GENEALOGY WITH A PURPOSE
You Can’t Cancel an Ancestor
But maybe you can see them in a different light.
Our society is enamored with binary ways of thinking: “you’re either in or you’re out.” We like simple answers and good vs evil stories, which we can tie up in a pretty bow. But if I’ve learned anything from researching my family history (and from just living on this planet), it’s that people are complicated, and often things aren’t what they seem. Doing genealogy offers insight that can help all of us get real about where we come from and also where we’re going.
I recently wrote about a Mafia-like bombing that took place in my grandmother’s Chicago home when she was a toddler. The 1911 explosion killed a couple of her siblings and left a traumatic mark on the family.
The narrative passed down to me was that my grandmother’s father was pulled into cooperating with “the Mob” since he was a leader of a big labor union. That was part of organized crime’s approach to “owning” the workers in order to wield more power over businesses and politicians. This corrupt dynamic — especially in the city of Chicago — is no surprise.
Part of the family story was always that our great-grandfather was a good man who was forced to play dirty. That he was a “good” man was never in doubt (and…
