Full Narrative Bio
I started this project because I loved my grandmother. When I retired, I thought I was writing a biography and tribute to her — the keeper of our family scrapbooks, the one who told stories about brave Puritan ministers, pioneering Texans, and honorable Confederate soldiers. I wanted to honor that legacy. Then I joined a racial equity task force at my church. For the first time, I learned how slavery, Indigenous dispossession, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration formed a single, ongoing system — and how white families like mine benefited from it at every turn. When I went back to my grandmother's scrapbooks with those new eyes, the heroes began to look different. A 'pioneer' became a land-taker. A 'merchant' turned out to be a slave trader. I realized I had inherited not just their advantages, but also their stories — stories that left out the people they harmed.I wrote this book because I needed a way to face my own ancestors without either excusing them or disowning them. I couldn't find a book that showed white readers how to do that work. Healing White History is my attempt to offer the book I needed. I live and write in Dallas, Texas.
Short Bio
Steven Baughman Jensen is a writer and retired trial attorney based in Dallas. He is the author of Healing White History, a narrative nonfiction book tracing his white family's entanglement with slavery, Native dispossession, and the Lost Cause — and modeling practical ways white people can reckon with their ancestors and repair harm.
