Welcome to the website of author and journalist Bill Sizemore.
Bill Sizemore spent eight years researching and writing the story of his slaveowning Virginia ancestors, their slaves, and the descendants of those slaves.
The author's great-great-great-grandfather was a small-time tobacco farmer in Mecklenburg County, Virginia. In contrast to large planters with hundreds of slaves, he was far more typical: He owned fewer than 20. The book traces the lives of generations of African-Americans who descended from his slaves, up to the present day.
Recent Blog Posts
W&M’s Morton Hall: a prime candidate for renaming
Here’s an op-ed I wrote for the Virginia Gazette of Williamsburg (July 11): It’s good news that a working group of administrators, alumni, students, faculty…
It’s time to confront American apartheid
In my more than seven decades on this Earth, I’ve never feared more for the future of my country than now. I am sick at…
Book talk coming up at a historic site
In observance of Black History Month, I’ll do a book talk at the Williamsburg-area site of one of America’s earliest free black settlements. Freedom Park,…