Free The Invisible Line by Daniel J. Sharfstein Page A

events. Often the descriptions are based on letters, interviews, and court testimony. In the absence of these personal expressions, I have relied on other material, including documented sources from contemporaneous observers, local histories, and my own observations. Like every historian, I have made inferences in interpreting primary sources, but these inferences—my interpretations of history—are always rooted in fact.
    Because The Invisible Line is a history of race told largely from the perspective of people who lived in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, I have made every effort to preserve their individual voices by retaining the original spelling, capitalization, and punctuation in direct quotations. I also use a number of archaic terms to refer to African Americans. These are the terms that the subjects of this book used in order to think about racial categories and to define themselves and others.

“Now measure ten drops into the paint ... There, that’s it, not too goddam fast. Now. You want no more than ten, and no less.”
    Slowly, I measured the glistening black drops, seeing them settle upon the surface and become blacker still, spreading suddenly out to the edges.
    â€œThat’s it. That’s all you have to do,” he said. “Never mind how it looks. That’s my worry. You just do what you’re told and don’t try to think about it. When you’ve done five or six buckets, come back and see if the samples are dry . . . And hurry, we’ve got to get this batch back off to Washington by 11:30 . . .
    â€œLet’s see,” he said, selecting a sample and running his thumb across the board. “That’s it, as white as George Washington’s Sunday-go-to-meetin’ wig and as sound as the all-mighty dollar! That’s paint!” he said proudly. “That’s paint that’ll cover just about anything!”
    He looked as though I had expressed a doubt and I hurried to say, “It’s certainly white all right.”
    â€œWhite! It’s the purest white that can be found. Nobody makes a paint any whiter. This batch right here is heading for a national monument!”
    RALPH ELLISON, Invisible Man (1952)
    Â 
    â€œWhere is the blood of me? Where is my color? My blood is covered over the cornfield among these hills ... Blood and sweat of mine is on the bare hills where they ain’t no timber—where there is old corn rows. That’s where my blood is and my color is.”
    JESSE STUART, “Battle Keaton Dies,” in Head o’ W-Hollow (1936)

WALL FAMILY TREE

    For reasons of space and clarity, the family trees depict only those branches that are featured in this book. Each family can claim dozens—even hundreds—of living descendants.
    SPENCER FAMILY TREE

    GIBSON FAMILY TREE

INTRODUCTION
    The House Behind the Cedars
    T HOMAS MURPHY GREETED ME on a warm autumn day in 2005 wearing a baseball cap with a bald eagle staring fiercely across an American flag. He lived twenty-five miles south of Atlanta in an area that was neither country nor city. His house was shrouded by woods yet stood only blocks from a busy commercial strip. It was close enough to the Atlanta Motor Speedway that he could hear the engines revving on NASCAR race days. 1
    Murphy was in his mid-sixties but looked years younger. He had recently retired from his job driving travelers from the Atlanta airport to a rent-a-car lot; soon he would find work baking biscuits for Chick-fil-A. He spoke quickly and was full of ideas. He was buying up property with the help of adjustable-rate mortgages. An enormous pickup truck and towing rig sat in his driveway, part of a plan to start a business hauling cars interstate.
    The house that Murphy shared with his roommate was hidden from the road by a copse of cedars and other trees. One could drive past and never guess that it was there. He called it Murphy Manor. It was a spacious