, there’s no such thing as a “good slaveholder.” So I set out to learn the truth.
And the truth was that at the peak of their wealth, my Scarlett ancestors in Georgia enslaved at least 500 people—making them one of the largest enslavers in the United States.
The people the Scarletts held in bondage suffered hunger, imprisonment, rape, beatings, kidnapping, enforced breeding, poor health, and brutal year-round labor in snake-infested waters, suffocating heat and bone-chilling cold. They slept in one-room cabins with as many as a dozen others. They were sold, bred, hunted, captured, recaptured, whipped, chained, and buried in unmarked graves.
Nor did the torment end with Emancipation. After the war, members of my Scarlett family continued to punish and restrict people of color. The story is anything but the cheerful fantasy Margaret Mitchell paints in Gone with the Wind. Hence the title of my book. It tells the other side of Mitchell’s fiction.
Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: Over the years I had inherited a wealth of documents relating to my Scarlett ancestors—pictures, letters, genealogies, notes, marriage licenses, photographs of Black people who worked for the Scarletts after the war. This was my starting point—trawling through those materials.
My grandmother Mamie grew up in Georgia among former Scarlett enslavers and alongside people once enslaved by the Scarletts. Mamie told me countless stories. To my enduring gratitude, she shared her memories through letters and family memorabilia. She too wanted to preserve our history, even it bothered her.
In what would become the driving question for my book, Mamie remembered waiting in the Scarlett house in the early 1900s while Scarlett men went out into the night. My grandmother always assumed they were involved in some sort of violence against Blacks—a scenario familiar to readers of Gone with the Wind. This was the key piece of our history I wanted to unearth—and ultimately I did. It is a heartbreaking story.
I also did more traditional research in books, libraries, archives. I visited places where my ancestors had lived, and where some of the people they enslaved escaped to freedom by boat. I met descendants of people my family enslaved, and we shared what we knew. We’ve become close friends, and I treasure their friendship.
Q: The writer Joseph McGill Jr. said of the book, “With history again being weaponized, the timing is perfect for the release of Leslie Stainton's vital story.” What do you think of that assessment?
A: Sadly, it’s true. We live at a time when our government seems intent on demolishing not only institutions and buildings, but history—in particular the history of enslavement and the history of our abuse of indigenous people and their lands. (An enslaver who did business with the Scarletts said, about Native Americans, “I am for exterminating them or removing them west of the Mississippi.”)
I spent a lot of time with Joe McGill and his Slave Dwelling Project. Sadly, Joe is right in his assessment. It’s why we need to keep telling these stories.
Q: What impact did it have on you to write this book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: I hope readers are moved to do their own research into family and community histories. I hope readers confront this history with truth but also hope and action. This includes making reparations to people and communities harmed by slavery’s legacy.
One of the most important forms of reparation is the sharing of family histories. I encourage readers who have access to documents, stories, objects, or anything related to slavery to share what they know with historians, archivists, and most importantly descendants of enslaved people. Descendants of the enslaved are hungry for their histories, and it’s often white Americans who hold the keys to that history.
Like my grandmother Mamie, I am haunted by the history of my family's violence to people of African descent, both before and during the Civil War and long after. I'm grateful that so many Scarlett truths are now in the open. No more lies. On a personal note, I am gratified to enjoy a deep friendship with descendants of people the Scarletts enslaves.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m working, mostly through poetry and essays, to do what I can to addressing environmental contamination and climate change—both of which, incidentally, have roots in America’s history of slavery and the abuse of indigenous people and lands.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Please visit www.lesliestainton@com for more details about Scarlett, including post-publication updates and events. My thanks to those readers who have already reached out with questions, comments, and new information about the Scarletts. Let’s keep talking.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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