Anyone who’s ever dug into their family history understands the urge to uncover more—more facts, more insights, more tangible connections to the past. Beyond the dry details in census data and official documents, there’s the burning question: who were these ancestors, really? What did they hold dear, and what historical currents influenced their lives?
David Levering Lewis, a celebrated historian and two-time Pulitzer Prize recipient for his biographies of W.E.B. DuBois, decided to delve into these very mysteries concerning his lineage. Despite his impressive body of work and a lifetime of exploring historical landscapes, the story of his own family was missing pieces. At 88, Lewis embarked on a mission, not only to embrace his genealogy but also to weave it seamlessly into the broader tapestry of African American history. What he discovered was far beyond his expectations.
“The Stained Glass Window” takes root symbolically from an antique window in a church in Atlanta. This window, featuring a mother and child inspired by the likeness of his maternal grandmother, Alice King Bell, became a touchstone. Alice, raised in the vibrant and historically crucial Black community in Atlanta, was fondly remembered within the family. Yet, as Lewis journeyed further back in time, he uncovered ancestors whose stories had remained untold. To successfully navigate this daunting historical exploration, he enlisted the help of a genealogy expert to interpret genetic testing results.
These revelations brought surprises. Lewis, an African American, discovered he had at least three white ancestors stemming from the painful legacy of slavery, where enslavers often forced Black women into sexual relationships. He was staggered, especially upon learning that one of his great-grandfathers, James W. Belvin, a white man, fathered five children with Lewis’s enslaved great-grandmother Clarissa King while maintaining a separate white family. This mosaic of ancestors—white, enslaved Black, and free people of color—mirrored the broader African American experience from the late 18th century through the mid-20th century. Through this lens, Lewis tells the story of African Americans across varying social classes and complexions, right up to the 1950s.
The narrative Lewis presents isn’t always easy to digest, touching on the brutal shadows of slavery, the violence during Reconstruction, and the suffocating suppression of Black rights that forced many of Lewis’ relatives to escape the South. It is, above all, a tale of tremendous resolve and perseverance. The section particularly illuminating of what Black citizens have faced—and accomplished—relates to his branch of the family in Atlanta.
James W. Belvin’s purchase of property in Atlanta for Clarissa King represented a pivotal moment, enabling her and her family to escape rural Georgia. They moved into the heart of the South’s Black cultural and intellectual hub, paving the way for Lewis’s father to become a minister and college president, and his mother to emerge as an influential teacher and artist within the community.
Despite Atlanta’s self-proclaimed status as a “city too busy to hate,” the power dynamics there frequently obstructed even its most determined African American residents. Lewis documents the systemic underfunding and neglect of Black educational institutions with painful precision. Additionally, a divide between the professional and working-class segments of the Black population further sapped their collective political strength. Lewis astutely observes how middle- and upper-class Black individuals, often of mixed race, sometimes prioritized their own resources over comprehensive advocacy for all Black Americans until they were swept up in the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century.
Nevertheless, the essence of Lewis’s family narrative is one of fortitude and generosity. Inspired by his father’s sacrifices to support the schools he led, along with the dedication of two aunts who toiled under difficult conditions to finance both his father’s and uncle’s education, the thread of selfless endurance is unmistakable. The horrific episodes of racial violence targeting Black communities further underscore the fragile yet vital nature of voting rights and the ease with which they can be jeopardized.
Lewis masterfully employs his historical acumen to weave less recognized facets of the African American journey, including the existence of Black slaveholders in South Carolina and the vulnerable status of free people of color in the aftermath of a retaliatory wave post-slave revolt.
Yet, in his recounting, Lewis’s strengths can also be his pitfalls. His compelling storytelling sometimes gets tangled in academic references, making portions of the book feel like an exhaustive family ledger rather than a sweeping American epic. Despite this, “The Stained Glass Window” stands as a monumental achievement, reviving lost histories with depth and honor. If writing this book was Lewis’s homage to his lineage, it is a tribute generously delivered—with compounded interest.
Mary Ann Gwinn, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist based in Seattle, frequently writes about books and the literary world.
