Do you know who you are? This is a question that sometimes keeps me up at night as I work through ancestry.com to find my people. Years ago, when my son was six, I attended an event at his school where one of the White moms stood up (without being asked) and talked about how her family line traced back to the Mayflower. As I rolled my eyes and began to pack my bags to leave, my son turned to ask me if our family had come on the Mayflower, too. He was sincere and wanted to know our family’s history.
In that moment, I struggled for words. I did not know how to say that slavery and Whiteness had stolen almost everything from us, especially our names and historical legacy. I did not know how to properly articulate that our people were considered property and were typically listed by gender and not name. I did not know how to tell him that we were the descendants of enslaved people, and that White supremacy worked to deliberately and intentionally erase us. I did not know how to say that our people had been enslaved in South Carolina, the first state to secede from the Union, a place where Black bodies were bridges of entitlement for White families to stand on. I did not know how to tell them that I had not done the research into our history. Unable to express any of this, I finally said that we came from people who chose to survive.
It took me 13 years of research and working with our family’s unofficial genealogists before I could sit down with my sons and tell them our history, naming names. I remember when I showed them our family tree and said, “This is your line: this is who you are.” These are your grandparents and your great-grandparents. This is your great-great-grandfather on your grandmother’s side, who encouraged Black men to vote and was killed in the doorway of our family home by the Klan. This is your great-great-grandmother, his wife, who survived that brutal murder, raised children, and purchased land. You are the 6th-great-grandson of Mary and Zed, her parents, and the last members of our family who were born enslaved. I took them to South Carolina to our family’s 40 acres and had them walk the land, put their hands in the dirt, and touch the trees.
Their reaction spoke volumes. When I finished saying their names, my sons were speechless, recognizing the significance of this moment. By this point, they knew that slavery and Whiteness tried to erase us. They knew that the policies, practices, and laws of that time were meant to discard us, dehumanize us, break us, consume and control us. They knew that they were designed to bury us and to own us forever. Despite this, our family and our ancestors chose to survive.
Do you know who you are? For Black people, this is a question that we must answer, not for ourselves but for our children.
On this 11th Day of Black History Month, I encourage you to take the moment, learn your history, and tell your story! As Marcus Garvey once wrote, “A people without knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.” And as Dr. Carter G. Woodson noted, “Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.” We must teach our children that our ancestors were more than just property, more than just footstools or bridges; they were survivors, and they chose every day to survive for us.
Bending toward social justice,
Karsonya Wise Whitehead
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