July 12, 2023 • 57 mins
In this week’s episode Jill, Aja, and Laiya talk to genealogist Brian Sheffey and Donya Williams. They breakdown what’s really hidden in our spit as diasporic Black people. To get a deeper understanding of your own lineage check out the links below to their books, TV show, and genealogy services.
YouTube channel: https://m.youtube.com/@GenealogyAdventures
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/genealogyadventuresusa?mibextid=ZbWKwL
Genealogy: genealogyadventures@e360tv.com
Books:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to j dot L, a production of iHeartRadio. What
Up everybody? Hi, welcome back to J dot L the Podcast.
I'm sitting here with my sister friends. You already know
Laiah Saint Claus, Yes, hello, and Aja Graydon Danzler, you
(00:26):
got it, Phillyonsay. And this is Jill Scott and we
have the privilege in this awesome pleasure of speaking to
two incredible people, Brian Sheffie and Donia Williams. Okay, Hi, welcome,
(00:47):
Welcome to J dot L the podcast. There's so much Yeah,
like Aja, would you would you guide us into this?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
The thing about it is that one of the things
that we were really loving about this era of our
show is we're been talking to some of our amazing
day ones and how they grow so much beauty to
the podcast. And so one of our day ones is
Donia Williams, who along with her cousin Brian Sheffeye, are
experts in genealogy okay, And so what they do is
(01:16):
they co host a podcast, a streaming show called Genealogy
Adventures Live. And they also have a company, their authors,
their community activists. They are doing tons of work around
helping African Americans in particular trace their family histories, understand
where they come from, making good connections between us here
(01:39):
in the US and the diaspora as well as the continent.
So we're just really grateful to have them more but Donya,
aside from supporting us since the very beginning, has also
done a lot of chiming in on some of the
past conversations that we've had around African American history, around
personal family history, and so we wanted to have on
(02:01):
and we're just really super happy to have both of them,
So welcome you guys.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Was that a good enough? Is that an explanation?
Speaker 4 (02:07):
That was awesome?
Speaker 3 (02:09):
And we love to see it.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
We love to see it because because we're here, we
are you know, in this in this time, we're trying
to figure out who we are. You know, everybody is
really wanting to know because now the technology is such,
you know, that we can find out where our people
are from. All this time walking around just just not knowing,
(02:30):
you know, wearing wearing cloths we don't know what they mean.
Having art on the wall, we don't even understand what
it is. But we've been searching and looking and reaching
for some kind of connection with with a continent that
you know was ripped from us in every possible way.
Speaker 5 (02:47):
Talk, but that's what it is.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah, I'm agent and I and like, yeah, we're all
coming up in a neo soul movement. You know, the
soul movement originally was really about connecting, connecting to ourselves,
you know, all of that all that good powerful funk,
you know, finding that that rhythm in ourselves. And here
we are, you know, all of these years later, and
(03:12):
now we have the technology to truly find out what
it is in us that that makes us us.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
And you know that one of the big things on
this show is you know, pointing out so many of
the outside kind of structures that affect how we, you know,
think about ourselves, who we believe we are. And we've
been uncovering little by a little so much of you
know how that you know affects our everyday lives. And
(03:42):
so this is really on par with the conversation that
we've been trying to have since the very beginning, you
know what I mean. And as we peel back those
layers and we really see who we are, then we
can start to better see those outside structures for what
they are for the lives that they tell. So if
we don't know who you are, then you can't even
go out here and properly identify all of the different
(04:05):
things that are coming at you. And what is the
foreign matter, if you will, from you and who you
are supposed to be.
Speaker 6 (04:11):
So but the fact that everybody just can't afford Henry
Lewis Gates.
Speaker 7 (04:14):
And we're trying to navigate all these websites and stuff
and figure out who we are by ourselves, and we
get lost in these streets.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
That's how I.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
See may be not to mention in fact, Henry Lewis Gates,
it's not the researcher on finding your roots.
Speaker 6 (04:26):
I just want to put that out there.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
He's a host, he's a whole. I personally think I
maybe because I don't know any better, But I personally
think that because I don't follow these things.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
I don't follow astrology.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
You know, I have a favorite number, but I don't
live my life exactly by following the number. I think
that that there's more way, more than just you know
those things. Somebody else will argue with me and you know,
trying to punch me in the chance about it. But
you know, this is another aspect of finding out exactly
(05:00):
we are, how we are, why we are.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
Thank you so much for the invitation. Such a pleasure
to be able to speak with all of you and
to be able to speak to your audience. So again,
thank you for inviting us to the show. Do you
know that was the first time I've ever been introduced
as an activist And as soon as that, as soon
as she said that, I was thinking, it's really a
shame that in this day and age, in twenty twenty three,
(05:25):
I'm being called an activist for just speaking truth, just
speaking truth about the African American experience in the United
States of America. I will be pondering that all day.
So thank you for that. And Jewel Ray's a really
good point. We do know a lot more than our
(05:45):
ancestors new but because our history, Black history still isn't
honestly improperly taught in schools, there's still a lot of
I don't want to say ignorance, because ignorance is almost
like a choice. You don't know that you don't know
until you don't know it. There's such a gap and
our collective knowledge that people are actually trying to fill
(06:06):
that gap of knowledge with I call it nonsense, but
with kind of out there explanations about how black people
actually arrived in this country, something that Donnie and I've
been actively siding online for a for a long long time,
so you know that that knowledge is really important.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah, So what what brings you guys to this work
in the first place? Like, one day you're Brian and Donya,
y'all walking around the world being black mind and your
black business, your cousin, y'all going to the cookout, y'all
seeing each other on graduations and funerals and things.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
And then one day what changes it makes y'all go
into this word.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
So my dad was turning seventy eight. I was living
in England at the time. They were still here. They
were here and my parents were here in Maryland, and
I phoned my mum and I was like, Mom, what
do I get that? Because my father had everything, just
every kind of gadget, every kind of music, just he
had lowds and stuff. My mother's like, don't buy your
father a single thing. She's like, we're trying to get
(07:04):
rid of stuff because we're trying to downsize. And I'm like, well,
because his parents divorced when he was really young, and
his mother didn't allow him to have contact with his
dad's side of the family. He grew up really knowing
nothing about the Sheffy side of his ancestry, very little
about his father's kind of He knew where his father
was born, in a place called with County, Virginia, but
(07:25):
that was kind of it. So I'm like, do you
think he'd be interested in genealogy? And my mother was like,
that is the perfect thing to give him. So that
was my seventy eighth birthday present for my father, was
his genealogy. I'm pushing it all the way back, even
identifying his white Cheffie slave holding ancestor, and he was amazed.
I found photographs and pictures of aunts and uncles that
(07:48):
he had never seen before. Giving someone their roots, even
at the age of seventy eight, was so fundamentally transformative.
My mother said it was probably the most awesome birthday
present I could have ever give.
Speaker 5 (08:00):
I want to do that for my mom, and I was.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
And at that point I was hooked. I was hooked
on genealogy and there was a.
Speaker 6 (08:05):
New training back well for me.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
My mom is the baby at fourteen and Will thirteen lived,
so I have seventy first cousins.
Speaker 6 (08:16):
So I always had this really really big, big family.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
And then my mom's last name is a very rare name,
it's Yeldeale, and so you know, I was like, well,
who are these people who are to yelled as because
they didn't know anything about her father's side, but they
knew everything about her mother's.
Speaker 6 (08:31):
Side, and I was like, well, I don't want to
do all that.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I started to find out how many people were in
my family, just wanted to know that. And in the
midst of me doing it, it was nineteen ninety six and
I started doing this whole thing of just counting how
many descendants my grandparents had, and long story short, it
ended up being almost four hundred people just from my grandparents.
(08:57):
After I did that, I was like, well, I found
I know who they are. I mean as well dig
and find out who the dead people are.
Speaker 5 (09:04):
And that's how I started.
Speaker 6 (09:06):
And then that's that's how I started it.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
But the funny thing, Asia you say, you know we
were going to cookouts and reunions and graduations.
Speaker 6 (09:14):
Brian and I did not know each other.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
It was genealogy that actually introduced us to each other,
and through a common family member, and in that research,
we've now found out that we're cousins, like eight times over.
Speaker 6 (09:31):
What cousins are y'all?
Speaker 5 (09:32):
Like?
Speaker 6 (09:33):
What grandparents through grandparents? A lot?
Speaker 4 (09:37):
A lot?
Speaker 3 (09:39):
No, that was cold. For first of all, don't be
trying to put my family business out here.
Speaker 6 (09:42):
Okay, you know you know we won't tell it all.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Baby lak black folks. We were like, we're gonna tell.
Speaker 8 (09:52):
It to a point to a parent, more real talk
after the break.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
You can't see this, but your grandmother, I'm assuming that
the lady left of your mother, well my left. Yeah, yeah,
you guys, Brian, you and that woman look alike, can
you get my bugging?
Speaker 5 (10:27):
Can you see it?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
No? No, no you're not. I can see it.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
No, I can see it.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
And the woman next to her is Mama Lula. That's
her mother. So what you guys are looking at is
five generations. It's my daughter on the very far end,
my daughter, then me, then my mom, then her mother,
and then her mother's mother. So that's probably one of
my favorite photos that I've put together because it's five
(10:54):
generations of women.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
But to put it this way, Donnie and I are
related eight or nine ways in South Carolina alone, then
we're going to be related more ways in North Carolina earlier,
and then all the way back in colonial Virginia, we're
gonna have even more shared ancest Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
So is it safe to say or have you noticed
that amongst African Americans that there are these multiple points
of contact with people or is that just something rare
for you?
Speaker 4 (11:23):
For y'all, I'm going to make you all out. I'm
divorced twice over and people I lived just outside of DC,
and everyone keeps trying to fix me up on blind
dates and whatnot. And I'm like, listen, I will never
marry anyone from Massachusetts or date anyone from Massachusetts to
(11:43):
Florida because the great migration coming out of the South
into the you know, scattering across the East coast. I'm
related to so many people in DC alone, the Metro
DC area.
Speaker 6 (11:57):
Everybody's from Carolina and DC. That's because everybody's.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
And Donnie will Donnie will be my truth guardian on
this one. I will not date a cousin. Don't just
not no.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
We talk about like we talk about, you know, other
mammals that meet with mammals and their family, like, do
you think we're nuts? Because it's a lot of interbreeding,
whether we recognize it or not.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
No, I think that once you know who they are,
it's harder for you to go and do it.
Speaker 6 (12:36):
It was something that happened back then.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
First of all, they were in small it was in
you know, groups of areas where they couldn't go anywhere,
so you was ending up dating your family anyway.
Speaker 6 (12:45):
But where our family comes.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
From, it just got it just got ridiculous, like it's
it's so many. And then as we dug back into
our research, we started to understand why it got that
way because of a grandfather that we found. His name
was Moses, and yeah, forty five children, forty girls, five
(13:08):
boys with two women.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
He said, I'm taking my socks off.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
And I really want to clarify. Come on, Moses, he
was not a breeder. He has one set of kids
with one woman whose first name we don't know. We
know that biologically she was a hay Good. She died.
He got with a much younger woman, Mariah Stalwarth, and
then had a whole second group of kids.
Speaker 6 (13:34):
Right, so it was twenty it was twenty.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Girls and two boys with one woman. Twenty girls and
three boys with another woman. But because of this, my
mom is a descendant of both of those two women,
because my mother is a descendant of at least so
far four of his.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Children, and we carry his prolific gene Yeah.
Speaker 6 (13:58):
But y'alla already mixed up? Then, so y'all are y'all
are already?
Speaker 4 (14:01):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
So my grandmother and my grandfather are related to each
other because of that, and my and my grandmother's grandmother,
which is the older lady in the chaid that y'all see,
she is also related to her husband because of that.
And you're talking about this is like north rural North
(14:22):
Carolina and.
Speaker 6 (14:23):
South Carolina all south.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah wow, But you know what, though, this is quite common.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I mean, I just want to make sure.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
That people who are listening understand that this is actually
quite common, because I've actually heard the story several telling us.
Why I wanted you guys to speak to it because
I think that that there is some romanticizing around what
it is to understand your genealogies, specifically as descendants of slaves.
And one of the things I want people to not
miss is that there's a historical context that they that
(14:53):
these two people have to understand in order to you know,
really get their family his You've got to have you
have to. And that's where understanding our history is so
important in everything that we do because everything as an
African in the diaspora is tied to a historical context.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
So we have to be able to understand that.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
I'm curious because I know that you know, there's a
big boom. Like we talked, we start out the conversation
talking about technology, and there's a big boom and technological advances.
There's DNA, there's all this stuff that you can do
to figure out and this really appeals to us as
as African Americans or as Africans in the diaspora.
Speaker 6 (15:35):
What do you do?
Speaker 3 (15:36):
So you go out, you get this DNA situation done.
Speaker 5 (15:40):
And wait, is it blood?
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Is it?
Speaker 5 (15:43):
Is it? Saliva?
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Okay, saliva? You get it done, you get the results back.
What are the next steps for us?
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Like you know, a lot of this information is hard
to digest, it's hard to read.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
You don't know what this means for you.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
And for those of you who are fans of the show,
you also know that we've done a show previously on
this where that we went through African ancestry and I
had a hard time. Of the three of us, I
was the person who was not able to actually identify
where my family was from on the continent. So kind
of give me some top three things that we need
(16:19):
to be kind of understanding when we go through this process.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
I'm going to do the pre bit. Donnia you can
do the post one important step and Donnie you can
jump in on this too. Please. That a lot of
people don't think about is you have to mentally prepare
yourself for a DNA test. I know that they're kind
of sold as entertainment. Or spit in a tube or
do a cheek swab and find out where you come from. Well,
(16:44):
you can find out anything, including stuff you weren't expecting.
You can find out that one of your parents is
not your biological parent. Even though we know, or hopefully
I think most people know that you're average African American
with any length of ancestry in this country is going
to have a degree of European DNA. Not every their
(17:05):
pockets that wouldn't, but a lot of us are going
to happen an average amount of European DNA. How are
you going to respond to seeing that? Will that affect
how you identify yourself. You have questions around that. You
can discover through accident, that an ancestor was fostered, was adopted,
that someone was raped. They're all, you know, we're talking
(17:26):
about human beings. We're not a great species. We've never
really treated each other, you know, our own species particularly well.
But when you have, when you're involved in either slavery
or if you were a poor family of color who
were free during the you know, during the slavery period,
anything can pop up in your DNA.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Anyway, my mom's DNA helped ten different people find who
their actual father was because her DNA is so very
very strong. I ended up helping like ten different people
finding out who the who their father was. And Brian
and I are in a position where, you know, we
(18:07):
do this as a business as well. So when we're
talking to someone and we're and they're like, oh, I
want to do DNA, Okay, hold up, time out, because
DNA is going to introduce you to some things that
you're not.
Speaker 6 (18:20):
You might not be ready for.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
So we we console before we even allow them to
go into that, we give them everything that it's going
to do. We give them all of this information that
it may find and then you have to sit and
think about whether or not you really want to go
that route. You know, if you went all your life
thinking that you were the only child to your parents,
(18:45):
and then all of a sudden you find out you
got a sibling out there, and you're like, I'm sorry,
who is that? I mean, that actually happened in my family,
That actually happened.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
I'm looking at it.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
And matter of fact, the other thing that people need
to realize is that when you start doing this stuff.
Speaker 6 (19:06):
Your family might walk away from you.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
They may not deal with you because you're finding information.
You're digging into those secrets that a lot of families
just wanted to take it with them to the grave,
and you're digging into that. I have several family members
that don't talk to me. I ain't tripping, but I do.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I have seven.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
So again, it's it's not to scare anyone, and it's
not to turn anyone away from taking a DNA test,
but to realize there is a lot packed in our
spit and you just have to advice. If you can't
approach it with an open mind, don't do it.
Speaker 6 (19:47):
Don't do it.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
I'm doing it.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
I'm doing it.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
I'm doing it.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
I'm doing it again.
Speaker 6 (19:56):
Yeah, I want you to do it again. Let me
say this.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
African ancestry tells you that they can pinpoint your tribe.
They can tell you what tribe you come from. Now
I want you all to take this. Take one parent,
just one of your parents. They have two parents, so
those are your grandparents. And then those grandparents have parents,
(20:23):
so you have four great grandparents, and you have eight
great grade sixteen thirty two sixty four you get.
Speaker 6 (20:32):
Then then you see where I'm going.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
In order for you to be able to pinpoint that
tribe going back as far as they're talking about, so
we're talking about hundreds of thousands of years, everybody back
there had to be from the exact same place. So
they're not pinpointing your tribe. They're looking at your largest
(20:55):
DNA amount, that where your family came from, and then
they're going from there.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
That's what that is.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
The DNA that they're testing isn't particularly made clear either.
Human beings have three different kinds of DNA, well most
I'm going to actually some have three, some have two.
So we have mitochondrial DNA, which is noted as MT
DNA that gets paused from mother to daughter also gets
(21:24):
paused from mother to son that sons don't pass that on.
You have why DNA which is paused from father to
sons daughters don't get it literally mail to mail to
mail to mail down the family line. So those are
the two kinds of DNA that African ancestry actually tests.
There is a third called autosomal, and that's like a stew.
(21:47):
You get autosomal DNA from your mother and your father
and it goes back, as Donnie was saying, generations. Now,
siblings don't exactly they know two sip two or three
siblings inherit the exact same mix of DNA is unless
they're twins les or identical twins. It's a matter of
(22:08):
what they're pulling in from each parent.
Speaker 7 (22:09):
So my question is, and because everybody won't be able
to get to you guys, but is there a way
because you know, like I said, people are out in
the street already trying to do this work on their own.
And it's each service because you know, there are at
least three main ones that we're talking talking about the
first one and then there are the other two. But
they are they are all for different purposes, correct? Is
there a way to use them for good?
Speaker 4 (22:32):
I'm gonna see the big three like Ancestry, twenty three
and me my heritage family tree DNA, so those are
all assumed a DNA testing, so they're looking at your
mother and your father's side of the family. Now, what
I would advise people is don't get too hung up
in whatever ethnicity, kind of you know, whatever kind of
(22:54):
cultural ethnicity, whatever you want to call them. DNA results
you get whether you're getting you Tobago, Kenya, Nigeria, all
of the kind of typical countries that we think of,
and I'm along the west coast of the West coast
of Africa because again those are very mixed populations. None
of them are particularly clear about what they're in order
(23:18):
for you to get a ethnicity result means that people
were tested in all of those countries. Hundreds of people
were tested in those countries. None of the DNA really,
the commercial ones tell you how many people they tested
in these different African countries, which is why you can
get such a wide variance between ancestry and twenty three
(23:40):
and meters about your different percentages. All it's really telling
you is that you have a percentage of ancestry from
a particular part of a country, wherever that country is
in the world. I wouldn't get too hung up on
the actual percentage. Just go, yeah, okay, I've got a
couple of ancest just from Kaban. I've got a couple
(24:01):
of ancestors from from you know, Nigeria. Maybe the you know,
the larger the percentage, the more ancestry you're going to
have from that place. The other part of the puzzle
that gets missed out is, as Donnie was saying, it's
not like people in Nigeria, Africans Nigeria were always in Nigeria.
You know, human beings, we move, We move all over
(24:23):
the place. Movement isn't new to our generation or you know,
to modern times. In order to get to West Africa,
our ancient ancestors started off in East Africa and then
work their way over to the West. So DNA is
just a really complicated thing, and it tells a very
complicated story.
Speaker 6 (24:40):
And I think that it's nothing the truth. Brian, I
don't know what it's about.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
The thing is this, The thing is this that our
little Western I spirits pull together the plot in a
thirty minute rom Com, let's get into it.
Speaker 6 (24:55):
Yeah, he's the thing. This is, this is the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
From the four places that the four companies that he named,
at least two of them are entertainment. Remember that the
twenty three and me is probably the one that's not entertainment.
So you can go to you can go to twenty
three and me, you can get the DNA information. They're
gonna show you, they're gonna tell you different things when
(25:21):
you get your information. But what makes twenty three and
Me different from Ancestry not African Ancestry is the fact
that with ancestry dot com you can actually connect records
to your to a tree and start to build and
bring it all together and compile both the DNA and
(25:42):
the records together so that you can then go ahead
and start finding your family and finding out more about them.
Speaker 6 (25:49):
And that's what we would love to do for you guys.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
We want to be able to build like that. And
then the other thing is but remember ancestry is is entertainment.
But because those records are there, it's why it works.
So so let me just let me just try to like, Okay,
so what you guys are saying is that ultimately that
(26:13):
it is the story, the record, it's the the family
members stories, the records, and the DNA as a as
a body or a toolkit is probably the best kind
of use of this type of work. So genealogy as
a you know, as a study, so involves all of
(26:36):
these things. That's exactly for us. We can't be fully
dependent on one spoke in this wheel. We have to
kind of figure, you know, pull in all of these things,
which makes all the sense in the world, because I mean.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Look at our hair. Yeah, how many textures of hair
do you have on your head?
Speaker 4 (26:55):
You know what I mean? How many colors of hair
do I have on my head?
Speaker 5 (27:00):
How about that?
Speaker 3 (27:01):
It's a four three.
Speaker 5 (27:05):
We're gonna take a quick break and then.
Speaker 9 (27:07):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 7 (27:18):
I can't wait to get into a more Brian and
Dinet because I'm kind of like in live mode right
now where I have two older parents and I use
both two different services for each parent for two different reasons,
right Like, I literally used the twenty three and me
because I did want to know my averaging content and
where we came from. But then I use the ancestry
for my mom because she has no idea of who
(27:39):
her father's people are.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
Like after the father, we don't know who the.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Birth parents and things of that nature.
Speaker 6 (27:44):
So I'm hoping that that will help me.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
Yeah, we can.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
We can definitely hopefully we will be able to help
with that. The thing that I also want people to
understand is.
Speaker 6 (27:56):
That with.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
We are not in any kind of way knocking African ancestry.
I need for everybody to know that if you're gonna
do that route, then buy all me do that route. However,
you have to be mindful of the information that they're
giving you. So one of the things that was said
to Asia, and I promise you, Asia, I cried along
(28:21):
with you that day. And I don't even know if
y'all saw my tweets that day, but there is a
halflo group for every last person and they told you
that there wasn't.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
And can I just say that that Darnia is legit
because it hit her to the core and she was
crying on the foon to me as she was telling
me about what was said on the show.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
She was, Yeah, that broke my heart knowing that knowing
the kind of person everybody knows who Asia is that
listens to this show, everybody knows you know why supremacy
is that the problem? But I wanted to say that
one of the big thing that was heartbreaking for me
(29:09):
was again the way that we were discussing it with
that it was being traced from mother to mother to
mother to mother, and.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
On my mother's side, my grandmother's grandmother is a person
who is a mystery to us, and so I was
looking forward.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
To understanding more about her lineage because she's a person
we don't know. My great grandmother was raised by a
woman who wasn't her mother, and it's heartbreaking because her
her mother who raised her, who was not her biological mother,
is well documented.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
So she was an educator. She has all kinds of
things that have been written about her.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
My family goes back many many generations in Loudon County, Virginia.
So that means, Brian, you can never date me. It's
a good thing. I mean, I know, I'm fine, but
you know that's right. Knew yourself, okay, because we are
probably related, but you know, but the bottom line is
that you know it was It was heartbreaking on multiple levels.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
It wasn't just the like surprise age you're a white lady.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
It hurt it was like, not only did I have
to find out that, but then now this woman who
I knew I was gonna finally find something about her,
it was just went up and smoke. So I was
hurt and I and I thank you for just being
in that moment with me. You know, of course I
didn't want to make you sad, but girl, that's where my.
Speaker 6 (30:33):
I was more mad crying than sad. Yeah, I'm gonna
keep that real with you. I was, yeah, I'm gonna
keep that. I was mad.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
I was like, listen, I'm like, if you're gonna give
this information, did tell it truthfully? Because that's where that's
where Brian and I, you know, that's what we live on.
Speaker 6 (30:51):
We live on truth and the light of things that people.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Don't realize is taking American history, you have to add
that Black history in it.
Speaker 6 (31:02):
It's just missing. It's missing. It has been taken out.
So when you're doing your research and you're.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Trying to find your family, you're gonna go through start saying, well,
wait a minute, this.
Speaker 6 (31:14):
Was going on during American history.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
You mean to tell me my peoples was dealing with
that at that particular moment, at that particular time, and
we weren't. We weren't taught it. We didn't know that
we had a hand in it. I'm gonna be very
honest with you, y'all. I don't know how well you
guys are on your history. Most people know who ch'all
Sumner is, right, ch'all Sumner is the man that got
(31:36):
beat on the Senate floor because he was did a
speech against slavery. Yeah, guess whose second great grandmother was
enslaved by the man who beat him.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
And the way I learned it, I'm sitting here and
I'm doing my research, and you know, your ancestors talked
to you, and you're doing these things. They guide you,
whether you want to realize it or not, they guide you.
And I'm sitting here and I'm like, Okay, I just
got this email from the place that I was working with,
they saying, yeah, your your great great grandmother, Martha Brooks
(32:14):
was enslaved by Whitfield Brooks, Preston Brooks, and Lemuel Brooks.
Speaker 6 (32:19):
Well, Whitfield was first, Preston was second, and Lemuel was last.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
So in most instances, when you're going to research, you're
either going to start from the back to the forward
or start from the front and backward. You're never going
to go in the middle. Something in me said, look
at Preston Brooks.
Speaker 6 (32:40):
So I did.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
And when I looked up Preston brook that's when I
saw a picture that is still in history books today
about a man holding a cane over Charles Sumner. And
I was like, need to tell me that this is
the man that I started this picture. I am sitting
here learning my history in class and not realizing that
(33:03):
it was my history that I was learning because I
ended up being related to this man. So when you
look at when you sit down and you're in school
and you're trying to do your you're learning about history,
and you're learning about all of the founding fathers and
them doing this and them doing that, and then they
get the slavery and everybody white turns to the black
(33:26):
people because that's our history.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah, and pull them together all of the elements that
at least you know that we are all, you know,
tied to one another, though you know there's got to
be some major like you know, y'all probably are really
answered this because truth of the matter is that we
can be more surprising than Hello, we related and three
(33:54):
different times over I was going to ask, like, you know.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
What, there's something really like that your wig back about
this work.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
Doing genealogy introduced me to American history, but starting to
actually started giving me the names of ancestors. That was
the first time I actually had a sense of an
American identity. Now, I was born and raised here up
until I was about nineteen, small Connecticut town. Dad was
in the military, so, you know, but not too far
(34:24):
from the naval base in Connecticut. Never felt like an American.
I was never allowed to feel like even though I
was born in this country with ancestry that goes all
the way back to the foundations of Virginia and then
further beyond my Native American side. How sad is that
to not feel like you were an American until you
start learning about your family and start naming your ancestors.
(34:46):
And I said, all of this work started in when
I was still living in England. So now that I'm
back at state side, when white supremacists come for me
on Twitter or anywhere on social media, I can clap back.
When they're like, if you don't like this country, just
just leave, I'm like, why should I come to think
of it, Thomas Jefferson is a great grand you know,
(35:07):
I'm not I'm not dropping names to be bigging up anything.
This is America. We're talking about America. We're talking about
people who are like all of us. You know, Thomas
Jefferson is an ancestor. George Washington is a great uncle
and a step great grandfather. Patrick Henry is an ancestor.
All the kind of movers and shakers colonial you know,
(35:29):
Donnie and I have colonial governors who are our ancestors.
So it's like our ancestors, just thinking specifically about the
black ones built this country. I'm ode and I ain't leaving.
Speaker 6 (35:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
And then for me, what blew me back was Moses
was Moses Williams the forty you know, because I was
I was pissed when Brian was like, yeah, we're gonna
do this research, and I'm like, no, I'm not.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
It was it was the forty kids that put Domnia
off his research.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
For him, I have a I already knew that I
had a second great grandfather named Moses, So when I
was doing my research, I was looking for Moses.
Speaker 6 (36:13):
I was looking for that great grandfather.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
But when I found this whole article about this Moses
Williams with the forty five children. He's looking fifty but
he's actually sixty five.
Speaker 6 (36:26):
And yeah, this is in.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
An article, guys, And then they tell you. They're telling
you everything about it.
Speaker 6 (36:31):
And at the very end of the article it says
that it was verified. So this was true.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
And I sent it to him. I sent it to Brian,
and I was like, Brian, this is Moses. I'm not
doing this, you know, this research on him because we
never told y'all his age. So Brian turns around and
he goes and he finds an obituary note for him,
and the obituary note simply says age man one hundred
(36:58):
and fifteen dies.
Speaker 6 (37:01):
Forty three of his children are surviving him.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
So when I'm looking at it, like and in fifteen,
now I know that my Moses was born in seventeen
ninety one.
Speaker 6 (37:12):
This ain't my Moses.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Who was this?
Speaker 6 (37:15):
So then Brian comes back and says, yeah, this is
his father.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
I'm like, no way, now, no, I'm not doing this
research because that means every last one of his children
were enslaved and I am not going into that.
Speaker 6 (37:32):
And he made me do it.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
So forty five, forty five children all were enslaved.
Speaker 4 (37:39):
So to put Moses into context, he was born when
America was still a calony. British pound sterling was the
currency of the day. Well, briches or pantaloons or you know,
the zipper wasn't even invented at that point. When he
got you know, he was here for all those major wars,
(38:00):
Polutionary War, War of eighteen twelve and made it, you know,
the Civil War when he was born, in the Mexican War,
when he was born in seventeen sixty nine, when he
was old enough to remember the Revolution, he would have
heard all those words about liberty and freedom, We're not
going to be slaves to Britain. He would have understood it.
(38:21):
He would have heard it, and he could never have
conceived that he would ever be free. And he survived it.
He survived slavery for a good few decades because he
died in eighteen eighty four. His father, who was was
also his enslaver, Daniel Williams. Daniel Williams wife was his
(38:43):
aunt because Moses's mother was Daniel Williams enslaved sister in law. Yeah, okay,
I'm seeing people's people's heads agains, but I.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Do think this is a really I mean the context
of where we are today, the idea that.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
We are being separated so intentionally.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
From this place around who is who is the most American?
What history deserves to be spoken about and taught? What
are our identity?
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Who are that? This is so let's go back to
you being an activist.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
This is a revolutionary app because what happens is that
we have to contend with the identity of ourselves, our families,
the country that has been built around us, our part
in that, and that It is not a cut and
dry story. It is not a you know, no pun intended,
(39:50):
black and white story. This is a story about a
number of systems that have been in place since the
fifteen hundreds that.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
In this country, and that now we are.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Contending with what happens when you set up something like
this and you insert human beings into it, and then
you look at it four hundred.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
And what sixty five seventy some odd years.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Later, right when I wrote my book, Brian and I
because Brian was my editors completely, you know, he and
I have done so much together. But when I wrote
my book, he started doing something called characters and started,
you know.
Speaker 6 (40:34):
Explaining who each character was.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
And he spoke about Martha, the one that I talked about,
and it was like she was speaking through him when
he did it, and it angered so many people on Facebook,
on that Facebook page, and it angered so many different
people because they were like, why are you talking about slavery?
You're not slaved, You weren't enslave. You weren't this, You
(40:58):
weren't that. Why are you even discussing that?
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Why are we Why are we talking about the Revolutionary War?
Why are we talking about who died on the battlefield?
They were still carrying around a flag of the people
that lost.
Speaker 6 (41:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Confederate monuments, why why are we to have these things
are out there protecting Christopher Columbus statutes? Why why is
your opinion of yourself so damn hi that nobody else
can have a history?
Speaker 5 (41:32):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (41:33):
It doesn't, And you know that's not why hold on.
Speaker 6 (41:37):
I gotta be quiet now.
Speaker 4 (41:40):
I was gonna say for people who couldn't and this wasn't.
This is for the wealthiest, for people who couldn't do
a thing for themselves, not a thing. They have black
people to do everything for them, But they wanted to
take all the credit for it, But what's the reason?
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Asia all the reason? And the chorus says why.
Speaker 9 (42:09):
More conversation after the break.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Speaking of white supremacy, Guys, just asked a question real
quick because I noticed in my little journey that while
I was trying to find out about my et grandmother,
that was limited information. But when her husband and she
married was an Indigenous man, it seems like the role
call that was kept on indigenous people is ridiculously meticulous.
Speaker 6 (42:42):
Am I tripping you?
Speaker 4 (42:43):
Guys? No, No, you're not, You're not. You know, there
was a very I can't remember his name again, it's Virginia.
It's either Virginia or South Carolina. I swear it was
in the nineteen twenties. He was an avowed racist and he
wanted to limit the number of people who can claim
Native ancestry. So they have these things called the Eastern
(43:05):
Cherokee Application Forms. You can get them on full three
level form. It's an amazing resource because it has generations
of family named. If you named one black ancestor, that
was it. Your application was melin void denied Negro ancestry.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah wow, because that's that one drop, that's a part
of that that one one drop. Well, you know that's
interesting because we've had other guests come on and talk
about some of the anti blackness within the indigenous communities
and of course the somewhat unsavory history of slavery within
those communities as well.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
So this kind of brings a little bit of that
to the surface.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
But you know, of course it all gets introduced through
you know, these kind of white supremacist lenses and things
like this form where you know, but it is all
about how they create these things. You gotta you gotta
get into this lane so I can tell you what
you can have. I should I feel this form out
so that I can tell you that you don't get
to live here this you don't get to have this. Yever,
(44:07):
it's never for your benefit.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
We'll put your face up next to this paper bag
and I'll let you know what you can get.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
We'll get back to you.
Speaker 5 (44:15):
I'll get back to you.
Speaker 4 (44:17):
Can I share a snippet of history that I hope
is going to make your audience feel really proud about
our people and kind of our start.
Speaker 5 (44:23):
Are you kidding?
Speaker 4 (44:25):
There was early Africans in Virginia, those sixteen nineteen Africans
and a couple and many others who arrived between sixteen
nineteen and sixteen thirty, but I'm going to concentrate on
those sixteen nineteen. So we're told they were slaves, they
would have been slaves, that they had ended up in Mexico,
that's their original destination before they got captured by the British.
(44:46):
Their definition here is pretty nepulous. I think the best
one was called a bombed servant because they had to
basically pay off the cost of a voyage that they
never signed up to take in the first place. But
that's another story for another day. They're here and all
but one of them are able to buy themselves out
of their bonds, and these people start buying up large
(45:08):
tracts of land, which means they had to learn English.
English was not their native for Okay, and a lot
of them were in Goldin's who were Catholic were told
they were savages, that they lived in huts. They did not.
They came from a very cultured kingdom. It was a
Catholic kingdom. So you had the Portuguese who were Catholics
kidnapping Catholic Africans. The Pope is totally cool with this,
(45:30):
by the way, Looking to make a profit. Now, unfortunately
Catholics in Virginia not a good mix because it was
a very Protestant colony at that time. But anyway, most
of them buy themselves out of their bond. They've learned English,
they've learned the English legal system. This is stuff that's
never taught. Donnie and I kind of how to work
this out between, like how did they manage to do
(45:52):
all this stuff? Two of them became magistrates, four of
them had white servants, and when they died, the Colony
of virgin the bridges of Virginia that were like the
governmental body started closing that door. When the last black
magistrate died, they passed a law black people can't be magistrates.
(46:13):
When the last one with the with the white servant died,
there's a code black people can no longer hire or
be monsters over white people. All of you know, their achieatment,
they just kept making achievement after achievement after achievement, and
when they died, there's a law, can't do this, can't
do that, can't go here, can't you know, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
And from that point, fast forward to the Civil War
era and their come and now they've been enslaved for
all these years, and now the Civil War has come
and gone, and now we're free again. They came out
from Reconstruction era moving faster than the speed of light
because they became doctors, lawyers. It was over fifteen hundred
(47:00):
African Americans who was in any type of position that
you can think of as far as government was concerned, local, state, federal,
They were everywhere. They moved at the speed of light.
They became teachers, they became doctors, they were everything. Within
a fifteen year period, one hundred HBCUs were created because
(47:25):
of it.
Speaker 4 (47:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Well, I want to go back to one of our
early early episodes and I talked about reading Black Reconstruction,
which is like should be required reading for any person
in this country, period, but particularly for black people. WBD boys.
Black Reconstruction really does a very good job. It's not
the only book that does a good job at this,
(47:47):
but it does a very good job.
Speaker 3 (47:49):
Of really talking about that time.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Period after the Civil War and during that time and
what was accomplished, what was taken away, what was structurally
changed in order for it to never happen again. And
we're able to see from each state's Constitution, which was
ratified in each individual state. So when you hear white
people say things like states rights, when they say that,
(48:11):
that is a that is a dog whistle to Reconstruction
era anti black laws that still exist on the books
in almost all of these states.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
So when they say things like states rights.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Or we don't want big government, we want small government,
states rights, all of that is a dog.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Whistle to anti black legislation.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
That means we don't want black people to have economic
or political power, period. So don't buy into that, BS.
And it's like when you hear black conservatives in particular
spill out this same type of propaganda.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
It is a problem. Please know that.
Speaker 5 (48:48):
If we really are people that we will make a way.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
Yes will you will make a way to left to
be excellent, to advance.
Speaker 5 (49:01):
We do these things right.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
So just imagine had this society and all the others,
you know, if they hadn't had such a hatred towards us,
there wouldn't be the issues that they have with us
right now. I don't believe that people naturally gravitate to
selling drugs or selling people for that matter.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
I don't think that that's a natural thing for us,
but you put us in positions where we have to
make a way or try to survive when everything at
our cities are destroyed, our towns are destroyed, our education
is denied. You know, so many things had we just
been left the fuck alone.
Speaker 4 (49:47):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
You're talking about people who started off not being able
to read a language.
Speaker 5 (49:53):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
People are forced to take a name that they doesn't
belong to them at all.
Speaker 3 (49:59):
Right, dead, that wasn't their dead.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
That was dead, and save.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
A group of people that they didn't need to save
because had it not been for those sixteen nineteen people,
those twenty odd people, Virginia would have died.
Speaker 4 (50:15):
Yes, that's the killer. Because Donnia has spoke an important truth.
That was the third time that Jamestown was on the
verge of failing due to because they didn't know how
to do anything. They did not send their best, in
their brightest.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
They send the thieves, the same murderers, and they send
the criminals stay in this place, and the.
Speaker 4 (50:38):
Rich and the rich men who didn't know how to
do anything.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
That's right when Donna's embarrass.
Speaker 4 (50:44):
Yes, so when Donnia said, these people saved Jamestown, they
saved Jamestown. They knew how to grow food, they knew
how to rear the animals, they knew how to build houses,
all of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
And the response, the response to them to who they were,
Like I said, this is really important piece of information
that they learned early on. That the response was to
learn from them and then use the systems to then
say we will shut you down that once they are gone,
(51:16):
then you say, okay, now this is not allowed. Because
that's really important piece there, because I think a lot
of times when we talk this is erasure.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
This is almost the.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
This is the definition of erasure. You people do a
thing and then you outlaw this thing that they did,
and then too it only takes a generation to come
by before they never knew it ever existed in the
first place.
Speaker 4 (51:40):
And I left your point about big states rights. I'm
just going to put this out there because it's very topical.
So we get the states rights argument. But at the
same time, the same group of extreme conservative GOP people
they want to be in your gynocologist's office with you,
(52:01):
telling you what you can and cannot do with your
own body. They want to be in the classroom telling
teachers what they can and cannot That doesn't sound like
small governments.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
No, that kind of sounds like, Yeah, hypocrisy is the
is the American way.
Speaker 6 (52:16):
Isn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (52:19):
Only way, Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 5 (52:23):
Listen.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
Our strengths and our weaknesses, our tenacity, all of it
derives from situations now and then and the blood that flows.
We'll hate ourselves by design, but we can destroy the
chains with knowledge, with comprehension of who we are.
Speaker 4 (52:45):
Inform yourself and realizing that the system has played us for.
Speaker 5 (52:50):
Generations, for generations.
Speaker 4 (52:52):
Cause if we were acting, I mean knew one people
is ever going to be united. Human beings just aren't
built that way. But if the majority of us can,
I mean, that's probably the worst pot bubble for the
group of people that we're talking about, white supremacists. But
if non white people, I'm going to expand this beyond
African Americans would just come together and say, you know what,
(53:14):
we're drawing a line under the sand. Y'all had a
good run of it. European descend to people for the
hunt for centuries, you've made a mess of it. It's
our turnout. We can't do any worse and what you've done.
I was having this conversation with JOHNNYA in the car,
I think a week ago saying indigenous peoples all around you.
(53:36):
Think about all the places in the world that got
colonized by Europe. Indigenous people are not responsible for climate change.
We even create pollution. Our people or had religions and
cultures about celebrating living in harmony with the planet. You
look at any indigenous people, they have mythologies and a
real sense of duty to take care of Mother Earth.
(53:58):
Raping mother Earth was as foreigner news to any group
of indigenous people as any kind of thoughtform told possibly be.
But yeah, we're told that we're the Syphageans.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
That was just that was just a moment of silence,
because yeah, it's deserved, it's deserved. This is if you
have any questions, you know, we're going to give you
some resources so that you can take your time and investigate.
It's worth the trip. Knowledge really is power, and you
(54:33):
are the last dragon.
Speaker 5 (54:35):
You are the last dragon, Paul.
Speaker 3 (54:40):
Power real rap.
Speaker 5 (54:50):
Listen, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (54:52):
Thank you, Brian Sheffy, I said it right this time,
I hope. Thank you Donnie Williams for being supporters of
j dot Ilde podcast and being.
Speaker 10 (55:04):
So sough, so open, and so informative, being so multi dimensional.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
You are who we hope we've been speaking to. You
are absolutely we feel like we're on We've been par
for the course. So thank you for that, and thank
you everyone for listening to j dot Ilede podcast. You
are loved beyond what you know, and you can do
more than you've done. I promise be good, y'all.
Speaker 3 (55:41):
How do You Eat an Elephant?
Speaker 4 (55:43):
One?
Speaker 3 (55:44):
By Cod.
Speaker 11 (55:47):
Hey listeners, it's Amber the producer here. I am so
excited to dig deeper into my own lineage, and today's
guests have so many resources to help us start this journey.
I am so excited to dig deeper into my lineage,
and today's guests have so many resources to help us
start that work. Ryan actually wrote two books. The first
(56:10):
one is called Practical Genealogy fifty simple steps to research
your diverse family history and a Family Tree Workbook that's
thirty plus step by step worksheets to build out your
family history. You can find both of these books on Amazon.
I'll link them in the show notes. They also have
an amazing genealogy show that you can watch on YouTube,
Facebook and E three sixty TV. They offer genealogy services.
(56:33):
If you want to work with them one on one,
you can drop them an email at Genealogy Adventures at
E three sixty tv dot com. And just again, I'll
drop all this info and all the links in our
show notes.
Speaker 4 (56:50):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Hi.
Speaker 1 (56:59):
If you have comments on something we said in this
episode called eight six six, Hey Jill, if you want
to add to this conversation that's eight six six four
three nine five four five five. Don't forget to tell
us your name and the episode you're referring to. You
might just hear your message on a future episode.
Speaker 11 (57:19):
Thank you for listening to Jill Scott Presents Jay dot lthepodcast.
Speaker 5 (57:27):
Jay dot L is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to j dot L, a production of iHeartRadio. What
Up everybody? Hi, welcome back to J dot L the Podcast.
I'm sitting here with my sister friends. You already know
Laiah Saint Claus, Yes, hello, and Aja Graydon Danzler, you
(00:26):
got it, Phillyonsay. And this is Jill Scott and we
have the privilege in this awesome pleasure of speaking to
two incredible people, Brian Sheffie and Donia Williams. Okay, Hi, welcome,
(00:47):
Welcome to J dot L the podcast. There's so much Yeah,
like Aja, would you would you guide us into this?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
The thing about it is that one of the things
that we were really loving about this era of our
show is we're been talking to some of our amazing
day ones and how they grow so much beauty to
the podcast. And so one of our day ones is
Donia Williams, who along with her cousin Brian Sheffeye, are
experts in genealogy okay, And so what they do is
(01:16):
they co host a podcast, a streaming show called Genealogy
Adventures Live. And they also have a company, their authors,
their community activists. They are doing tons of work around
helping African Americans in particular trace their family histories, understand
where they come from, making good connections between us here
(01:39):
in the US and the diaspora as well as the continent.
So we're just really grateful to have them more but Donya,
aside from supporting us since the very beginning, has also
done a lot of chiming in on some of the
past conversations that we've had around African American history, around
personal family history, and so we wanted to have on
(02:01):
and we're just really super happy to have both of them,
So welcome you guys.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Was that a good enough? Is that an explanation?
Speaker 4 (02:07):
That was awesome?
Speaker 3 (02:09):
And we love to see it.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
We love to see it because because we're here, we
are you know, in this in this time, we're trying
to figure out who we are. You know, everybody is
really wanting to know because now the technology is such,
you know, that we can find out where our people
are from. All this time walking around just just not knowing,
(02:30):
you know, wearing wearing cloths we don't know what they mean.
Having art on the wall, we don't even understand what
it is. But we've been searching and looking and reaching
for some kind of connection with with a continent that
you know was ripped from us in every possible way.
Speaker 5 (02:47):
Talk, but that's what it is.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah, I'm agent and I and like, yeah, we're all
coming up in a neo soul movement. You know, the
soul movement originally was really about connecting, connecting to ourselves,
you know, all of that all that good powerful funk,
you know, finding that that rhythm in ourselves. And here
we are, you know, all of these years later, and
(03:12):
now we have the technology to truly find out what
it is in us that that makes us us.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
And you know that one of the big things on
this show is you know, pointing out so many of
the outside kind of structures that affect how we, you know,
think about ourselves, who we believe we are. And we've
been uncovering little by a little so much of you
know how that you know affects our everyday lives. And
(03:42):
so this is really on par with the conversation that
we've been trying to have since the very beginning, you
know what I mean. And as we peel back those
layers and we really see who we are, then we
can start to better see those outside structures for what
they are for the lives that they tell. So if
we don't know who you are, then you can't even
go out here and properly identify all of the different
(04:05):
things that are coming at you. And what is the
foreign matter, if you will, from you and who you
are supposed to be.
Speaker 6 (04:11):
So but the fact that everybody just can't afford Henry
Lewis Gates.
Speaker 7 (04:14):
And we're trying to navigate all these websites and stuff
and figure out who we are by ourselves, and we
get lost in these streets.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
That's how I.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
See may be not to mention in fact, Henry Lewis Gates,
it's not the researcher on finding your roots.
Speaker 6 (04:26):
I just want to put that out there.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
He's a host, he's a whole. I personally think I
maybe because I don't know any better, But I personally
think that because I don't follow these things.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
I don't follow astrology.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
You know, I have a favorite number, but I don't
live my life exactly by following the number. I think
that that there's more way, more than just you know
those things. Somebody else will argue with me and you know,
trying to punch me in the chance about it. But
you know, this is another aspect of finding out exactly
(05:00):
we are, how we are, why we are.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
Thank you so much for the invitation. Such a pleasure
to be able to speak with all of you and
to be able to speak to your audience. So again,
thank you for inviting us to the show. Do you
know that was the first time I've ever been introduced
as an activist And as soon as that, as soon
as she said that, I was thinking, it's really a
shame that in this day and age, in twenty twenty three,
(05:25):
I'm being called an activist for just speaking truth, just
speaking truth about the African American experience in the United
States of America. I will be pondering that all day.
So thank you for that. And Jewel Ray's a really
good point. We do know a lot more than our
(05:45):
ancestors new but because our history, Black history still isn't
honestly improperly taught in schools, there's still a lot of
I don't want to say ignorance, because ignorance is almost
like a choice. You don't know that you don't know
until you don't know it. There's such a gap and
our collective knowledge that people are actually trying to fill
(06:06):
that gap of knowledge with I call it nonsense, but
with kind of out there explanations about how black people
actually arrived in this country, something that Donnie and I've
been actively siding online for a for a long long time,
so you know that that knowledge is really important.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah, So what what brings you guys to this work
in the first place? Like, one day you're Brian and Donya,
y'all walking around the world being black mind and your
black business, your cousin, y'all going to the cookout, y'all
seeing each other on graduations and funerals and things.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
And then one day what changes it makes y'all go
into this word.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
So my dad was turning seventy eight. I was living
in England at the time. They were still here. They
were here and my parents were here in Maryland, and
I phoned my mum and I was like, Mom, what
do I get that? Because my father had everything, just
every kind of gadget, every kind of music, just he
had lowds and stuff. My mother's like, don't buy your
father a single thing. She's like, we're trying to get
(07:04):
rid of stuff because we're trying to downsize. And I'm like, well,
because his parents divorced when he was really young, and
his mother didn't allow him to have contact with his
dad's side of the family. He grew up really knowing
nothing about the Sheffy side of his ancestry, very little
about his father's kind of He knew where his father
was born, in a place called with County, Virginia, but
(07:25):
that was kind of it. So I'm like, do you
think he'd be interested in genealogy? And my mother was like,
that is the perfect thing to give him. So that
was my seventy eighth birthday present for my father, was
his genealogy. I'm pushing it all the way back, even
identifying his white Cheffie slave holding ancestor, and he was amazed.
I found photographs and pictures of aunts and uncles that
(07:48):
he had never seen before. Giving someone their roots, even
at the age of seventy eight, was so fundamentally transformative.
My mother said it was probably the most awesome birthday
present I could have ever give.
Speaker 5 (08:00):
I want to do that for my mom, and I was.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
And at that point I was hooked. I was hooked
on genealogy and there was a.
Speaker 6 (08:05):
New training back well for me.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
My mom is the baby at fourteen and Will thirteen lived,
so I have seventy first cousins.
Speaker 6 (08:16):
So I always had this really really big, big family.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
And then my mom's last name is a very rare name,
it's Yeldeale, and so you know, I was like, well,
who are these people who are to yelled as because
they didn't know anything about her father's side, but they
knew everything about her mother's.
Speaker 6 (08:31):
Side, and I was like, well, I don't want to
do all that.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I started to find out how many people were in
my family, just wanted to know that. And in the
midst of me doing it, it was nineteen ninety six and
I started doing this whole thing of just counting how
many descendants my grandparents had, and long story short, it
ended up being almost four hundred people just from my grandparents.
(08:57):
After I did that, I was like, well, I found
I know who they are. I mean as well dig
and find out who the dead people are.
Speaker 5 (09:04):
And that's how I started.
Speaker 6 (09:06):
And then that's that's how I started it.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
But the funny thing, Asia you say, you know we
were going to cookouts and reunions and graduations.
Speaker 6 (09:14):
Brian and I did not know each other.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
It was genealogy that actually introduced us to each other,
and through a common family member, and in that research,
we've now found out that we're cousins, like eight times over.
Speaker 6 (09:31):
What cousins are y'all?
Speaker 5 (09:32):
Like?
Speaker 6 (09:33):
What grandparents through grandparents? A lot?
Speaker 4 (09:37):
A lot?
Speaker 3 (09:39):
No, that was cold. For first of all, don't be
trying to put my family business out here.
Speaker 6 (09:42):
Okay, you know you know we won't tell it all.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Baby lak black folks. We were like, we're gonna tell.
Speaker 8 (09:52):
It to a point to a parent, more real talk
after the break.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
You can't see this, but your grandmother, I'm assuming that
the lady left of your mother, well my left. Yeah, yeah,
you guys, Brian, you and that woman look alike, can
you get my bugging?
Speaker 5 (10:27):
Can you see it?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
No? No, no you're not. I can see it.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
No, I can see it.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
And the woman next to her is Mama Lula. That's
her mother. So what you guys are looking at is
five generations. It's my daughter on the very far end,
my daughter, then me, then my mom, then her mother,
and then her mother's mother. So that's probably one of
my favorite photos that I've put together because it's five
(10:54):
generations of women.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
But to put it this way, Donnie and I are
related eight or nine ways in South Carolina alone, then
we're going to be related more ways in North Carolina earlier,
and then all the way back in colonial Virginia, we're
gonna have even more shared ancest Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
So is it safe to say or have you noticed
that amongst African Americans that there are these multiple points
of contact with people or is that just something rare
for you?
Speaker 4 (11:23):
For y'all, I'm going to make you all out. I'm
divorced twice over and people I lived just outside of DC,
and everyone keeps trying to fix me up on blind
dates and whatnot. And I'm like, listen, I will never
marry anyone from Massachusetts or date anyone from Massachusetts to
(11:43):
Florida because the great migration coming out of the South
into the you know, scattering across the East coast. I'm
related to so many people in DC alone, the Metro
DC area.
Speaker 6 (11:57):
Everybody's from Carolina and DC. That's because everybody's.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
And Donnie will Donnie will be my truth guardian on
this one. I will not date a cousin. Don't just
not no.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
We talk about like we talk about, you know, other
mammals that meet with mammals and their family, like, do
you think we're nuts? Because it's a lot of interbreeding,
whether we recognize it or not.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
No, I think that once you know who they are,
it's harder for you to go and do it.
Speaker 6 (12:36):
It was something that happened back then.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
First of all, they were in small it was in
you know, groups of areas where they couldn't go anywhere,
so you was ending up dating your family anyway.
Speaker 6 (12:45):
But where our family comes.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
From, it just got it just got ridiculous, like it's
it's so many. And then as we dug back into
our research, we started to understand why it got that
way because of a grandfather that we found. His name
was Moses, and yeah, forty five children, forty girls, five
(13:08):
boys with two women.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
He said, I'm taking my socks off.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
And I really want to clarify. Come on, Moses, he
was not a breeder. He has one set of kids
with one woman whose first name we don't know. We
know that biologically she was a hay Good. She died.
He got with a much younger woman, Mariah Stalwarth, and
then had a whole second group of kids.
Speaker 6 (13:34):
Right, so it was twenty it was twenty.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Girls and two boys with one woman. Twenty girls and
three boys with another woman. But because of this, my
mom is a descendant of both of those two women,
because my mother is a descendant of at least so
far four of his.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Children, and we carry his prolific gene Yeah.
Speaker 6 (13:58):
But y'alla already mixed up? Then, so y'all are y'all
are already?
Speaker 4 (14:01):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
So my grandmother and my grandfather are related to each
other because of that, and my and my grandmother's grandmother,
which is the older lady in the chaid that y'all see,
she is also related to her husband because of that.
And you're talking about this is like north rural North
(14:22):
Carolina and.
Speaker 6 (14:23):
South Carolina all south.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah wow, But you know what, though, this is quite common.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I mean, I just want to make sure.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
That people who are listening understand that this is actually
quite common, because I've actually heard the story several telling us.
Why I wanted you guys to speak to it because
I think that that there is some romanticizing around what
it is to understand your genealogies, specifically as descendants of slaves.
And one of the things I want people to not
miss is that there's a historical context that they that
(14:53):
these two people have to understand in order to you know,
really get their family his You've got to have you
have to. And that's where understanding our history is so
important in everything that we do because everything as an
African in the diaspora is tied to a historical context.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
So we have to be able to understand that.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
I'm curious because I know that you know, there's a
big boom. Like we talked, we start out the conversation
talking about technology, and there's a big boom and technological advances.
There's DNA, there's all this stuff that you can do
to figure out and this really appeals to us as
as African Americans or as Africans in the diaspora.
Speaker 6 (15:35):
What do you do?
Speaker 3 (15:36):
So you go out, you get this DNA situation done.
Speaker 5 (15:40):
And wait, is it blood?
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Is it?
Speaker 5 (15:43):
Is it? Saliva?
Speaker 3 (15:45):
Okay, saliva? You get it done, you get the results back.
What are the next steps for us?
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Like you know, a lot of this information is hard
to digest, it's hard to read.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
You don't know what this means for you.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
And for those of you who are fans of the show,
you also know that we've done a show previously on
this where that we went through African ancestry and I
had a hard time. Of the three of us, I
was the person who was not able to actually identify
where my family was from on the continent. So kind
of give me some top three things that we need
(16:19):
to be kind of understanding when we go through this process.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
I'm going to do the pre bit. Donnia you can
do the post one important step and Donnie you can
jump in on this too. Please. That a lot of
people don't think about is you have to mentally prepare
yourself for a DNA test. I know that they're kind
of sold as entertainment. Or spit in a tube or
do a cheek swab and find out where you come from. Well,
(16:44):
you can find out anything, including stuff you weren't expecting.
You can find out that one of your parents is
not your biological parent. Even though we know, or hopefully
I think most people know that you're average African American
with any length of ancestry in this country is going
to have a degree of European DNA. Not every their
(17:05):
pockets that wouldn't, but a lot of us are going
to happen an average amount of European DNA. How are
you going to respond to seeing that? Will that affect
how you identify yourself. You have questions around that. You
can discover through accident, that an ancestor was fostered, was adopted,
that someone was raped. They're all, you know, we're talking
(17:26):
about human beings. We're not a great species. We've never
really treated each other, you know, our own species particularly well.
But when you have, when you're involved in either slavery
or if you were a poor family of color who
were free during the you know, during the slavery period,
anything can pop up in your DNA.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Anyway, my mom's DNA helped ten different people find who
their actual father was because her DNA is so very
very strong. I ended up helping like ten different people
finding out who the who their father was. And Brian
and I are in a position where, you know, we
(18:07):
do this as a business as well. So when we're
talking to someone and we're and they're like, oh, I
want to do DNA, Okay, hold up, time out, because
DNA is going to introduce you to some things that
you're not.
Speaker 6 (18:20):
You might not be ready for.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
So we we console before we even allow them to
go into that, we give them everything that it's going
to do. We give them all of this information that
it may find and then you have to sit and
think about whether or not you really want to go
that route. You know, if you went all your life
thinking that you were the only child to your parents,
(18:45):
and then all of a sudden you find out you
got a sibling out there, and you're like, I'm sorry,
who is that? I mean, that actually happened in my family,
That actually happened.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
I'm looking at it.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
And matter of fact, the other thing that people need
to realize is that when you start doing this stuff.
Speaker 6 (19:06):
Your family might walk away from you.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
They may not deal with you because you're finding information.
You're digging into those secrets that a lot of families
just wanted to take it with them to the grave,
and you're digging into that. I have several family members
that don't talk to me. I ain't tripping, but I do.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I have seven.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
So again, it's it's not to scare anyone, and it's
not to turn anyone away from taking a DNA test,
but to realize there is a lot packed in our
spit and you just have to advice. If you can't
approach it with an open mind, don't do it.
Speaker 6 (19:47):
Don't do it.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
I'm doing it.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
I'm doing it.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
I'm doing it.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
I'm doing it again.
Speaker 6 (19:56):
Yeah, I want you to do it again. Let me
say this.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
African ancestry tells you that they can pinpoint your tribe.
They can tell you what tribe you come from. Now
I want you all to take this. Take one parent,
just one of your parents. They have two parents, so
those are your grandparents. And then those grandparents have parents,
(20:23):
so you have four great grandparents, and you have eight
great grade sixteen thirty two sixty four you get.
Speaker 6 (20:32):
Then then you see where I'm going.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
In order for you to be able to pinpoint that
tribe going back as far as they're talking about, so
we're talking about hundreds of thousands of years, everybody back
there had to be from the exact same place. So
they're not pinpointing your tribe. They're looking at your largest
(20:55):
DNA amount, that where your family came from, and then
they're going from there.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
That's what that is.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
The DNA that they're testing isn't particularly made clear either.
Human beings have three different kinds of DNA, well most
I'm going to actually some have three, some have two.
So we have mitochondrial DNA, which is noted as MT
DNA that gets paused from mother to daughter also gets
(21:24):
paused from mother to son that sons don't pass that on.
You have why DNA which is paused from father to
sons daughters don't get it literally mail to mail to
mail to mail down the family line. So those are
the two kinds of DNA that African ancestry actually tests.
There is a third called autosomal, and that's like a stew.
(21:47):
You get autosomal DNA from your mother and your father
and it goes back, as Donnie was saying, generations. Now,
siblings don't exactly they know two sip two or three
siblings inherit the exact same mix of DNA is unless
they're twins les or identical twins. It's a matter of
(22:08):
what they're pulling in from each parent.
Speaker 7 (22:09):
So my question is, and because everybody won't be able
to get to you guys, but is there a way
because you know, like I said, people are out in
the street already trying to do this work on their own.
And it's each service because you know, there are at
least three main ones that we're talking talking about the
first one and then there are the other two. But
they are they are all for different purposes, correct? Is
there a way to use them for good?
Speaker 4 (22:32):
I'm gonna see the big three like Ancestry, twenty three
and me my heritage family tree DNA, so those are
all assumed a DNA testing, so they're looking at your
mother and your father's side of the family. Now, what
I would advise people is don't get too hung up
in whatever ethnicity, kind of you know, whatever kind of
(22:54):
cultural ethnicity, whatever you want to call them. DNA results
you get whether you're getting you Tobago, Kenya, Nigeria, all
of the kind of typical countries that we think of,
and I'm along the west coast of the West coast
of Africa because again those are very mixed populations. None
of them are particularly clear about what they're in order
(23:18):
for you to get a ethnicity result means that people
were tested in all of those countries. Hundreds of people
were tested in those countries. None of the DNA really,
the commercial ones tell you how many people they tested
in these different African countries, which is why you can
get such a wide variance between ancestry and twenty three
(23:40):
and meters about your different percentages. All it's really telling
you is that you have a percentage of ancestry from
a particular part of a country, wherever that country is
in the world. I wouldn't get too hung up on
the actual percentage. Just go, yeah, okay, I've got a
couple of ancest just from Kaban. I've got a couple
(24:01):
of ancestors from from you know, Nigeria. Maybe the you know,
the larger the percentage, the more ancestry you're going to
have from that place. The other part of the puzzle
that gets missed out is, as Donnie was saying, it's
not like people in Nigeria, Africans Nigeria were always in Nigeria.
You know, human beings, we move, We move all over
(24:23):
the place. Movement isn't new to our generation or you know,
to modern times. In order to get to West Africa,
our ancient ancestors started off in East Africa and then
work their way over to the West. So DNA is
just a really complicated thing, and it tells a very
complicated story.
Speaker 6 (24:40):
And I think that it's nothing the truth. Brian, I
don't know what it's about.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
The thing is this, The thing is this that our
little Western I spirits pull together the plot in a
thirty minute rom Com, let's get into it.
Speaker 6 (24:55):
Yeah, he's the thing. This is, this is the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
From the four places that the four companies that he named,
at least two of them are entertainment. Remember that the
twenty three and me is probably the one that's not entertainment.
So you can go to you can go to twenty
three and me, you can get the DNA information. They're
gonna show you, they're gonna tell you different things when
(25:21):
you get your information. But what makes twenty three and
Me different from Ancestry not African Ancestry is the fact
that with ancestry dot com you can actually connect records
to your to a tree and start to build and
bring it all together and compile both the DNA and
(25:42):
the records together so that you can then go ahead
and start finding your family and finding out more about them.
Speaker 6 (25:49):
And that's what we would love to do for you guys.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
We want to be able to build like that. And
then the other thing is but remember ancestry is is entertainment.
But because those records are there, it's why it works.
So so let me just let me just try to like, Okay,
so what you guys are saying is that ultimately that
(26:13):
it is the story, the record, it's the the family
members stories, the records, and the DNA as a as
a body or a toolkit is probably the best kind
of use of this type of work. So genealogy as
a you know, as a study, so involves all of
(26:36):
these things. That's exactly for us. We can't be fully
dependent on one spoke in this wheel. We have to
kind of figure, you know, pull in all of these things,
which makes all the sense in the world, because I mean.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Look at our hair. Yeah, how many textures of hair
do you have on your head?
Speaker 4 (26:55):
You know what I mean? How many colors of hair
do I have on my head?
Speaker 5 (27:00):
How about that?
Speaker 3 (27:01):
It's a four three.
Speaker 5 (27:05):
We're gonna take a quick break and then.
Speaker 9 (27:07):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 7 (27:18):
I can't wait to get into a more Brian and
Dinet because I'm kind of like in live mode right
now where I have two older parents and I use
both two different services for each parent for two different reasons,
right Like, I literally used the twenty three and me
because I did want to know my averaging content and
where we came from. But then I use the ancestry
for my mom because she has no idea of who
(27:39):
her father's people are.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
Like after the father, we don't know who the.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Birth parents and things of that nature.
Speaker 6 (27:44):
So I'm hoping that that will help me.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
Yeah, we can.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
We can definitely hopefully we will be able to help
with that. The thing that I also want people to
understand is.
Speaker 6 (27:56):
That with.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
We are not in any kind of way knocking African ancestry.
I need for everybody to know that if you're gonna
do that route, then buy all me do that route. However,
you have to be mindful of the information that they're
giving you. So one of the things that was said
to Asia, and I promise you, Asia, I cried along
(28:21):
with you that day. And I don't even know if
y'all saw my tweets that day, but there is a
halflo group for every last person and they told you
that there wasn't.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
And can I just say that that Darnia is legit
because it hit her to the core and she was
crying on the foon to me as she was telling
me about what was said on the show.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
She was, Yeah, that broke my heart knowing that knowing
the kind of person everybody knows who Asia is that
listens to this show, everybody knows you know why supremacy
is that the problem? But I wanted to say that
one of the big thing that was heartbreaking for me
(29:09):
was again the way that we were discussing it with
that it was being traced from mother to mother to
mother to mother, and.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
On my mother's side, my grandmother's grandmother is a person
who is a mystery to us, and so I was
looking forward.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
To understanding more about her lineage because she's a person
we don't know. My great grandmother was raised by a
woman who wasn't her mother, and it's heartbreaking because her
her mother who raised her, who was not her biological mother,
is well documented.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
So she was an educator. She has all kinds of
things that have been written about her.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
My family goes back many many generations in Loudon County, Virginia.
So that means, Brian, you can never date me. It's
a good thing. I mean, I know, I'm fine, but
you know that's right. Knew yourself, okay, because we are
probably related, but you know, but the bottom line is
that you know it was It was heartbreaking on multiple levels.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
It wasn't just the like surprise age you're a white lady.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
It hurt it was like, not only did I have
to find out that, but then now this woman who
I knew I was gonna finally find something about her,
it was just went up and smoke. So I was
hurt and I and I thank you for just being
in that moment with me. You know, of course I
didn't want to make you sad, but girl, that's where my.
Speaker 6 (30:33):
I was more mad crying than sad. Yeah, I'm gonna
keep that real with you. I was, yeah, I'm gonna
keep that. I was mad.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
I was like, listen, I'm like, if you're gonna give
this information, did tell it truthfully? Because that's where that's
where Brian and I, you know, that's what we live on.
Speaker 6 (30:51):
We live on truth and the light of things that people.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Don't realize is taking American history, you have to add
that Black history in it.
Speaker 6 (31:02):
It's just missing. It's missing. It has been taken out.
So when you're doing your research and you're.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Trying to find your family, you're gonna go through start saying, well,
wait a minute, this.
Speaker 6 (31:14):
Was going on during American history.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
You mean to tell me my peoples was dealing with
that at that particular moment, at that particular time, and
we weren't. We weren't taught it. We didn't know that
we had a hand in it. I'm gonna be very
honest with you, y'all. I don't know how well you
guys are on your history. Most people know who ch'all
Sumner is, right, ch'all Sumner is the man that got
(31:36):
beat on the Senate floor because he was did a
speech against slavery. Yeah, guess whose second great grandmother was
enslaved by the man who beat him.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
And the way I learned it, I'm sitting here and
I'm doing my research, and you know, your ancestors talked
to you, and you're doing these things. They guide you,
whether you want to realize it or not, they guide you.
And I'm sitting here and I'm like, Okay, I just
got this email from the place that I was working with,
they saying, yeah, your your great great grandmother, Martha Brooks
(32:14):
was enslaved by Whitfield Brooks, Preston Brooks, and Lemuel Brooks.
Speaker 6 (32:19):
Well, Whitfield was first, Preston was second, and Lemuel was last.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
So in most instances, when you're going to research, you're
either going to start from the back to the forward
or start from the front and backward. You're never going
to go in the middle. Something in me said, look
at Preston Brooks.
Speaker 6 (32:40):
So I did.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
And when I looked up Preston brook that's when I
saw a picture that is still in history books today
about a man holding a cane over Charles Sumner. And
I was like, need to tell me that this is
the man that I started this picture. I am sitting
here learning my history in class and not realizing that
(33:03):
it was my history that I was learning because I
ended up being related to this man. So when you
look at when you sit down and you're in school
and you're trying to do your you're learning about history,
and you're learning about all of the founding fathers and
them doing this and them doing that, and then they
get the slavery and everybody white turns to the black
(33:26):
people because that's our history.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah, and pull them together all of the elements that
at least you know that we are all, you know,
tied to one another, though you know there's got to
be some major like you know, y'all probably are really
answered this because truth of the matter is that we
can be more surprising than Hello, we related and three
(33:54):
different times over I was going to ask, like, you know.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
What, there's something really like that your wig back about
this work.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
Doing genealogy introduced me to American history, but starting to
actually started giving me the names of ancestors. That was
the first time I actually had a sense of an
American identity. Now, I was born and raised here up
until I was about nineteen, small Connecticut town. Dad was
in the military, so, you know, but not too far
(34:24):
from the naval base in Connecticut. Never felt like an American.
I was never allowed to feel like even though I
was born in this country with ancestry that goes all
the way back to the foundations of Virginia and then
further beyond my Native American side. How sad is that
to not feel like you were an American until you
start learning about your family and start naming your ancestors.
(34:46):
And I said, all of this work started in when
I was still living in England. So now that I'm
back at state side, when white supremacists come for me
on Twitter or anywhere on social media, I can clap back.
When they're like, if you don't like this country, just
just leave, I'm like, why should I come to think
of it, Thomas Jefferson is a great grand you know,
(35:07):
I'm not I'm not dropping names to be bigging up anything.
This is America. We're talking about America. We're talking about
people who are like all of us. You know, Thomas
Jefferson is an ancestor. George Washington is a great uncle
and a step great grandfather. Patrick Henry is an ancestor.
All the kind of movers and shakers colonial you know,
(35:29):
Donnie and I have colonial governors who are our ancestors.
So it's like our ancestors, just thinking specifically about the
black ones built this country. I'm ode and I ain't leaving.
Speaker 6 (35:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
And then for me, what blew me back was Moses
was Moses Williams the forty you know, because I was
I was pissed when Brian was like, yeah, we're gonna
do this research, and I'm like, no, I'm not.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
It was it was the forty kids that put Domnia
off his research.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
For him, I have a I already knew that I
had a second great grandfather named Moses, So when I
was doing my research, I was looking for Moses.
Speaker 6 (36:13):
I was looking for that great grandfather.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
But when I found this whole article about this Moses
Williams with the forty five children. He's looking fifty but
he's actually sixty five.
Speaker 6 (36:26):
And yeah, this is in.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
An article, guys, And then they tell you. They're telling
you everything about it.
Speaker 6 (36:31):
And at the very end of the article it says
that it was verified. So this was true.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
And I sent it to him. I sent it to Brian,
and I was like, Brian, this is Moses. I'm not
doing this, you know, this research on him because we
never told y'all his age. So Brian turns around and
he goes and he finds an obituary note for him,
and the obituary note simply says age man one hundred
(36:58):
and fifteen dies.
Speaker 6 (37:01):
Forty three of his children are surviving him.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
So when I'm looking at it, like and in fifteen,
now I know that my Moses was born in seventeen
ninety one.
Speaker 6 (37:12):
This ain't my Moses.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Who was this?
Speaker 6 (37:15):
So then Brian comes back and says, yeah, this is
his father.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
I'm like, no way, now, no, I'm not doing this
research because that means every last one of his children
were enslaved and I am not going into that.
Speaker 6 (37:32):
And he made me do it.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
So forty five, forty five children all were enslaved.
Speaker 4 (37:39):
So to put Moses into context, he was born when
America was still a calony. British pound sterling was the
currency of the day. Well, briches or pantaloons or you know,
the zipper wasn't even invented at that point. When he
got you know, he was here for all those major wars,
(38:00):
Polutionary War, War of eighteen twelve and made it, you know,
the Civil War when he was born, in the Mexican War,
when he was born in seventeen sixty nine, when he
was old enough to remember the Revolution, he would have
heard all those words about liberty and freedom, We're not
going to be slaves to Britain. He would have understood it.
(38:21):
He would have heard it, and he could never have
conceived that he would ever be free. And he survived it.
He survived slavery for a good few decades because he
died in eighteen eighty four. His father, who was was
also his enslaver, Daniel Williams. Daniel Williams wife was his
(38:43):
aunt because Moses's mother was Daniel Williams enslaved sister in law. Yeah, okay,
I'm seeing people's people's heads agains, but I.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Do think this is a really I mean the context
of where we are today, the idea that.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
We are being separated so intentionally.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
From this place around who is who is the most American?
What history deserves to be spoken about and taught? What
are our identity?
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Who are that? This is so let's go back to
you being an activist.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
This is a revolutionary app because what happens is that
we have to contend with the identity of ourselves, our families,
the country that has been built around us, our part
in that, and that It is not a cut and
dry story. It is not a you know, no pun intended,
(39:50):
black and white story. This is a story about a
number of systems that have been in place since the
fifteen hundreds that.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
In this country, and that now we are.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Contending with what happens when you set up something like
this and you insert human beings into it, and then
you look at it four hundred.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
And what sixty five seventy some odd years.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Later, right when I wrote my book, Brian and I
because Brian was my editors completely, you know, he and
I have done so much together. But when I wrote
my book, he started doing something called characters and started,
you know.
Speaker 6 (40:34):
Explaining who each character was.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
And he spoke about Martha, the one that I talked about,
and it was like she was speaking through him when
he did it, and it angered so many people on Facebook,
on that Facebook page, and it angered so many different
people because they were like, why are you talking about slavery?
You're not slaved, You weren't enslave. You weren't this, You
(40:58):
weren't that. Why are you even discussing that?
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Why are we Why are we talking about the Revolutionary War?
Why are we talking about who died on the battlefield?
They were still carrying around a flag of the people
that lost.
Speaker 6 (41:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Confederate monuments, why why are we to have these things
are out there protecting Christopher Columbus statutes? Why why is
your opinion of yourself so damn hi that nobody else
can have a history?
Speaker 5 (41:32):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (41:33):
It doesn't, And you know that's not why hold on.
Speaker 6 (41:37):
I gotta be quiet now.
Speaker 4 (41:40):
I was gonna say for people who couldn't and this wasn't.
This is for the wealthiest, for people who couldn't do
a thing for themselves, not a thing. They have black
people to do everything for them, But they wanted to
take all the credit for it, But what's the reason?
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Asia all the reason? And the chorus says why.
Speaker 9 (42:09):
More conversation after the break.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Speaking of white supremacy, Guys, just asked a question real
quick because I noticed in my little journey that while
I was trying to find out about my et grandmother,
that was limited information. But when her husband and she
married was an Indigenous man, it seems like the role
call that was kept on indigenous people is ridiculously meticulous.
Speaker 6 (42:42):
Am I tripping you?
Speaker 4 (42:43):
Guys? No, No, you're not, You're not. You know, there
was a very I can't remember his name again, it's Virginia.
It's either Virginia or South Carolina. I swear it was
in the nineteen twenties. He was an avowed racist and he
wanted to limit the number of people who can claim
Native ancestry. So they have these things called the Eastern
(43:05):
Cherokee Application Forms. You can get them on full three
level form. It's an amazing resource because it has generations
of family named. If you named one black ancestor, that
was it. Your application was melin void denied Negro ancestry.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah wow, because that's that one drop, that's a part
of that that one one drop. Well, you know that's
interesting because we've had other guests come on and talk
about some of the anti blackness within the indigenous communities
and of course the somewhat unsavory history of slavery within
those communities as well.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
So this kind of brings a little bit of that
to the surface.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
But you know, of course it all gets introduced through
you know, these kind of white supremacist lenses and things
like this form where you know, but it is all
about how they create these things. You gotta you gotta
get into this lane so I can tell you what
you can have. I should I feel this form out
so that I can tell you that you don't get
to live here this you don't get to have this. Yever,
(44:07):
it's never for your benefit.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
We'll put your face up next to this paper bag
and I'll let you know what you can get.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
We'll get back to you.
Speaker 5 (44:15):
I'll get back to you.
Speaker 4 (44:17):
Can I share a snippet of history that I hope
is going to make your audience feel really proud about
our people and kind of our start.
Speaker 5 (44:23):
Are you kidding?
Speaker 4 (44:25):
There was early Africans in Virginia, those sixteen nineteen Africans
and a couple and many others who arrived between sixteen
nineteen and sixteen thirty, but I'm going to concentrate on
those sixteen nineteen. So we're told they were slaves, they
would have been slaves, that they had ended up in Mexico,
that's their original destination before they got captured by the British.
(44:46):
Their definition here is pretty nepulous. I think the best
one was called a bombed servant because they had to
basically pay off the cost of a voyage that they
never signed up to take in the first place. But
that's another story for another day. They're here and all
but one of them are able to buy themselves out
of their bonds, and these people start buying up large
(45:08):
tracts of land, which means they had to learn English.
English was not their native for Okay, and a lot
of them were in Goldin's who were Catholic were told
they were savages, that they lived in huts. They did not.
They came from a very cultured kingdom. It was a
Catholic kingdom. So you had the Portuguese who were Catholics
kidnapping Catholic Africans. The Pope is totally cool with this,
(45:30):
by the way, Looking to make a profit. Now, unfortunately
Catholics in Virginia not a good mix because it was
a very Protestant colony at that time. But anyway, most
of them buy themselves out of their bond. They've learned English,
they've learned the English legal system. This is stuff that's
never taught. Donnie and I kind of how to work
this out between, like how did they manage to do
(45:52):
all this stuff? Two of them became magistrates, four of
them had white servants, and when they died, the Colony
of virgin the bridges of Virginia that were like the
governmental body started closing that door. When the last black
magistrate died, they passed a law black people can't be magistrates.
(46:13):
When the last one with the with the white servant died,
there's a code black people can no longer hire or
be monsters over white people. All of you know, their achieatment,
they just kept making achievement after achievement after achievement, and
when they died, there's a law, can't do this, can't
do that, can't go here, can't you know, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (46:35):
And from that point, fast forward to the Civil War
era and their come and now they've been enslaved for
all these years, and now the Civil War has come
and gone, and now we're free again. They came out
from Reconstruction era moving faster than the speed of light
because they became doctors, lawyers. It was over fifteen hundred
(47:00):
African Americans who was in any type of position that
you can think of as far as government was concerned, local, state, federal,
They were everywhere. They moved at the speed of light.
They became teachers, they became doctors, they were everything. Within
a fifteen year period, one hundred HBCUs were created because
(47:25):
of it.
Speaker 4 (47:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Well, I want to go back to one of our
early early episodes and I talked about reading Black Reconstruction,
which is like should be required reading for any person
in this country, period, but particularly for black people. WBD boys.
Black Reconstruction really does a very good job. It's not
the only book that does a good job at this,
(47:47):
but it does a very good job.
Speaker 3 (47:49):
Of really talking about that time.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Period after the Civil War and during that time and
what was accomplished, what was taken away, what was structurally
changed in order for it to never happen again. And
we're able to see from each state's Constitution, which was
ratified in each individual state. So when you hear white
people say things like states rights, when they say that,
(48:11):
that is a that is a dog whistle to Reconstruction
era anti black laws that still exist on the books
in almost all of these states.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
So when they say things like states rights.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Or we don't want big government, we want small government,
states rights, all of that is a dog.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Whistle to anti black legislation.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
That means we don't want black people to have economic
or political power, period. So don't buy into that, BS.
And it's like when you hear black conservatives in particular
spill out this same type of propaganda.
Speaker 3 (48:45):
It is a problem. Please know that.
Speaker 5 (48:48):
If we really are people that we will make a way.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
Yes will you will make a way to left to
be excellent, to advance.
Speaker 5 (49:01):
We do these things right.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
So just imagine had this society and all the others,
you know, if they hadn't had such a hatred towards us,
there wouldn't be the issues that they have with us
right now. I don't believe that people naturally gravitate to
selling drugs or selling people for that matter.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
I don't think that that's a natural thing for us,
but you put us in positions where we have to
make a way or try to survive when everything at
our cities are destroyed, our towns are destroyed, our education
is denied. You know, so many things had we just
been left the fuck alone.
Speaker 4 (49:47):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
You're talking about people who started off not being able
to read a language.
Speaker 5 (49:53):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
People are forced to take a name that they doesn't
belong to them at all.
Speaker 3 (49:59):
Right, dead, that wasn't their dead.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
That was dead, and save.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
A group of people that they didn't need to save
because had it not been for those sixteen nineteen people,
those twenty odd people, Virginia would have died.
Speaker 4 (50:15):
Yes, that's the killer. Because Donnia has spoke an important truth.
That was the third time that Jamestown was on the
verge of failing due to because they didn't know how
to do anything. They did not send their best, in
their brightest.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
They send the thieves, the same murderers, and they send
the criminals stay in this place, and the.
Speaker 4 (50:38):
Rich and the rich men who didn't know how to
do anything.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
That's right when Donna's embarrass.
Speaker 4 (50:44):
Yes, so when Donnia said, these people saved Jamestown, they
saved Jamestown. They knew how to grow food, they knew
how to rear the animals, they knew how to build houses,
all of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
And the response, the response to them to who they were,
Like I said, this is really important piece of information
that they learned early on. That the response was to
learn from them and then use the systems to then
say we will shut you down that once they are gone,
(51:16):
then you say, okay, now this is not allowed. Because
that's really important piece there, because I think a lot
of times when we talk this is erasure.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
This is almost the.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
This is the definition of erasure. You people do a
thing and then you outlaw this thing that they did,
and then too it only takes a generation to come
by before they never knew it ever existed in the
first place.
Speaker 4 (51:40):
And I left your point about big states rights. I'm
just going to put this out there because it's very topical.
So we get the states rights argument. But at the
same time, the same group of extreme conservative GOP people
they want to be in your gynocologist's office with you,
(52:01):
telling you what you can and cannot do with your
own body. They want to be in the classroom telling
teachers what they can and cannot That doesn't sound like
small governments.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
No, that kind of sounds like, Yeah, hypocrisy is the
is the American way.
Speaker 6 (52:16):
Isn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (52:19):
Only way, Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 5 (52:23):
Listen.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
Our strengths and our weaknesses, our tenacity, all of it
derives from situations now and then and the blood that flows.
We'll hate ourselves by design, but we can destroy the
chains with knowledge, with comprehension of who we are.
Speaker 4 (52:45):
Inform yourself and realizing that the system has played us for.
Speaker 5 (52:50):
Generations, for generations.
Speaker 4 (52:52):
Cause if we were acting, I mean knew one people
is ever going to be united. Human beings just aren't
built that way. But if the majority of us can,
I mean, that's probably the worst pot bubble for the
group of people that we're talking about, white supremacists. But
if non white people, I'm going to expand this beyond
African Americans would just come together and say, you know what,
(53:14):
we're drawing a line under the sand. Y'all had a
good run of it. European descend to people for the
hunt for centuries, you've made a mess of it. It's
our turnout. We can't do any worse and what you've done.
I was having this conversation with JOHNNYA in the car,
I think a week ago saying indigenous peoples all around you.
(53:36):
Think about all the places in the world that got
colonized by Europe. Indigenous people are not responsible for climate change.
We even create pollution. Our people or had religions and
cultures about celebrating living in harmony with the planet. You
look at any indigenous people, they have mythologies and a
real sense of duty to take care of Mother Earth.
(53:58):
Raping mother Earth was as foreigner news to any group
of indigenous people as any kind of thoughtform told possibly be.
But yeah, we're told that we're the Syphageans.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
That was just that was just a moment of silence,
because yeah, it's deserved, it's deserved. This is if you
have any questions, you know, we're going to give you
some resources so that you can take your time and investigate.
It's worth the trip. Knowledge really is power, and you
(54:33):
are the last dragon.
Speaker 5 (54:35):
You are the last dragon, Paul.
Speaker 3 (54:40):
Power real rap.
Speaker 5 (54:50):
Listen, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (54:52):
Thank you, Brian Sheffy, I said it right this time,
I hope. Thank you Donnie Williams for being supporters of
j dot Ilde podcast and being.
Speaker 10 (55:04):
So sough, so open, and so informative, being so multi dimensional.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
You are who we hope we've been speaking to. You
are absolutely we feel like we're on We've been par
for the course. So thank you for that, and thank
you everyone for listening to j dot Ilede podcast. You
are loved beyond what you know, and you can do
more than you've done. I promise be good, y'all.
Speaker 3 (55:41):
How do You Eat an Elephant?
Speaker 4 (55:43):
One?
Speaker 3 (55:44):
By Cod.
Speaker 11 (55:47):
Hey listeners, it's Amber the producer here. I am so
excited to dig deeper into my own lineage, and today's
guests have so many resources to help us start this journey.
I am so excited to dig deeper into my lineage,
and today's guests have so many resources to help us
start that work. Ryan actually wrote two books. The first
(56:10):
one is called Practical Genealogy fifty simple steps to research
your diverse family history and a Family Tree Workbook that's
thirty plus step by step worksheets to build out your
family history. You can find both of these books on Amazon.
I'll link them in the show notes. They also have
an amazing genealogy show that you can watch on YouTube,
Facebook and E three sixty TV. They offer genealogy services.
(56:33):
If you want to work with them one on one,
you can drop them an email at Genealogy Adventures at
E three sixty tv dot com. And just again, I'll
drop all this info and all the links in our
show notes.
Speaker 4 (56:50):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Hi.
Speaker 1 (56:59):
If you have comments on something we said in this
episode called eight six six, Hey Jill, if you want
to add to this conversation that's eight six six four
three nine five four five five. Don't forget to tell
us your name and the episode you're referring to. You
might just hear your message on a future episode.
Speaker 11 (57:19):
Thank you for listening to Jill Scott Presents Jay dot lthepodcast.
Speaker 5 (57:27):
Jay dot L is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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