Brought Together
Guideposts|August/September 2021
How two strangers found friendship and healing as they came to terms with the legacy of slavery
BETTY KILBY FISHER BALDWIN and PHOEBE KILBY
Brought Together
Betty Kilby Fisher Baldwin

There I was, coming up on my sixty-second birthday. God had helped bring me to a good stage in my life. I’d retired from my career as an executive. I had raised four children and was helping raise two of my nine grandchildren. And I thought I’d made peace with the past.

Then I received an e-mail from a stranger:

My name is Phoebe Kilby, and I am white. My father grew up in Rappahannock County, Virginia, near where your father grew up. I have been doing some research on my family. I suspect that our families had some kind of relationship in the past.

What did that mean?

There was a follow-up e-mail too. Phoebe—whose last name was the same as my maiden name—said she had been doing genealogical research and discovered that her ancestors might have enslaved my ancestors.

White slave owners often fathered children with the African-American women they owned. It was possible that Phoebe and I were not just connected but related.

“I feel shame that my family once owned slaves and by that very fact traumatized and mistreated them,” she wrote. “Someone in the Kilby family needs to apologize for this injustice, and perhaps that person should be me.”

Those e-mails stirred the past up again, stirred up a storm of feelings inside me too.

Let me tell you my story. Maybe then you’ll understand why Phoebe’s words felt like a message from God.

この記事は Guideposts の August/September 2021 版に掲載されています。

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この記事は Guideposts の August/September 2021 版に掲載されています。

7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。

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