Houston Chronicle: "Tomlinson Hill: 2 Families Who Share the Tomlinson Name - 1 White, 1 Black"

[Faryn Balyncd]

Excerpt from Chris Tomlinson's book, "Tomlinson Hill: The Remarkable Story of Two Families Who Share the Tomlinson Name - One White, One Black"

Old scrapbooks in his father's boyhood room open a world of family lore to a Texan seeking his roots

By Chris Tomlinson


...Before he died, on New Year's Eve in 1973, my grandfather tried to make me proud of being a Texan. My father tried to keep me from becoming a racist. And bringing both points home in my young imagination was the knowledge that somewhere in rural Texas there were black Tomlinsons who shared our heritage....My ancestors had owned their ancestors....I tried to imagine the black Tomlinsons. Could their family have moved to Dallas, too? Were they still in the country? What an irony that would be. I had always imagined blacks to be urban and the countryside to be white. To me, rural Texas was the backwoods, a place where the sun didn't reach the forest floor, where rednecks still grew cotton, hunted deer, gigged frogs, and fried catfish. It was the place where the Ku Klux Klan roamed the red clay roads and burned crosses at night. The country was where the bogeyman lived. . .


Two Tomlinsons

Thirty years later, I was standing on a mountain ridge near Tora Bora, covering Osama bin Laden's last stand in Afghanistan. Fighter jets screamed through the bitterly cold winter sky, dropping laser-guided bombs on the caves where al-Qaeda had fled following the September 11 terrorist attacks. At night, I slept in a mud hut a farmer had been using to dry peanuts. His compound was the closest shelter to the front line. The Associated Press team and a handful of other writers and photographers huddled around propane heaters to escape the mountain cold. We could hear the relentless explosions of 2,000-pound bombs in the next valley over, but occasionally one would go astray and fall close enough to shake the walls of our shack....We spent our days with the mujahideen at the front lines as they fought their way to reach Osama's redoubt. At night, we sipped tea with Pashtu warlords, transmitted our stories and photographs by satellite phone, and planned for the next day. . . .

At the same time, on the other side of the planet, a young African-American athlete worked hard to prove himself in his rookie year in the National Football League. LaDainian Tomlinson had led the NCAA in rushing his senior year at Texas Christian University, carrying the ball for 2,158 yards and scoring 22 touchdowns. The San Diego Chargers recognized his talent and picked him in the first round of the 2001 draft. LaDainian was one of the best running backs in the NFL, but the Chargers were one of the worst teams. He planned to change that.....On Dec. 15, 2001, I was sitting in the sun with Afghan warlords while they used a walkie-talkie to negotiate the surrender of al-Qaeda fighters, who were decimated and demoralized by American air power. LaDainian was in Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, being pummeled by the Oakland Raiders in a game that would end with a 6-13 loss for the Chargers........We had never met, but we shared a common legacy. We both traced our heritage to Tomlinson Hill. And we both had traveled far from Texas to create better lives for ourselves. I was the city boy who became a foreign correspondent; he was the country boy who became a millionaire football player. . . .

When Tomlinson was in elementary school, his grandfather bragged about their ancestors owning slaves on a Falls County cotton plantation along the Brazos River. When the slaves became free, his grandfather said they loved their slaveholders so much they took Tomlinson as their last name....Nearly 40 years later, Tomlinson returned to Texas after spending 14 years as a war correspondent for the Associated Press in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Informed by covering dozens of ethnically influenced conflicts, Tomlinson decided to take a look at his own family history of owning slaves and employing sharecroppers in Central Texas...Tomlinson dug deep into historical records and letters, conducted hundreds of oral histories and closely researched the legacy of Tomlinson Hill's founding family and the men and women held in bondage there. He also closely examined his own education about race and how the past influences the present. . . . . . . .


http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/Excerpt-from-Chris-Tomlinson-s-book-Tomlinson-5708026.php#/0

[monmouth3]

1. Am bookmarking for later. Looks like a fascinating read. Thanks for posting...n/t

[shanti]

2. pbs

broadcasted this show at one time. it's pretty interesting!