Other Side of Eden: Emma Coleman responds to a question about her mixed race heritage
Emma Coleman (1898 -- 1997) was interviewed by filmmaker Tom Davenport in 1997. Also included in this video are comments made by Rev. Alphonzo Washington in a 2016 interview about how common it was in this area of Virginia for white males of political and social power to sire children with black women, who often worked as servants in their households.
A key challenge in making The Other Side of Eden, was to discover the motive for Shadrick Thompson’s enraged and suicidal attack on Mamie Baxley. Early in their marriage (which was childless for seven years), Mamie's husband Henry had fathered a daughter with the black cook whom Shadrick's wife Ruth later replaced. Shadrick Thompson would have known the story of the child's parentage and could have been suspicious that his wife Ruth was also having an affair. By all accounts, the marriage of Shadrick and Ruth Thompson was a rocky one, and Ruth may have encouraged her husband's jealousy by flaunting her relationship with the Baxleys, who were well connected to the political and social white establishment of the day.
