Home Blog Style 1 | Straightspeak

Home Blog Style 1DHughes2016-12-10T09:32:56-05:00

One small step for democracy, one giant leap for Port Hope

By DHughes|2016-12-10T00:40:56-05:00April 6th, 2014|Categories: communitywatch|Tags: democracy, moon landing, Port Hope|

Is there hope for democracy in small towns? The metaphor of the moon landing is overused but it seems appropriate for a local historic event that happened just one week after the forty-fifth anniversary of Read more...

Community? What is it good for?

By DHughes|2016-12-10T00:40:56-05:00November 19th, 2013|Categories: communitywatch|Tags: Community, Jean Jacque Rousseau, Richard Florida, Robert Putnam|

You are part of a community and the sum of the parts is greater than the whole (photo: oneeyeland.com) As published in Northumberland Today Community is a grand word. It’s ubiquitous, universal and Read more...

No shitting, it’s a conspiracy – with Matt Damon, Bono, Branson and Wilde

By DHughes|2016-12-10T00:40:58-05:00May 29th, 2013|Categories: social|Tags: Bono, clean water, Matt Damon, Olivia Wilde, Richard Branson, shit strike, strikewithme|

The clean water Illuminati conspiracy has gone viral Who gives a shit? Just rich celebrities? How about you? Do we really give a shit about the rest of the world? The evidence is in and Read more...

One small step for democracy, one giant leap for Port Hope

By DHughes|2016-12-10T00:40:56-05:00April 6th, 2014|Categories: communitywatch|Tags: democracy, moon landing, Port Hope|

Community? What is it good for?

By DHughes|2016-12-10T00:40:56-05:00November 19th, 2013|Categories: communitywatch|Tags: Community, Jean Jacque Rousseau, Richard Florida, Robert Putnam|

No shitting, it’s a conspiracy – with Matt Damon, Bono, Branson and Wilde

By DHughes|2016-12-10T00:40:58-05:00May 29th, 2013|Categories: social|Tags: Bono, clean water, Matt Damon, Olivia Wilde, Richard Branson, shit strike, strikewithme|

The clean water Illuminati conspiracy has gone viral Who gives a shit? Just rich celebrities? How about you? Do we really give a shit about the rest of the world? The evidence is in and Read more...

Home Blog Style 1

My personal history is the stuff they write books about. And that's what I am doing. The working title, "Chains of My Father: Marry White."

"The ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds." - Barack Obama

This perspicacious line from the Prologue of Barack Obama's "Dream from My Father" wrenched my aspiration into action. I started writing, furiously. Unlike Obama's perspective, my pain had been for the opposite reason: I was not seen by whites as a "tragic mulatto," rather I lived every day of my childhood hoping whites were not "searching my eyes for some telltale sign" that I WAS mulatto. This is my story.

It's historical fiction because I cannot find enough records to substantiate all facets of the story. I've combed the genealogy, traveled to my father and grandmothers' birthplace, walked the graveyards, searched the churches and ... well, all the facts aren't there. I have written three books based on the genealogy of other families but my ancestors emerged from a journey that left too few records – slavery.

My paternal, great grandmother was a "freed slave." My grandmother, Amelia, was born to a mixed race slave named Mary (we do not know her last name) and a white, French plantation owner, the Count de Poullain, in Grenada, West Indies. Amelia was raised in the "Big House" and in adulthood, in an attempt to escape her black heritage disowned her mother, telling her, "Get out and never come back." Amelia, as a mother of twelve children, enshrined into the family commandments, "Marry white." Many did, including my father. My mother was a lovely, white, Anglo-Saxon protestant born in England. They met in Canada where my dad studied and became a doctor.

It has taken five generations for the descendants of Mary to free themselves from the stigma of their black heritage but today my children embrace it. Unfortunately, the past 250 years have been a wasteland of bigotry, racism and bullying. But, on closer look, we see not only the brutality, fear, violence, and murder but also the self-respect, dignity, love, kindness, perseverance and indomitable spirit.

As of the spring of 2025, the depth of historic perspective and the sweeping inspiration of oppressed people has created a two-volume duology of which I have only arrived at the middle of the 19th century. 1840 is the year my great grandfather was born, the beginning of Volume II, and he's pushing me to make sure our story is published by the summer of 2026.