Everyone’s family history is complicated. Nearly everyone has an estranged sibling, a drunken uncle, a contentious aunt, or a well-kept secret trauma. With DNA testing and genealogy websites, everyone is almost guaranteed to find a cousin, a half-sibling, or even a parent previously unknown to them. During American slavery, the bloodlines of slaveholding families were particularly fraught. Without technology, “Mama’s baby and Papa’s maybe,” as the saying goes, could be kept hidden. When an enslaved child had red hair, freckles, and the same dimple or gait as their biological father, everyone noticed, but they never discussed these relationships. Behind the family portraits, genetics told everything. The irony among slaveholders and their enslaved descendants was that light skin meant little. Slavery did not discriminate: The children of white masters could be bought, sold, beaten, or sexually assaulted. Interracial relationships did not bring people together in an era of slavery; rather, they kept them apart.

The family history of the Grimkes features many of these complications. In a single family tree, there were generations of slaveholders, enslaved people, abolitionists, and free-born Black descendants. There was wealth and poverty, inherited money and self-made men. The Grimke family tree encompassed the spectrum of bondage…