Forever in the Path: An Ancestral Anthology Amazon Book Description Some families carry secrets. Others carry history. Tonya’s family carries both. Forever in the Path is a sweeping ancestral anthology that traces one African American family’s journey through slavery, survival, segregation, and spiritual resilience — told through the vivid, true stories of the people who lived it. Drawing on decades of personal research, family photographs, court records, census documents, and a landmark Pulitzer Prize-winning book, author Tonya Groomes brings her ancestors to life with remarkable intimacy and unflinching honesty. From an African man named Scipio — born in 1802, stolen from his homeland, and forced to build a farm with his bare hands — to a grandmother who swayed like a pine tree in a schoolhouse window, pregnant and alone in 1940 Alabama, these are not abstract historical figures. They are real people, with real heartbreak, real courage, and real joy. Inside these pages, you will meet: Gertie Mae Robinson , a bright and beautiful young woman betrayed by love, shamed by her community, and rebuilt by an unbreakable spirit - Scipio Cottingham , an African ancestor whose name appeared in the 1870 census — the first time the law recognized him as a person, not property - Andrew Jackson Locklayer , a man who used race as a legal weapon, winning and losing in Alabama courts depending on which identity served him best - The Hubbard family , who faced down the notorious Brooks brothers in a blazing gunfight in what is now Bankhead National Forest — and lived to tell the tale But Forever in the Path is more than a family history. It is a meditation on race, identity, truth, and healing in America. Tonya argues that the disproportionate economic struggles of African Americans today are not a matter of character — they are the direct result of a legal system that systematically denied an entire people the right to build wealth, own land, and live freely. And she makes that case not with anger, but with evidence, empathy, and grace. At its heart, this is a book about what it means to survive — and what it costs. It is about the faith that carried people through circumstances that should have broken them. And it is about the truth that, once told, has the power to heal not just one family, but an entire nation. “Examination of the past is only relevant if we can use it to affect the present.”