One family’s uniquely American story

Historian and author Adele Logan Alexander has dedicated her career to answering the questions at the heart of American identity.

“I also like to tell the larger story, the important questions about American history, about race and gender and power,” Alexander said. “I try to do it in the context of telling a family story. That’s what grabs people in the first place.”

Sometimes, that means looking to her own family for inspiration. For her new novel, “Princess of the Hither Isles,” Alexander is turning to the story of her grandmother, Adella Hunt Logan.

Adella Hunt Logan taught at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute in the late 1800’s, and knew many of the most important civil rights icons of her time, including George Washington Carver, W.E.B. Dubois, Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony.