A Chat with W. Ralph Eubanks and his new The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South

It wasn’t until he was 16-years old that Ralph Eubanks discovered that his grandfather, Jim, who died six months before he was born, was white. In 1914, Jim married Edna, a light-skinned black woman, Edna, and settled in Prestwick, Alabama in Washington County, some 80 miles north of Mobile. It was a time when harsh Jim Crow laws prohibited mixed race marriage, yet the strong, loving family they raised remains a testimony to their devotion. Eubanks’ excellent biographical exploration into his grandparents’ lives, The House at the End of the Road, is a remarkable personal journey and meditation on how we can move beyond race when examining the past. And the present. Note: Eubanks is speaking at the University of Montevallo Monday, Sept. 28, for “A Night with W. Ralph Eubanks.” The event will begin at 6:30 p.m., in the Montevallo Room, Anna Irvin Dining Hall.

Todd Keith: What was the point of departure that made you undertake to research and investigate your family’s experiences in early 20th century south Alabama?
Ralph Eubanks: You think about so much of your life as being ordinary until you reach a certain age. Then you realize it’s not so ordinary after all. Thinking of my own children’s experiences and how different they were from my own, you naturally think of where and how differently my grandparents lived—and the times they lived were quite exceptional.

TK: When you were writing, were you thinking of how this might impact an Alabama audience?
RE: I was thinking in terms of a national audience, this conversation on race that we are supposed to have that we don’t have and continue to avoid. By looking at one family as a microcosm of American life, I’m hoping that people can look at how race has had an impact on their lives.

TK: In what ways do you see south Alabama as being different from say the Black Belt and north Alabama?
RE: It would have been a completely different story. I had a historian read this, just to get another’s input since I’m not historian. I grew up in Mississippi and know Mississippi history better than Alabama, but what made south Alabama different is there has always been this blending of cultures that was forced upon people. As they moved north or settled, that isolation bred some different attitudes. That island community that my grandparents cultivated, it takes hold in Alabama in ways that I just don’t see in Mississippi. Mississippi tried to be a monolithic culture where Alabama left it more to various communities to interpret in their own ways.

TK: A proximity to Mobile seems to have impacted your grandparent’s ability to create their own refuge.
RE: That blending of cultures has gone on in Mobile for centuries. There were people who crossed that Jim Crow line often. Creole culture there has bridged those black and white worlds. Some in Mobile would say that fact buffered the tensions there during the Civil Rights era.

TK: Reading your book, I get a sense of where this exploration has taken you. Tell me about moving past race as a means of looking at people.
RE: The new dialogue is really just having a conversation about the past, that’s the real thing. There hasn’t been much that’s happened in Alabama that’s forced a look into its past. You go to the Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham and you’re confronted with the issues, but that’s simply dry history for many people, particularly those of my daughter’s generation. Unlike the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, there hasn’t been anything like that in Alabama that has led to a confrontation with the dark elements of the past. Has Mississippi completely learned from it? No [laughs]. The takeaway is the importance of the dialogue about the past. It’s incredibly important to move forward, but at the same time to understand how race was once lived. We tend as Americans to not be very introspective. Now that I know that, how do I move forward? I want people to look at this book and see how race was once lived in Southern culture and say ‘We don’t have to live like this anymore.’

TK: So that’s where you want this to take your readers?
RE: I hope there are readers my age who have never had that dialogue—but are ready for that dialogue after reading the book.

TK: I’m struck by how, after all this excellent digging and research you done for the book, you still don’t have a photo of your grandmother.
RE: This book is her photograph, isn’t it? She had an impact, and I wanted that to come through. I walked away from this with so much affection for her, I can’t say.