Tag Archives | Rudean Leinaeng

Rudean & grandparents

Coal, War and Love

A Family Memoir By Rudean Leinaeng Rudean holds a portrait of her grandparents, Albert & Evelyn She was beautiful, cultured, and clairvoyant–the pampered daughter of a middle-class colored family; he was handsome and hard-nosed – a laborer with little formal education. How they met and fell in love is the beginning of this family narrative. […]

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Photograph of seven adults and one child. The adults sit on chairs

My Grandfather The War Hero

Albert Sidney Johnson (1880 – 1947) was born in Lexington Virginia, the eldest of five children. Both of his parents had been born into slavery. His father, James, worked as a cook at the Virginia Military Institute; while his mother, Emma, worked as a housekeeper at Washington College. Al attended primary school for only four years before […]

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