Bettye Kearse is the author of the strongly reviewed memoir The Other Madisons: The Lost History of A President's Black Family(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, March 2020). She is a descendant of a slave and President James Madison. Her essays, commentaries, and personal narratives have appeared in the Boston Herald, River Teeth, Image Makers and Influencers, Zora, TIME Magazine, and Black Lives Have Always Mattered (2Leaf Press, 2017).