Ep. 148 Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, "The Vice President's Black Wife"

Booknotes+

The name of the book is "The Vice President's Black Wife." The author is Amrita Chakrabarti Myers. Prof. Myers teaches history at Indiana University. She explains best what is between the covers of her book in the first paragraph of the introduction: "This is the story of an American family. Set in Great Crossing, Kentucky, in the early nineteenth century, it’s a tale that seems typical at first glance: a plantation owner was sexually involved with an enslaved woman and had children with her. The union of Julia Ann Chinn and Richard Mentor Johnson, a congressman from Kentucky who became vice president of the United States in 1837 under Martin Van Buren is, however, anything but standard."

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