In Search of the Children of Eliza:
Finding Our Ancestors to Heal Our
Trauma and Bless Our Children
In Search of the Children of Eliza is the deeply personal memoir of one woman’s journey from Soul Train Saturday mornings in 1970s Detroit to the dusty pages of a family Bible that bore witness to children born enslaved. Tracing her lineage from Grandma Ethel, a light-skinned “Old Detroiter” proud of passing the brown bag test, back to Great-Great-Grandma Eliza, whose endurance carried a family from bondage to freedom, she uncovers generations of resilience, assimilation, and inherited pain. Along the way, she discovers that knowing where we come from is the key to rising with clarity and purpose.
