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Vikki

Vikki

-dw

Vikki

And thank you, A. D. Powell. I appreciate learning about Frank Sweet’s and Daniel J Sharfstein’s books which both center on the subject of mixed race families. I also enjoyed your commentary regarding your own experiences with the issue of who is or is not Black. Interesting indeed. When I was in high school, the science textbooks claimed three races. That was it! Just three. However, one of my science teachers, Mr. Frankston, stated that this simply was not true. He further admonished us to not believe everything we read, including the Bible. You tell a good story, Ms. Powell.

In regard to the game of “self-policing,” and the “gentlemen’s agreement of silence,” both played their part in the Davis Knight trial. “Performance of whiteness” was one of the criteria used to determine race, as were institutional affiliations and neighborhoods.

Thanks for your insightful comments,
Vikki

Thanks for sending this–your wife’s line certainly places her in the midst of the history of the Free State of Jones!

A few of the kinship relations you list, however, don’t correspond to genealogies published by other family members. JoAnn Odom Wingate, for example, is descended from Gustavus Adolphus Bynum’s brother, Prentice (a member of the Knight band who later joined the Union Army in New Orleans). In her history, “A Gathering of Bynums,” which she co-wrote with her husband, Wayne, JoAnn agrees that the brothers’ parents were Benjamin Bynum and Peggy (Margaret) Collins Bynum. However, she identifies Peggy’s father as Stacy Collins Sr., meaning that Jasper Collins was Peggy’s brother, not her father. This agrees with the Collins family history written by Vinson Allen Collins, son of Warren J. Collins, Jasper’s brother. It also agrees with all the records that I myself have studied.

Another history of the Bynum family, Ruby Bynum Sanders’s “The Bynum and Herrington Connections,” contains information on “Nan Arizona Bynum.” Sanders agrees that Arizona married Andrew Jackson Collins, and she lists his parents (not Stacy Collins Sr.’s) as Elijah Jonathan Collins and Margaret Smith Collins. I have not independently researched this branch of the family, however, and can’t vouch for the accuracy of these statements.

It is my understanding that no one has yet been able to document the parentage of Stacy Collins Sr.

thanks again,
Vikki