Support for this podcast and the following message come from the United States Postal Service. Turn shipping to your advantage with USPS Ground Advantage Service. Learn how to gain a competitive edge at usps.com slash advantage. USPS Ground Advantage Simple, affordable, reliable. Hey everyone, you're listening to Code Switch. I'm BA Parker. So my family comes from a plantation called Somerset Place. It's a site that I go past every summer because my folks still have a farm nearby.
They're both in a town called Creswell, North Carolina. The town's small, about 207 people. And a lot of them are descendants of Somerset. My whole life, I've gone to Creswell, but I've never had to really engage with the Somerset Plantation. It wasn't intentional. It's just that you really had to want to go.
And who wants to go to a plantation? So today, we're bringing you the first episode in a two part series from last year where I ask, how do we best honor our enslaved ancestors and what kind of descendant do I want to be? That's coming up. This message is brought to you by NPR Sponsor Progressive Insurance. You call the shots on what's in your podcast queue. Now you can call them on your auto insurance too, with the name your price
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Growing up, my family's home in Cresswell felt like my link to my ancestors. I didn't really need the plantation. Plus, my mom has always been there instilling our family's history into me. What we were told that we are descendants of the original 13. That was the 13 enslaved. That came to some of that. Yeah, okay. Here, I can tell you who my great,
great, great grandmother was. And I think that that's the one thing someers said taught me the importance of knowing your ancestry because you know, most white people know. They can trace all the way to the main flower, the main flower, daughters of the revolution. But a lot of times, black families can't do that.
I am one of those descendants who knows a respectable amount about her family history, but not an encyclopedic amount like the women who came before, like my mom and her mom, my grandma daughters. So grandma's mom is a, oh my bell. Okay, wait, my bell is Grandma Lucille's mother. Yes. Hi, look at me. All right, my bell was born on the plantation at someer said. She's now buried at the family church, same as my great grandmother and my grandmother.
My bell didn't have a marker for a grave. And um, mommy and her siblings, the 10 of them put together and bought Isabella a headstone. Yeah, I remember saying, because this, like it's, this like circular and white grandma and Aunt Louise would clean it every August. So that's what my grandmother did for the people that came before her. But it has me wondering, how am I supposed to maintain the legacy of my ancestors?
I got invited to an event in Washington, D.C. I didn't fully understand what it was about, aside from the invitation saying they wanted, quote, descendants of slavery who are stakeholders of culturally significant historic places. End quote. It was a symposium at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. They called it the Descendants Community's Social Innovation Lab. In short, they wanted African American descendants of sites of enslavement to sit together
and talk out our ancestry and see what happens. Immediately, I invited my mom. I mean, I wanted you to come with me because you have all this knowledge that I don't have. But I feel like also you absorbed a lot of it from being around grandma and all her sisters and brothers and granddaddy and his siblings and you just have it. It's just memories. We knew that there would be at least two other people from some of that place in attendance,
but that was about it. Just three days inside of the Black Sonian with free lunch vouchers and looming discussions about intergenerational trauma. I really don't know what was supposed to be doing. Well, it's an adventure. Can we get to what we know and they'll tell us what they know? And you like talking to people about this kind of stuff. I'm looking forward to it. All right. You'll see the open-run theater down there. Okay. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. This place is huge.
Do you want a best place being this huge? Yes. There were hundreds of people there, descendants of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello of James Madison's Montpelier of the shadows plantation in Louisiana. Places I'd never even heard of and there was a libation ceremony pouring out water for the dead. There were silent prayers to our ancestors. The goal was to find connections. We all wanted the same things to honor our ancestors and preserve their legacies the best way we know how.
But it was when a poet named Amaris Beehill came onto the stage that the sentiment of the event started to fall into place for us. I'm going to start with the poem from my grandmother, Herring Beehill Sprohill. She was actually named by her mother after Herring Beehill Sprohill. Demaris' grandmother was named after the famed author of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
And what does it mean to be named after a woman that was named after a woman that Abraham Lincoln said wrote the book that started the Civil War? It was during this tidbit in Demaris' introduction that my mom nudged me. You notice lady's very mother? Yeah, and the sign now her grandmother, well. Her children? In the midst of this communion, we'd found actual family. Addistant cousin. We're very light. Okay, you're a school. You're father McKinley Hill. Yeah, yeah. I'm a descendant of Somerset.
Okay. That is so crazy. Yes, I know. We stood around the museum comparing relatives. Who was retired? Who lived where? Who was still alive? Demaris, my mom and I, had the strange task of representing a plantations legacy in the basement of the sprawling museum about Black History. A larger conversation that was happening at the symposium was about cemetery preservation. Just being able to place and commemorate the graves of ancestors in the United States.
An incalculable amount of Black cemeteries have been bulldozed, desecrated, or unmarked, cruel casualties of slavery and structural racism. African-American burial grounds have no protections. In fact, in 2020, the Senate passed the African-American burial grounds study acts in hopes to identify and preserve Black historical cemeteries, but it's stalled in the house. So the onus is sort of on the individual. The descendant who sees the problem and is determined to be the solution.
Margo Williams is one of those descendants doing the work. Her ancestors are buried in olivewood cemetery. It's the oldest Black cemetery in Houston, Texas. Here is a lake, here is a hoe, here is a shovel. Margo founded the descendants of olivewood over 20 years ago to take care of the cemetery and protect her ancestors in it. Another challenge Margo's facing and trying to preserve the cemetery is climate change.
We have a big erosion problem. Every time those 500 year rains or floods come through, they are coming through every four months in Texas, our graves are being washed away. Because of rising sea levels in North Carolina, even I have to wear glosses to put flowers on my grandfather's grave, the ground around him and his family is now total mush. My mom is concerned that I'm one of the few in my generation that's still visiting our
family's graves. So the question now is, who is going to bring flowers for the down the line? What young person is going to care? I'll do this the rest of my life. It's been imprinted that if we don't do this, no one else will do it. That's Boughty Williams Brown, he's 23. During our lunch break, I sat down with him and his mother Rachel Williams. They hail from Buffalo, New York, but once a month, they trek to the Lincoln
Cemetery in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It's the resting place for Rachel and Boughty's ancestors. How long is the trip from Buffalo to Harrisburg? The five hour drive and there's no snow. In the past year, Rachel, Boughty and all of his younger siblings have learned stone machinery repair to fix some of the neglected graves. And they've digitized all of Lincoln Cemetery's burial records. Small steps to introduce the site into the 21st century.
That cemetery is our family's, well, at least how we found it, was our family's last remaining piece of history, truly, and connect like wealth of connections. And without that, we would have no way to understand where we are in the world or who we are. So I can't stop because then I have no, I don't know who I am. But Boughty is thinking about what's going to get other people from his generation to care about the burial grounds. What does a successfully preserved space look
like? Like what does that mean? Do we know what that means? And I really mean that open-ended like how colorful would these Cemetery's be? How inviting? How peaceful? How open will they be? Like I have so many questions because I mean I really feel like to engage a space now is going to take such a different approach than maybe what we've seen before. So I've heard about it. Boughty was bursting with all of these ideas and questions. I mean when I met him, he was wearing
a poncho and those running shoes with individual toes in them. So I expected him to be thinking outside the box. Have ideas percolating? Yeah, we've had, we've started things that are a little interesting. Minecraft. What's a Minecraft Cemetery? For the youth? Building the Cemetery, Minecraft. I know. It's interesting. It's a little, it was difficult. Basically you're designing the physical cemetery inside Minecraft.
Yeah, make it a center, right? So Boughty was to meet people where they are in Minecraft and bring them into the past. But for Anthony, Am, and Drade, they chose to go into the past and pull it into the present. So I'd love to offer some breaths for us to engage in today before we get into our panel discussion. So a breath for this land, the wisdom of indigenous people that have been on this land since before this building arrives, since before a colonization. Deep breath in.
And now, Am is a visual and performance artist and a member of the House of Glitter Dance Company in Rhode Island. And in 2022, Am and the House of Glitter did something a little radical. They held a residency in the former home of Issa Hopkins. Hopkins was an 18th century naval officer who commanded a slavery ship called Sally. With that ship, Issa Hopkins abducted 196 Africans. But at least 109 died on the trip through disease, starvation,
failed insurrection, or suicide. Issa Hopkins is still commemorated across providence and public memorials, though that something the House of Glitter is trying to change. We created what's called an activist dance opera. And this centers the story of one particular woman who hanged herself on the first voyage of the slavery ship Sally. The historical fantasy of Issa Hopkins was an activist dance opera in a moment for catharsis,
retelling the overlooked stories from inside the ship called Sally. It was a colorful, meditative, fanteasia. I was surrounded by all of these people who had figured out how to honor their ancestors to the absolute best of their abilities, from Minecraft to dance operas, to cleaning up cemeteries. But for me, this weekend kickstarted an existential crisis I wasn't prepared for. That question of how I could be a good descendant plagued me. But apparently not for my mom.
I appreciate being here this weekend. This has really been a treat for me. And I learned a lot. So far in my family, the knowledge and responsibility of honoring our ancestors had been in the hands of my mom and the generations before. But now it ultimately falls on me. So I am one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight generations from Somerset. I think it's kind of comforting to trace it and be able to pinpoint know who you are, where you come from.
After the symposium, I started thinking about other descendants of Somerset plays. I wanted to talk to them, see if they felt the same kind of duty. Are you a descendant of Somerset? Yes, ma'am. Oh, howdy cousins. This is Mina Wilson. It means it's not my actual cousin, not technically. She's with some of the conference called Landkin. So if you're not like physically related because of you know slavery, we still have this connection point. So even if we aren't cousins, like you and I
would be Landkin. I like that. Me too. I was like, oh, I told my mom since like, mom, I'm going to go talk to our Landkin today. Mina is the executive director of a program in Berkeley, California called Healthy Black Families. And she's the descendant of Kofi and Sally, two of the original enslaved at Somerset. Those are my ancestors who were kidnapped from the continent and put on a ship called the Camden by Julia Collins and navigated the middle passage to arrive at Somerset.
And my Sally, at the time she was taken, I understand she was nine years old. And when she finally got to Somerset, they document her as a 11 years old. At her about Mina in the local crosswall news, she'd made it into the paper when she decided to go back to where it all began for both of us. Somerset, please. It's always a very spiritual experience to be on the plantation for me at Somerset. So much so that the first time I was leaving, I was walking away. And I kept feeling like something
pulling me, you know, from behind. And I turned around and I looked into those tall Cypress trees on the sound. And it was like I saw them, like the energy of them between the trees. And they were so grateful. And they thanked me like, thank you for taking the time to come. Thank you for acknowledging that we are important, right? So I love going there for that feeling. It connects me to myself in a way that nothing else does. Yeah. Now my children thought I was absolutely crazy
for planning a family reunion at a place where our folks were in slay. Why do they go crazy? They're just like, why do you want to go back there? Why would you want to like have a family vent there? I mean, it just didn't click for them that it was a way to connect with the generations of ourselves in a way that was what I'm meaningful. They're just thinking like, why don't we want to go to the plantation? But to be fair, our kids kind of had a bigger concern
than the family reunion. So how did the opportunity to sleep in a slave cabin come about? I got an eloquently crafted email about doing an overnight stay. It's part of the slave dwelling projects program offerings. Coming up, we hear about how sleeping where her ancestor slept went for Mina. I'm curious what your children thought. Well, they were not partaking. They're like, y'all can do that. We're cool. We're going back to the hotel. We are not sleeping in slave
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Parker. Just Parker. Code switch. So I've been trying to figure out how to be a good descendant, how to honor my enslaved ancestors' legacies, and I met my landkin, Mina Wilson, who was doing the same kind of work. She was telling me about how she was going to host a family reunion at Somerset Plantation, where both of our ancestors were enslaved. But Mina wasn't just reuniting with her living family. She was hoping to visit with those who'd passed. She was introduced to the
slave drawing project. They set it up so that descendants of the enslaved of these plantations can sleep where their ancestors slept. It's gotten a lot of traction. They eat meals from that time, some dress of that time. Some who slept there have infamously worn chains to bid, which was considered a bridge too far by some of the participants. What were your initial thoughts when that particular opportunity was brought to you to sleep in the in the slave quarters?
Because I'm curious also what your children thought. Well they were not partaking. They're like, uh-huh. Y'all can do that. We're cool. We're going back to hotel. We are not sleeping in slave cabins. Well the first time I took my son there he had an experience, a spiritual experience on the steps of the infirmary where he felt spirits around him. And that was enough for him. He's like, and I'm cool, but not being afraid to journey through that, I was really excited about the
opportunity. My biggest hesitancy was the logistics like, you know, sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag is really not my idea of a good night's sleep, but it wasn't really for that. It wasn't an overnight stay to get a rest for night's sleep. It was an overnight stay to really immerse ourselves in the experience, right? That night, Mina and two of her sisters attended a bonfire with the slave dwelling project and with tour guides. And then they were off to sleep in
the infirmary. It was a two level structure. We were on the first level. We didn't traverse the stairs going up. Then there was a room. It kind of was staged like a normal home would be for us enslaved family, single bunks, thin mattresses, wooden chairs, and all of the fire, there's a fireplace and a fireplace, artifacts. And then as you continue down the hall, there was a door to the right. And it was just an open room, which is probably where ill slaves received medical treatment.
And we slept on the floor there on air mattresses. What were you and your sisters first thoughts when you came into that room that evening? I mean, you can see outside through the side of the floor, through the sledge. So it's a it's a rudely crafted structure. And then it was summertime, so it wasn't cold, but you wonder, like what are people doing in kind of the cold? To sleep in a room that perhaps housed your enslaved ancestor is a heavy thing. But in the moment,
there was something else keeping her up. I tried my best not to like drink a lot of water before going to bed because the bathroom facilities were down the steps out the door across tall grass and over there to the right. Right? Right? Yes, man. So as hard as we tried, I think I went to the
bathroom more that night than ever. And my sisters. And so, you know, we're like hoisting our middle-aged bodies off the floor and you know, putting on shoes and you know, they walked down the steps and across the gravel and through this tall grass and into the, you know, the bathroom at the facilities and you know, wasn't like an outhouse? Well, it's the bathroom on the park ground.
Oh, right. Yes. And so the third time we crossed the grass and got in the bathroom, we kind of looked at each other and we started cracking up and I said, Sally and Kofi, we ain't, right? Because this is like a lot. And this is going one night we have to go through this. They did this every day and they were walking out to a bathroom, right? Yeah. So it just really built a huge measure of appreciation for the resilience of our ancestors. You know, that was really tangible
for us. So the next morning they made breakfast for us in this tour guide tour there. And so we went back to the infirmary to gather our, you know, overnight suitcases and all of that. And there was just this energy that, you know, switched them off in the car and go, but there was this energy like we didn't want to leave. Really? And it wasn't like a, oh, I don't feel like driving home or anything like that. It was like this connection that we were having to sever to walk
away because we had been so intimately immersed in the experience. So kind of organically, we just gathered in a circle and held hands and we started this circle of prayer. And everyone said their peace, you know, and tears started to flow. And I remember my brother's prayer
the most, I think, because I haven't often seen my brother show deep emotion. But by the time he finished praying and thanking the ancestors for their resilience and their vision and their commitment to being excellent and even in the midst of, you know, all that they were oppressed by. I can't tears rolling down his face. And once we did that, you know, and paid that kind of homage, I think we felt free to go. It's like they released us. Like, you can go.
It's a memory that I always keep. It was really, really powerful. And it was just, you know, like I said, most of the family didn't opt in for their overnight stay. So a very, very select few of us that share that experience together. And that's something you'll have forever. Yeah. And it's not, and it's not just then, it's the gift that keeps giving. How so? It makes me walk in the world in a different way to know myself like that.
Yeah. It makes me speak with clarity and confidence to know myself like that. So I'm thankful to be connected to what I know of myself this way because it informs and shapes the way I walk in the world. So much of my life has been learning about who I am from my mom, from my grandparents, and from this spot in the world of Crestwell and the Somerset. And it's not a burden. It's not that. I do feel, I feel like it's like a duty to
represent my family, to honor my family. My mom and I were going to go to a Somerset because I haven't been there since I think like 2008, 2009. Like it's been a long time. And I am curious if there is anything I should pay attention to that you think is overlooked. Or anything I should prepare myself for as an adult in that space. So I want to bring forth first. You say it's a duty, right? It's a responsibility.
And it is that. It is. But it's also an opportunity. And it's an opportunity that not many African Americans have. I would say not the majority of us can trace our lineage back to the place where our enslaved ancestors were. Yeah. So I look at it through both lenses. And as I take advantage of the opportunity, I also understand that what I learn and come to understand is not just for myself. Then I can come back to communities and share what I know because it's not very distant
in the realities for others. It's just that they don't have that connection to their lineage in the way that I do. This is a bigger question. What do you expect from my generation or from your children's generation when it comes to honoring? That is a bigger question. I try to to the best of my ability. Walk my journey without expectations. Because while they hold a standard, they also limit possibility.
And I think the standard is important. But I also think giving you all an opportunity to emerge your own way of doing this is really important. Because the world you live in is not the world I've lived in. And it's that world will need some of the historical grounding, but it'll need a new thing too. So what I try to bring to you all is the truth of our history, hoping that you'll take it and be inspired by it to do what you're called to do with it. But I think you would be remiss not to grab it
and hold on to it as part of the way you grow into being self in the world. I think it's vital to not only your reality, but also to your humanity. I'm sorry you're talking about something that needs a lot of me. It feels like Mina has had this kind of spiritual awakening, but I'm part of the first generation in my family that's always known this history of Somerset. And because of that, maybe I don't appreciate it as much as I should. It isn't an awakening for me. I mean, Mina feels it,
but I don't feel it. Is that bad? I don't know. I'm still figuring out my role. I talked to my mom about what that role could be, what responsibility I have to maintain our family's legacy. I think we do it as a family, you know, for the most part, we all try together that third Saturday in August. We all try to come down there so that we can be together. And I think that's a way of honoring. And we try to make sure that there's flowers on the graves
of our loved ones. So that's what you can do. There you go. Our greatest fear is that your generation, your generation doesn't want to be there. And I think that they need to come and see Somerset. I think that they need to stand on the same grounds that their ancestors did. You know what I'm saying? I catch you. Yeah. On the next episode, my mom and I go back to Somerset, please. We take a road trip.
Do you think it's accurate if you put your arm out and you do the bump bump that the truck will do bump bump? Do you think that ever happens? I've always wanted to do it. And that's our show. You can follow us on Instagram at NPR Code Switch. If email is more your thing, ours is code switch at npr.org. It's subscribe to the podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. So I wanted to give a quick shout out to our Code Switch Plus listeners. We
appreciate you and thank you for being a subscriber. Subscribing to Code Switch Plus means getting to listen to all of our episodes without any sponsor breaks. It also helps support our show. So if you love our work, please consider signing up at plus dot npr dot org slash code switch. This episode was originally produced by Christina Kala, Jess Kung and me. It was edited by Courtney Stein. This rerun was produced by Xavier Lopez. Our engineer was quesile. The big shout out to
the rest of the code switch massive. Leah Dinella, Dalia Mortada, Jean Demby, Virlen Williams, and Loyalize Raka. Special thanks to Elon Cookley, Hannah Scruggs, Michelle Lanear, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I'm BA Parker. Hi, Jate. This message comes from NPR, sponsor Chevron. Demand for energy is projected to continue rising in
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