Family roots run deep

By Laila Muhammad | Last updated: Mar 21, 2014 - 3:50:11 PM

Searching for my lineage

“For Africa to me ... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.” ~Maya Angelou

Brushing my grandmother’s salt and peppered hair, she stopped me, “I’m dying,” she said in a firm, unapologetic tone that I had been used to hearing my entire life. This tough as nails, five foot three inch, caramel complexioned, slender woman was even feistier in her eighties, than she had been in her youth. But as tough as she seemed, I knew it was just a cover for an extremely sensitive woman. “Don’t cry for me, I had a good life, even though I had to bury my firstborn and my husband,” she said.

I tried to hold back the tears.

My grandmother, who has lived in the same house for more than 40 years, is the only child of farmers, and has given so much to her family. I took a break and leaned against the mantel; Staring into the faces of family members I have never met, but who shared the same features as me.

And as I looked at a picture of her … I asked myself is this the face of cancer?

She asked me to, in the most sincere tone ever, to help her find our family, and to find out where we came from.

She told me stories of how her and my grandfather met in Arkansas as children, living in neighboring towns. She told me she didn’t know where her unusual name stemmed from, and handed me an old frayed obituary of a six foot tall mulatto man who they said was her husband’s father, but whom she never met.

So with a few names, a torn birth certificate, and an obituary, I gave her my word, that I would find her roots.

I had no clue to where to start, so I searched a few court records and websites, found a couple of entries, and even signed up on Ancestry.com, but I didn’t find anything that I didn’t already have.

I didn’t want to go back to my grandmother empty handed. So I did what any desperate person in my shoes would do. I reached out to the professionals. I found a brother and historian who actually does this for a living, and takes the stress out of combing through thousands of census records. So in a few days’ time, this historian and researcher was able to find my great, great grandfather’s World War I military record and documentation dating back to 1850 that showed he was not born a slave. We were eventually presented with much information, documents, tombstones and pictures of 5 generations of family members who came from Mississippi and Arkansas and migrated north.

My grandmother didn’t even know that Black people born in the South during slavery could be born as free men and women.

When he called and presented us with his findings, she was in awe, practically in tears, and overwhelmed with excitement. Not only did we find out about our family, we were able to give a terminally ill woman her last wish and ultimately brought a dispersed family closer. So sooner than later, I’m going to take the booklet of our family tree that is being compiled as I write these words, and present it to her, and I know the smile on her face will be priceless.

Hers isn’t the face of cancer; it is the face of a woman finding joy and comfort while discovering her roots.

I came into the realization that no matter what folks from the North say, and in particular Chicago most of us have family from Mississippi, mines just happens to stem from Coffeeville, Mississippi, population 905 and Cotton Plant, Arkansas population 649 as of 2010.

May Allah (God) bless us all to find the missing branches in our family trees. May he give us the strength to endure all that we discover, and may we all be blessed to be a comfort to our elders and give them their flowers while they live.

To start the journey on finding your roots, and searching for your ancestors or to take a historical tour in the Atlanta area contact Nasir Muhammad at [email protected] and follow him on Facebook at Black Mecca of the South Tours.

(Laila Muhammad is a Chicago-based writer, videographer and Final Call production assistant.)

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