much of the research i did at the schomberg and i am eternally grateful to the schomberg because in fact this building holds my family's history so that was really wonderful. so i decided to write about the 19th century. i was really interested in northern black culture generally, but before the civil war i wanted to write a book or a general audience and i decided family was a good hook. everybody has got a family. whether you know who they are or not. when i started on the very first page of my book i come to the schomberg and i go upstairs and i check everything and i talked to the library and so they -- people say you are not going to find anything. it is like a needle in a haystack. so when i first thought about doing the book because i am an academic and actually in the english department, but it was going to be a kind of morbid institutional history and just where i found my family memories. i would tuck them in, right? and i actually had an agent who was like no, no, no. that is not going to work. the driving force of my book, it is like a detective story. i start with one name,