The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South

by W. Ralph Eubanks

A powerful story about race and identity told through the lives of one American family across three generations

In 1914, in defiance of his middle-class landowning family, a young white man named James Morgan Richardson married a light-skinned black woman named Edna Howell. Over more than twenty years of marriage, they formed a strong family and built a house at the end of a winding sandy road in South Alabama, a place where their safety from the hostile world around them was assured, and where they developed a unique racial and cultural identity. Jim and Edna Richardson were Ralph Eubanks' grandparents.

Part personal journey, part cultural biography, The House at the End of the Road examines a little-known piece of this country's past: interracial families that survived and prevailed despite Jim Crow laws, including those prohibiting mixed-race marriage. As he did in his acclaimed 2003 memoir, Ever Is a Long Time, Eubanks uses interviews, oral history, and archival research to tell a story about race in American life that few readers have experienced. Using the Richardson family as a microcosm of American views on race and identity, The House at the End of the Road examines why ideas about racial identity rooted in the eighteenth century persist today. In lyrical, evocative prose, this extraordinary book pierces the heart of issues of race and racial identity, leaving us ultimately hopeful about the world as our children might see it.

Genres: Nonfiction, Race, History, African American, Memoir, American, Biography

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

W. Ralph Eubanks is author of When It's Darkness on the Delta: How America's Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land, which will be published January 13, 2026 by Beacon Press. He is also the author of three other works of nonfiction: A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape, Ever is a Long Time: A Journey into Mississippis Dark Past, and The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South. Eubanks has contributed articles to The Washington Post Outlook and Style sections, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Scholar, and National Public Radio. He is a recipient of a 2021 Harvard Radcliffe Institute fellowship, a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship, and was a national fellow at the New America Foundation. Eubanks lives in Washington, D.C., and is faculty fellow and writer in residence at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.

Reviews

[Carol · Rating 2 out of 5]

I borrowed this from Dad after reading a review and thinking it might make a good book group book. The story was interesting but it would be better suited to a serial in Vanity Fair or the New Yorker. It was redundant and after reading "the house at the end of the road" about 100 times in the first few chapters...I MIGHT be exaggerating a bit!...I was pretty bored with his family. With the events he was talking about so far in the past and few living people to remember, and no written history he had to do guite a bit of conjecturing. Maybe he is related to us!

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eubanks is a skilled writer, but this book would have benefited from some stronger editing and a tighter writing style. It is rambling and repetitious at points. Plus -- the principals involved are dead, there are few written records (and only photo in the entire book!) -- and so few family members had information they could share (or were willing to speak even) that the soup is made thin....

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting personal history yet at times could be very redundant.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book presents the reader with a fascinating examination of a complicated family in rural Southern Alabama and in seeking to overcome it also wrestles with the question of race and identity within contemporary America.  In the early 1900’s, the author’s white grandfather, Jim Richardson, married a mixed-race wife Edna Howell, and the results of that decision have continued to have repercussions throughout the family.  It was not unusual then for white men to have families with black or mixed-race women.  Indeed, Jim’s father had two families, one with his white wife and another with a black mistress in a neighboring town.  That said, the mixed-race families tended to be unacknowledged and swept under the rug, as it were, while only the white family was recognized.  What Jim Richardson did in attempting to recognize and provide for the well-being of his complicated family was a more delicate task and one that represents the difficulties in achieving some sort of racial harmony in contemporary America.  The author himself at times appears to struggle with the implications of what is meant by his own family background.

This book is a short one at about 200 pages in length.  The author begins with a prologue about his slowness in recognize the importance of his mixed-race heritage as he was a proud light-skinned black during the heady days of the civil rights movement.  After that the author talks about the importance of the Alabama ghost town of Prestwick (I) in forming his family history, including the world that was found by his maternal grandparents (1), as well as a discussion of the backgrounds of Jim Richardson (2) and Edna Howell (3), as well as the way that they dealt with their shadowy existence (4) while also seeking to come out of the shadows (5).  The author then discusses his attempts to reach out across the chasm (II) in discussing the importance of his grandfather’s decision (6), the parallel lives and separate legacies of the branches of his family (7), and the lost world of the small-town and rural spaces that allowed for freedom from the racial politics of the day (8).  Finally, the author moves to his discussion of transcendence (III) and the way that people can overcome racial ambiguity (9), move beyond various myths about the past (10), carry on one’s history to the next generation (11) and look at the ambivalence of the history of Alabama in the contemporary world (12), after which there is an epilogue, suggestions for further reading, and acknowledgements.

In many ways, this book is a subtle but powerful slap at the politics of the BLM as much as it is a more direct and less subtle slap at the racial politics of the KKK and other white supremacists.  The author, having married a white woman himself, is the product of many generations of racial admixture and is certainly proud of his black identity.  But at the same time he wants to recognize the importance of his white ancestry and the meaningful aspect of his grandfather’s choice not to merely keep a sub rosa second family through a black mistress but to actually make a home with her as a wife, which was a rare decision and one that was technically illegal in Alabama (and many other states) at the time.  This book is all about the ways in which people are able to move beyond binary categories of black and white to celebrate the complexity of their family backgrounds and acknowledge the elements that combine in their blood and in their background.  How much white blood does it take to be white?  Is one drop of black blood sufficient to make one black and thus some sort of racial elite in contemporary America?  The author would indicate that it is best if we are able to move beyond the binary identities of black and white without rejecting any elements of one’s background, but this is a complex and nuanced task that appears to be beyond the simplistic politics of our time, or any time that has existed so far in our nation’s history.  And that is a great shame.

[Mark Hainds · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed W. Ralph Eubanks book. When I first met the author at the Oxford Festival of the Book I didn't realize we had some very pertinent details of our life in common.

Mr. Eubanks is the product of an interracial marriage in south Alabama, and through numerous trips to and interviews with his relatives in Washington County, he pieces together the story of his white Grandfather and black Grandmother in Prestwick, Alabama.

I live a few counties east of Washington County, in Covington County Alabama, as a white man with a Mestiza wife.

Some things have changed dramatically: his grandparents’ marriage had been illegal under Alabama law of that time and era.

Other challenges remain, and I appreciate how much effort Mr. Eubanks put into this investigation and story of his interracial family, and how Jim and Edna Richardson navigated this potential minefield in Alabama.

Equally important, my children look like Ralph's children, but his are a few years ahead of mine. And it was interesting to read how they viewed and appreciate their family history.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting story of Eubanks' search for his family history, with broader implications for the Southern small town society his grandparents lived in and transformed through their relationship. Eubanks' prose was sometimes repetitious, but always immediate and effective as he discovers different members of his family, both black and white, and learns how they remember and embody the changing attitudes around race.

[Anne with Violets · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nonfiction book written by a grandson who sets out to find out about his grandparents who married and had children of different races more than 100 years ago in Alabama, where interracial marriage was prohibited until 2000. The attitudes of family members and neighbors who viewed or remembered the white husband and black wife are striking.
Meaningful and interesting subject matter, but distracting organization.

[Andrea Dowd · Rating 4 out of 5]

As part of my ongoing non-fiction goal (1 non-fiction book a month) and as part of my interest in reading books about/in relation to a place I will be visiting, I picked up this treasure.

Have read very little about interracial issues and never enough interracial fiction, the story of W. Ralph Eubanks family in deep-south Alabama has moved me and even confirmed a shift in thinking about race in the U.S. The story of Jim and Nora Richardson, a white man and light skinned black woman illegally married in post-war, Jim Crow era south was full of light. "The House at the End of the Road" was not a story about how terribly white people have treated black people or how mixed race children find fitting in with their peers difficult; rather, this is a story about transcending the color of skin and of the past and moving towards humanity and justice.

Loved this book! Eubanks makes it easy to read while making the story his and ours as readers, all at the same time.

[Stacey Marriott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Eubanks has an interesting family background but there simply was not enough content to justify a book. This was predominantly his musings on the changing perspectives of race relations. While valuable insights, that's not why I wanted to read the book because the description suggested it was more about the family.

I'm not even sure which 3 generations this book covered. There was very little personal memoir/story about anyone other than what little detail he could gather about his grandparents. There was virtually nothing about experiences of his mothers and her siblings, some of who are still alive. Did he mean his children as the third generation?

It's hard to imagine this could not have been improved by better editing and a better approach to the story telling. Simple additions like a family tree, photos of the town, the house. Something.

Very disappointing and repetitive.

[Debra Odom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was glad to read this book. Although I think that portions of this book was a bit wordy, Eubanks presented his case well about how the Jim Crow laws impacted his family across three generations. He covered the topic well as to how this country has dealt the Census classifications of multiracial individuals from the early 1900s to present day. He delves into the issue of how his white grandfather was able to straddle the fence between the white world and the black world. This was an informative read.

[Lk · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited to read this book after hearing the author on NPR. Fascinating and important topic especially since I've lived in several southern states and often (as an outsider) wondered about exactly what he was discussing. I WANTED this book to be better and kept reading because of the occasional gems but it was tedious and repetitive. I appreciate what he had to say but think he could have told us so much more based on all of his time and research.

[Elizabeth Schenck · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and thought it provided increadible insight into the world of race and racial identity. I especially liked the end of the book... it wraps it all of and causes the reader to examine their own biases and understanding of the word "race". I read this book for a class, but could easily see myself reading it for pleasure! Enjoy!

[Thomas DeWolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powerful story about racial identity, conflict, and survival told through three generations of one family beginning in the early 20th century. This story highlights the trauma that has been inflicted throughout history in the United States connected to race, how it has been passed down generationally, and how much healing remains to be done.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eubanks shared with his readers that he lacked information about his grandmother. I appreciated that admission because some sections felt underreported and padded with repetitive points. Eubanks' openness about his struggles to learn about his grandmother made me forgiving about those sections. The rest of the book was interesting and heartfelt. I enjoyed it.

[jill]

My Uncle Ray recommended this. He hasn't steered me wrong yet!

[Sumeyya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good clear narrative on the black/white dynamic in American society; only complaint: it was a little slow to get into.

[Wendyhodges · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard Eubanks' interview on NPR's Fresh Air. An interesting exploration of issues of race in America and how they not only have impacted his family, but the historical course of the nation.

[S Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

currently reading

[Alice · Rating 2 out of 5]

More documentary than story, this is the story of 3 generations of an interracial family in the deep South.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating! Changed what I thought I knew about the Jim Crow South.