Wishlist Wednesdays: Travelling to the Gullah Geechee Islands

So many of us are taught that in order to know where you are going, you have to know where you come from. I never had to cope with the fact that I don't know where I come from until I had to explain it to a group of seven-year-olds.

Some months ago, the second grade class I assist started their unit on ancestry. They were given an assignment to complete their family tree as far as their great grandparents, tell where they were from, and why [if they weren't Native Americans] they migrated to the United States.

In modeling how the sharing was supposed to go, the teacher [we'll call her Janet] and I planned to prepare and share our own family trees.

My mother has done extensive research in filling the holes that exist in our family tree. I remember when I was younger, she would spend hours upon hours into the night on her computer entering information into an ancestry application she had invested in. It had been my intention to bring in this information for my sharing.

Alas, I forgot, and on the morning that I was due to share, I found myself running around frantically getting a few names I could share with the class. It's easy to forget that they're seven, and that whatever you share is not going to be but so involved.

Janet assured me that all I needed to do was share some names, where they were from, and maybe a couple customs of my family. After she share hers, it seemed easy enough. Janet's family was from Poland. Her family moved to the United States in search for better jobs. She talked of some of the foods her family eats and some of her family's traditions. She showed Poland on our class map, and asked for questions or comments.

My turn.

I tried to model my family's journey in this country with Janet's. My head was swarming with ideas that I was not sharing. I just didn't know if my family's history was an appropriate subject matter for second graders. I also didn't want to lie. Our second graders sat perplexed as I stuttered through information made vague in protecting their ears. Slowly becoming trapped by the boundaries I was laying, I looked over at Janet, my eyes asking for guidance. She stopped me. What she said to me in front of the class is something I will never forget, and always respect:

"You can be honest with them about anything you like, right now," she said.

This is the real story, as I know it.

"I'm from Peoria
I oughta know
Way out in the
West of the State
Peoria, Peoria, that's my hometown
I'm from Peoria
I oughta know."

I couldn't have been more than two or three when my mother taught me this song. My grandfather sang it to her in his deep southern drawl, Peoria coming out as "Pee-or-a." My grandfather would have told you without hesitation that he was from Peoria, Illinois, when, in fact, he was from a place he would have rather forgotten. Born a Black man in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1902, it isn't hard to understand why he vowed never to go back.

He became a part of the Great Migration when he moved from Mississippi to the suburbs of Chicago sometime in the twenties. My grandmother was his second wife, and they made their home in Waukegan, Illinois, where my mother was born. My grandfather's father was one of twenty four children, none of whose descendants I am aware of. When my grandfather left Mississippi, it seems he left everyone and everything. I often contemplate trying to locate the descendants of my great grandfather's brothers and sisters. I hope one day I will be able to better explain the holes that exist within our family tree. This is what I know of my mother's family.

I did not have much to share of my father's side. I did tell the kids that I knew we had acquired our last name from a North or South Carolina slavemaster. I told them that I did not know what my real last name is. This stunned them, and they asked if my real name was real. I smiled, gaining a new appreciation for my first name. It was my own.

I explained my inability to trace my family history past a plantation. As I traced an imaginary line from Africa to South Carolina, my eyes grew heavy with that realization. I do not know where I come from. I do not know the way to my homeland. My history begins in a country I most likely do not originate from, and my ethnic classification represents two places that, historically, I am kept from identifying with; African American.

When I was finished "sharing," I excused myself from class and fell apart in a cramped, elementary school bathroom stall. That assignment may have been one of the hardest things I've ever done. It was as if our second graders were a mirror, and I had looked into it and seen an incomplete, distorted and disfigured image of myself. As difficult as it was, I imagine as I come across more information about my family, I will note that moment as one of my most rewarding. It began to make sense why my mother was so adamant about closing the gaps in our family history. The story of our journey to this country is a story that needs to be discovered, and needs to be told.

Over the Christmas holiday, I expressed to grandfather [on my father's side], my interest in learning more about his side of the family. He told me my great grandfather's name [his father], which I cannot remember. I do, however, remember that my Great Grandfather's name was Wiley, and he lived in the Gullah-Geechee Islands before he was captured and enslaved on a North Carolina/South Carolina Plantation [I need to check that]. That little bit of information is probably the best Christmas present he could have given me.

It turns out that many of the people of the Gullah Geechee Islands [which I def thought was nothing but a television show] were fugitive slaves who jumped ship. Many who sought refuge on the Sea Islands were later captured by European Planters.

The ships are said to have come from Western African countries like Sierra Leone and Senegal. Could I have West African Roots?! I cannot help but smile at the thought! I am so close...I can feel it.

I must travel to the Sea Islands, learn more about the history of the Gullah People, and step foot on the land between America and the rest of my history.

I join my mother in our quest to better understand our roots. I dream of my children standing in front of their second grade class, their fingers confidently skipping across a map of countries and oceans and ending where we currently reside. I may never make it all the way back to my motherland, but any journey we take to uncover our story is a journey worth taking.