Edward Ball (American author)

Edward Ball is an American author who has written works of history and biography. He is best known for works that explore his family's prominent past as major rice planters and slaveholders in South Carolina for nearly 300 years. He has also featured an African-American family descended from one of this family and an enslaved woman.
The Ball Family Slaveholder Index (BFSI) reports that between 1698 and 1865, six generations of Ball family "owned more than twenty rice plantations in Lowcountry South Carolina and enslaved nearly 4,000 Africans and African Americans." Edward Ball, who completed his MA in 1984, worked as a journalist and later began research into his family's complex history. 
His books include "Slaves in the Family" (1998), which won a National Book Award. In "Slaves in the Family", he described his great-great grandfather, Isaac Ball (1785-1825), a fifth generation of the Ball family slaveholders, who nherited the Comingtee plantation, near Charleston, and owned 571 enslaved people.
He was also recognized for his "Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy" (2020). In the "Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy", he told about his maternal great-great-grandfather, Constant Lecorgne (1832 - ). At one time he was officially classified as "colored", which denoted mulatto or mixed race. Having European ancestors, he changed his name and passed as white. He became an "embittered racist".
Early years and education.
Edward Ball was born in 1958 in Savannah, Georgia to a Southern, religious family. He is a son of Theodore Ball, an Episcopal priest, and Janet (Rowley) Ball, a bookkeeper. Ball grew up in Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, as his family moved following his father's church assignments. He graduated from St. Martin's Episcopal School in 1976.
Ball received a B.A. from Brown University in 1982 and an M.A. from the University of Iowa in 1984.
During the 1980s, Ball worked as a freelance journalist in New York City, writing about art, books, and film for "The Village Voice" and Condé Nast, Hearst, and Hachette magazines. He wrote a column about architecture and design for "The Village Voice".
Slaves in the Family.
Ball's history "Slaves in the Family" (1998) was described in a 2020 "New York Times" review as a "deeply reported National Book Award-winning history". Ball had "tracked down descendants of those who had once been enslaved by his South Carolina ancestors on his father’s side." In it he described how the Ball family had owned slaves in South Carolina for six generations. The well-received book was also reviewed at the time of publication by the "Washington Times", and the "The Philadelphia Inquirer". 
Edward Ball's great-great grandfather, Isaac Ball (1785-1825)—a fifth generation of the Ball family slaveholders—had inherited the Comingtee plantation, near Charleston, and owned 571 enslaved people. The Ball Family Slaveholder Index reported that between 1698 and 1865, generations of Ball family "owned more than twenty rice plantations in Lowcountry South Carolina and enslaved nearly 4,000 Africans and African Americans." Edward Ball told the story of one of the enslaved Africans—Priscilla—who was taken from Sierra Leone in 1756 and sold to Isaac Ball. She died at Comingtee plantation, near Charleston in 1920, according to the account by Edward Ball published by The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. In Ball's telling, a former enslaved African American, P.H. Martin (c. 1853-) had written several letters to Isaac Ball in the 1920s.
Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy.
In his 2020 book, "Life of a Klansman: A Family History in White Supremacy", Ball tells the story of his maternal great-great-grandfather, Constant Lecorgne (1832 - ). He had been officially classified as "colored" in a census, reflecting his mixed-race ancestry. He changed his name, passed as white, and later became an "embittered racist". 
Reception.
According to the 2020 "Times" review, "The interconnected strands of race and history give Ball’s entrancing stories a Faulknerian resonance. In Ball’s retelling of his family saga, the sins and stains of the past are still very much with us, not something we can dismiss by blaming them on misguided ancestors who died long ago." The "Times" cited Ball saying, "It is not a distortion to say that Constant’s rampage 150 years ago helps, in some impossible-to-measure way, to clear space for the authority and comfort of whites living now—not just for me and for his 50 or 60 descendants, but for whites in general. I am an heir to Constant's acts of terror. I do not deny it, and the bitter truth makes me sick at the stomach." The book was also reviewed by "The Wall Street Journal".
Other work.
Edward Ball has taught at Yale University between 2010 and 2015. He has also taught at the State University of New York.
Recognition.
Awards