UNC Asheville’s history and humanities student associations will host a talk on “Race and Removal: How One Creek Indian Family Survived the Journey West” by historian Claudio Saunt at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 27, at UNC Asheville’s Laurel Forum, Karpen Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

In his talk, Saunt will examine race relations in early America through five generations of a Native American family. At the center of the story are Creek Indian siblings Katy and William Grayson, who both took partners of African descent. Katy later married a Scottish-Creek man, disowned her black children, and became a slave owner. In contrast, William refused to leave his black wife and children and eventually emancipated them. In 1907, when Creeks were granted U.S. citizenship, state law further divided the Grayson family by defining some members as black and some as white. The divergent paths of this American family parallel many interactions among whites, blacks and Indians in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Saunt is an associate professor of history at the University of Georgia. His first book, “A New Order of Things: Property, Power, and the Power of the Creek Indians, 1733-1816,” traces the emergence of deep divisions in Southeastern Creek communities. In 2000, it was named the best book on Southern history by the Southern Historical Association and the best work in ethnohistory by the American Society for Ethnohistory. His recent book “Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family” chronicles the Grayson family. Saunt holds a doctorate in colonial North American history from Duke University.

For more information, call UNC Asheville’s History Department at 828/251-6415.