James Schell is on the road promoting his new book We Call our Daddy "Mister". The book is available on Amazon.com. The book is also available at www.itascobooks.com, Barnes and Noble, Borders, Books a Million, Bookland, and many other fine booksellers, world-wide. 

Dr. Schell's book is the main feature in the Morehouse College magazine First quarter, 2007. He appeared for a book signing at Morehouse during Founder's Week activities February 15-18, 2007, and then on to Philadelphia, Neptune, NJ and New York City.

Two new engagements:

Sisters and Friends Book Club            Scripps Ranch, San Diego, CA            9 March 2008
The Literary Lunch Bunch                   Ocean Hills Country Club, CA              14 April 2008

Synopsis of We Call Our Daddy “Mister”

This is a non-fiction story of a prominent Georgia, pioneer family’s son, a farmer, whose father was a Confederate soldier, who “took up” with a “mulatto” lass to be his common-law wife.  Burrell Harrell and Rosa Winston lived together in the early 1900’s in defiance of Georgia’s anti-miscegenation laws.  They became the proud parents of five boys and four girls over a stretch of 20 years, remaining on the family’s plantation of nearly 2000 acres.

His father died in 1901.  Burrell was then only 17 years old.  From his father’s deathbed, Burrell promised he would take care of his four brothers, three of whom were older, and five sisters, two of whom were older, as well as his mother, and a legion of farm hands up from slavery. His immediate family not only refused to accept his relationship with Rosa but also denied its existence, although Burrell was indispensable to their well-being but through, disdain, daring, derring-do, and even deceit, he ruled the roost.

Their children were “white” in appearance showing absolutely no features of their mixed race, yet the laws forbade them to attend the white school and to enjoy the many rights and privileges reserved for whites.  This story courses through their many struggles as they grew up, and how their father successfully staves off so many of those challenges including attempts by the KKK to do harm to his family; however, he, himself, was conflicted about his own children’s race.  His upbringing, loyal to the precepts of the Confederacy disabled his acceptance of them as equal to his own kind.

Burrell managed this vast plantation for nearly 60 years, before passing control of the plantation not to his own sons but to the eldest living white male, a nephew, Roy.  Roy was the son of Burrell’s slain but profligate brother.  Burrell felt that the white power structure would not be fair to his children and left the task to Roy, an inveterate confederate.

Two of Burrell’s daughters still live on the property by fate alone.  One is 78 and the other is 85 years old.