The Black Irish descended from Pirates: A Memoir of An American Family, The Mitchells is both a social history of Irish immigration and a genealogical study of particular families. Irish Protestants in the South, until the upheaval of World War II, retained a clannish allegiance years after leaving Ireland. The heritage of being a "Black Irishman" was deeply ingrained in the Mitchell family experience, one that resonates in the current generation's physical appearance and self-identity. It is an open-ended story that may, one day, be resolved by advances in deciphering the human genome.