The Sunday Story: Honoring My Enslaved Ancestors
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When we talk about tracing our roots and no, where am from, pretty much the south north of alignment, to be more exact. But if you try to get really specific, there's a lot I don't know. B, A, Parker is the cohoes of M P R S code switch.

SHE knows exactly where her ancestors came from, a plantation in north airline, a called summer set place. She's been told her relatives were among the thirteen original slaves before B, A was born. Her mother and grandma went to a homecoming there for thousands of descendants of the plantation.

I can tell you who my great, great grandmother was. And I think that as the one thing summer said taught me importance of knowing your ancestry. Because, you know, most White, they can trace all the may flow flower daughters of the revolution. But a lot of times black families can't do that.

So what happens when you can visit the very place where your black ancestors lived and breathe, but is also the same place where they lived and died as slaves? This year, ba and her mom decided IT was time to order their ancestors and take ba to where IT all started. Summerset plantation.

Am I jaso? And this is a sunday story. Here's ba. With the story of her journey to the plantation. You can hear more about ba s efforts to trace her roots on in P. S cold switch podcast.

Lately i've been trying to figure out what kind of descendent I want to be, knowing that I come from enslaved people is a crucial part of who I am. I want to honor my ancestors kind of room of everything I do, which is no big deal, just the weight of generations of ancestors towering over me and who accuse the bee. But i'm only one person, so i'm choosing to focus on one ancestor. And I think that's how he would have wanted. IT appreciate you.

Help me. Grams.

you just folk with me that's up that's my grim SHE helped raise me. In fact, SHE was my kindergarten teacher and for the longest time, SHE was my main interview subject because they would just me in her hanging out during the day grandma, the git, that's all i'm doing for this jail. Can you .

interview like what learnt .

I learning how to do? But I sit with somebody and we will talk about a specific story, or whatever gray, man, specific story always started with where she's from.

Grams grew up in farming .

country in cis.

Former gray long rose in class be closed at the.

Crustal is small. I mean, its main street is a block. In my lifetime, a freeway was built in the middle of the town to get to the outer banks faster.

And of the about two hundred and seven people currently living there, a significant portion of the population is related to me. It's a place that my grams loved fiercely. And on the edge of Chris .

wall is a plantation and free plantation. I just out of a criswell, my ma great gram, but sly say they have their children there, some other children there. The balloons reached bone patients down .

the line. We come from Richard in patients. That's the origin story my mom and I always got.

My mom remembers summer set the way. Most of the family remembers summer set as a sign. You pass on the way to church. I have spent every summer of my life and press well, and I saw the signs that said, some of siber, we never paid in a mine. No one in our family ever felt the need to go to the plantation.

I had never been to summit place before one thousand nine eighty six.

That was the year another descended of summer, said miss dis brul. Redford organized the homecoming. SHE said he'd grown up ashamed of her ancestors had been enslaved, saying during the black pride movement of the one thousand sixties, there was a tendency to gnp our slave ancestry. But then in the late seventies, when the phenomenon that was alex hailes many serious routes came out, SHE was inspired.

Miss redford spent the .

next ten years researching where SHE and other discendent ants came from and planned a reunion in August of one hundred and eighty six. For all the descendants of the enslaved sheet found from summer set.

there were a whole other people, never stained by both White and black. All of our terms, sai was says, no one thousand descendants .

of slaves gathered today, the north CarOlina plantation where their ancestors work more than two hundred years ago.

Media swarmed onto summers. Their ancestors came here as slaves, and they drain the swamp land, and then they farm the land, generation after generation of them, slaves. Twenty one .

family times.

But that was my grams on nbc news coverage. In fact, grams was interviewed by cbs sunday morning too. Mommy calls and tells me the bill witcher from cbs .

was coming to .

baltimore to interview her and cousin law. And I was like for what he said. They dawn this big thing down across swell.

The descendants of the plantation a summer said the TV crew traveled with grams from balls to modern north CarOlina. My mom went down with some of my grandmother siblings. I took a bus without the way and out the rain.

Uncle, hey, were from washington, D. C. To summer set. My great uncle.

L, hey, what was heard trying to connect the dots between new family members? SHE said, your brother is her grandfather, right? He was a my family had this life changing experience where they got to see long lost relatives and confront their family's history in a way they never had before. Even the more difficult parts, two direct descendants of the original plantation owner, were on hand. I can take any a credit for IT.

and I hope people give me any blame for the fact with my anti in the old late. So I think we can only be responsible for what we do.

For the ninety eighties, this was considered progressive, just to have the descendant of a plantation owner meet the descendants of the enslaved. But hearing this now, IT doesn't sound progressive. What here is? A White woman taking no account service for what was done.

Yeah, yeah. IT was a different time. But now, when I think about present day divides, the idea of a reunion like this feels impossible. There would be the White descendants angry that the history of slavery was even brought up, or the White descendants who feel behold, to apologize and take up too much space.

But over thirty five years ago, when this homecoming took place, over a thousand dissidents of the enslaves, all lanka were reunited to honor their shared ancestry. IT was transformative for everyone there. There was a moment of healing.

IT was a tough thing to see. You see the cannes, that slaves bill in the trees, the rain along at the a canada that the slave said at IT was a .

new way of holding this history. I asked my mom what I meant to her. When you went, what did you anticipate? IT? What did you think was gonna a happen the first time you'll went to this big event? I had no expectations AV just going to be noisy because like when the bus pulled in, we were all taking a back.

And we were like, oh my god, as we were driving up to summer, said those trees that the slaves are planted, the sales cyprus trees, they were all adorned with yellow ribbons, even the bus, I kind of quiet as we saw the yellow ribbons, because, you know, yellow ribbons are symbol of welcome home. And so seeing the yellow ribbons, and we will like, oh, welcome home. And despite the circumstances of slavery, this is where our family began in.

There's a bit irony and coming from a place hell bent on denying us our culture in personhood, becoming the actual wellspring of our culture. And personhood, summer said, had become our lunch pin. You weren't feeling sad.

You were just feeling just happy that you always, people were related to use some kind of way. And then two years later, they had another union. I took you, you would see you, you were worn. Then you were running around the plantation like you want IT. As a toddler, I roamed ed around summer set for the second homecoming.

I've seen pictures, but have no real memories of IT pictures of me running with other kids around the sign that reads sight of slave quarters of my cousin danny Carrying me along the brick walkway past families wearing african prints in the late eighties. Some are that helped this place of great importance in the lives of descendants like my grandma and my mom. But since then, the point of the reunions to connect people to their ancestors and their land can has been achieved.

So these big reunions aren't happening anymore in the plantation from my generation, that knowledge and connection is just part of who I am and how was raised. That was a gift from people like miss redford and my grams of holding all of my family's connections close and passed on the folks like me. But I don't have that fountain of familiar knowledge that my grams had on my mom. And if i'm not the holder of all this information than what can I be learning? That is not just about holding the family tree in my brain, it's about the things that I can actually do.

Coming up, I go to summers, said, please, so we are currently locked inside of the masters have stay with us that I would like you're .

listening to. The sundays story will be right back.

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We are back with a sundays story.

Parker, just Parker code switch. My relationship with Christalan wirth CarOlina is pretty much wrapped in death. I don't get me wrong. I love the place i've spent every summer there since I was born, hanging out with outrage, arians going to feed the ducks with my grandpa apple, picking with my great anima oco Normal. I love the sunsets and the dogs walking in the distance and go in the church revivals and freeing ordinal, her son, a fried porch, but is also where all the people who SAT with me at those revivals and on that front porch are now buried, including migrants.

SHE passed away a couple years ago.

He was ninety eight or spectable age to go, if you ask me. And I want to honor my grams the way SHE honor her ancestors. SHE and her nine siblings came together in the one thousand nine hundred seventy to get a grave stone for their grandmother, mobile.

And i've been trying for a year to get a grave stone for grahams. I'm calling um to check this. I can update my or did my grandmother to something through your he ordered an organ.

You got IT. IT takes eight, ten, eight to ten years. How me how are we you looking for the mayor gene? mayor? Gene, wow. yes.

IT takes a long time now to get on the code is because of everything, really, not just the tombstone, but the summit sla B2Cover her. I've been trying for months to find a summer truck. Everything is on backwater. And so my grams has just been resting with just a little blue flag in the ground with her name on IT, waiting for her confirmation number to come up in five to six months.

Grams is now in the symmetry I, where her parents are buried and her grandparents are buried with grams there, i've got ta take her place in continuing the family tradition that SHE and her sister, my grandson, the west, had. Every August i've started picking up flowers. Good so I will we get to cristal me and you can clean off the um the graves and put the flower with all OK.

The graveyard at the church is where the town of Crystal did in. If you go the other direction on main street, you hit the sign to go to the plantation growing up. I didn't go to the summer outside town.

IT was nice to know IT was still there, but I wasn't gonna. The existence of IT was enough, but my on the west takes great pride in summer set and being able to represent our family there. SHE even bought the family membership.

Well, I told we, uh, members of a, uh, summery 分 类型， as I were. I pay thirty thousand a year. What does that give this? But I think even get ten percent this kind, if you want the best.

So my mom and I went on a road trip meat from new york to baltimore to meet my mom, and we drove the cristal all the tour summer set and to check all my grams and make sure that tiny blue flag with her name on IT was still there. Do you think it's accurate if you put your army and you do the phone, phone that the truck, do you do you think that what happened? I've always wanted to do that.

You are not taking advantage of the roads experience. Crussol is about three hundred and sixty five acres of land. And for a long time was my families whole world.

And see some a set place ex IT. Far fifty eight. Oh, right.

Far fifty eight. yeah. And we almost forgotten just how small the town is, just px. There are two cresswell exit. The first leads, the summer set and the last to the city limits.

We missed our exit, but IT let us on the main street where for a long time the only business was a flower shop. Now that's gone, but we found you got a sandwich shop and a coffee bar, one square block of towns that has been missing for a while. I just look so somewhere like spring like this is so wide open. Force and bug .

having to .

come out and dirt rose. Isn't that how grand we said they would go to church? On our way to summer set, we drove down this never ending road, not unlike the one my grandma would have written in a horse and buggy.

E and my mom began remedying about the union from one thousand and eighty six. Remember, I told you we drove up and all the trees say IT was over the year those of the cyber shoes, and say, oh, that's pretty. We pulled up.

We thought there was someone greeting us in a golf car. Alright, we are here, a White man and just showed up. We thought I was going to give us a ride to the visitor center or, but no, he was just the groundbreaking doing this job. As we walked up, I was taken a back by the charming pestle nature of the place, the cat loans, the breeze from the lake, the birds sweetly twittering .

overhead.

For a brief moment, I almost understood why wealthy White people get married in places like this, until I pass the slave quarters on my way to the visitor center. When I opened the door, an older White couple was leaving, and I wondered if they paid for a two dollar tour of the grounds. Well, since they were probably seniors, the wind dollar tour, my mom and I tried to pay for our tour, but the guy wouldn't .

let us. I lead .

the way. OK, our tour guide, was a Young college graduate named lilly. She's twenty two, White, and only been on this job for two months. There are weeks, just like on this land. How is IT for you?

It's nice. You know, IT wasn't adjustment when they told me that they were rats next here. And I was like, they are, huh? In the where .

have you seen any?

I have luckily. No, I see. And he knows .

her stuff.

The formal garden here would have been something that mary Collins would have been in charge of.

But taking this tour with the was a little bit sleep behind you. Is that to form a garden area? And now mary just says, wife, he was in every garden.

That's my cousin alysa. SHE gave me the tour last time I was here back when I was in college. From most twenty years, he had lily's job.

Allissa was one of my only direct cousins who lived in crust wall. SHE had a house across from the supermarket, and SHE really loved her job. Now she's very next, my grams.

You take a breath and take a super world, right? Lily was nice. What's over? he? He just got her degree in forensic, but decided he'd rather be historic interpreter right now. I found myself smiling a lot with her. Not a weird way.

Just I don't know how many black people she's given a tour to today, and I guess I wanted to be OK kind of way, and we were the only black people there. So I kind of had to ask the question. I am curious, like demographically was with the visitors, what do they usually look like?

So IT is pretty mixed. In fact, we do IT a lot of groups, especially ally of descendants, that come here a little bit more of the White population, but still a good amount of afro american is also other nationally.

And you, I mean, the last time I was here, there was like an australian couple that came here. And as you came all the way from sydney to come the summer.

a very I think there's a part .

of me that's worried about an influx of White people discovering crash wall in overwhelming summer set place with their curiosities, with their tourist dollars, with their lay and dangerous. I guess, because when I stand at the canals, I see what that kind of curiosity LED to. Before summer size canals were built for transportation. IT was a massive project foisted on the enslaved. The canals are six miles long and six feet wide, opening up to party feet when they reached .

the copper lung river.

IT was the job of those eighty in slaved native africans to hand dig this canal. And this was a project that started in seventeen eighty six. And so we see that this was a project that was proposed to take five years to complete.

However, the overseas here work these individuals so hard that I only took two and a half years. yeah. And so there are our stories of, at the end of the working day, h individuals who were too tired to climb out of the canal and their bodies were removed .

the next morning.

Lilly would later tell me a story that I didn't fully process at the time, about two sons of the plantation owners and two of the enslaved children having an accident in .

the canal in eighteen forty three and everywhere, two of the boys at ward and hugh were canoeing in the canal with their tune, like play Anderson, and sees an accidents occurring in which is a communal capsize.

And all four boys did drown.

IT was only when I ve got home that I read a letter written in eighteen forty three by a cLarry gamin nam billiam petty grew that I found this tidbit. IT said, quote James newberry and dick blunt, a nig roman took out the children. They'd been drawn a half hour when they were taken from the canal in quote my great, great, great grandfather Richard blunt had been the enslaved person made to take the children out of the canal.

You're listening to the sundays story .

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We are back with the sunday story.

I was here when my mom decided to sit down on a bench instead of going into the home of the plantation owner. IT was three flowers in artifacts glory. If you told to you at any point.

let me know you have to lock IT because of on the third floor. We can hear anyone coming in on the first floor, and we don't want to excEllently lock.

Anyone in are here. So we are currently locked inside .

of the masters .

s house and that I I feel safe.

So this is the escape of proportion .

of the tourist. Alright, yeah, everything has been preserved. Barclays china cabinets for post bids, original oil paintings of each generation of plantation owner, the anti chAmber part towards original, though they were brought in.

And so this next time, here is the office. And so just, I would have cut all of the records for the plantation in this room. A lot of the information that we know from this plantation is because just, I was an avid record keeper. He kept track of the temperature at three event of the day, the Prices of crops, corporates as well as the number of enslaved individuals assigned to each task in order to make sure that no labour was wasted.

So he was doing something during the day, as we left the master's house down a back stairwell, through the service entrance, I was watching my head with every step. Will he finally unlock the door? I was thankful for the fresh air after the creepy suffocation of over two hundred and thirty years of oppression within those three floors.

I rather be out here on this land and deal the rattlesnakes. Oh, SHE delink me in the master's house round IT. wow.

SHE said because of their roles, roles. yeah. When we got to the visitor center, we met Karen hayes.

She's the historic site manager for summer set, the only black employee that we saw that day. The job used to belong to miss northeast. Paul redfern, the creator of summer set homecoming.

Miss redford felt that her job was done. Families found each other. Descendants flocked to summer set to pay, omit to their ancestors, but they can't find those ancestors.

That's the bigger thing that follow me here. We don't know what the great is and no, what is the place to be, right? That's that's the issue.

Record show more than four hundred people who were enslaved died at summer, set between seventy and eighty five and eighteen sixty five. The owners of this plantation were such fastidious note takers about the weather and the crops and even those who died. But I was never passed along where the souls rested.

My mother was born here, but you know she's buried in. So I don't know if her mother, her mother, father, they had to be learned granda. My .

grandmother's grandmother.

mobile, was born on this plantation, and mobiles, parents and grandparents are buried on this plantation. And since a majority of the land is now owned by private farmers, it's possible they could be under the crops. Karen thinks they might be buried at the highest point by the lake.

So they got to be back here somewhere if they are bearing here. We are the way. But I still can't laa reef anywhere on the property, because no one seems to know where my great, great grandparents are buried out there.

After the tour, my mom was thinking about lilly and her forest again, topology, degree, power. Maybe SHE could use her degree to find them. Are you animal questions? me? sure.

Let me go buy your magnet. On a way out, about two magnets to commemorate the experience we didn't use aren't wasis discount. On the state line from the summer set sign down main street, my mom and I grabbed a sandwich, a barnier abets who's .

IT along the way.

a random cousin side on the street coming over.

Hi, hey.

I had no idea how this lady was, but I hugged her anyway. I just knew that we related. My mom knew who he was, just like my grandma would have.

And that's enough. And then we continued on the convery belt of main street all the way to my family's church to visit grams. I see you flakes.

The little flag that rusted where gram's gravestone should be was still there. That was the only way to find her for a long time. And IT hasn't.

Dd, neither had the flowers with place there from last August. 喂， me. I was so excited .

the flag hadn't .

flown away that almost skipped over something important. Great me. You've been seen in the last man .

who did this who.

Someone had cemented my grams, the slab that covers her from the elements which is protected now no more backwater.

no。

To onto my ancestors. This is what I can do. I can try to do right by my grams.

I can help my grunts buy flowers for the graves and sweep them off. I can call the gravestone people and ask what's taken so long. I can just maintain because that's what they did.

We almost. We almost. then. I'm a tried to call Jamie in the car.

闺蜜 不 必备。 Has someone just called me? Yes, ms.

Coker, this is jane. Are you 一首歌？ They are going to install this.

Oh, this memorial on wednesday made thirty first. 哼， 这个？ Well, thank you so much.

You are welcome. And saying we need to do is make sure that is black flag. All right?

IT only took the Better .

part of a year, but I feel a sense of relief now because things are settled. I can onto my grams in the way that SHE honoured her family even set a flower down from mobile. For me, the town of crust wall can be both a family airlie and a family tomb.

And unfortunate that I know my family history and that I have this place that I get to go to once a year and pay ammad. One day i'll be old and i'll still be coming back to this place because as grams always put IT at home, it's why i've got a slight southern draw that I can get rid of. That's and grain to me.

Wait, so what is the stuff, ma, going through your gram stuff? Part of my germain's legacy as a collection of things, things SHE saved for me that my mom recently passed down a black full of grandma's books and official papers, all centering. Summer said, this is a record. It's a record is a record.

Another descendent, jeffrey little john roll, the theme song for the summer, set homecoming. And my grams had .

saved the record .

even head an autographed .

all your grammer.

First words on the show.

变得 漂亮 自在。

And that's our show. You can follow us on instagram at N P R code switch, if email is more you think ours is cold switch at N P R dead org, the subscribed to the podcast on the M P R APP whatever you get your podcast just wanted to give a quick shot out to a code switch plus listeners. We appreciate you, and thank you for being a subscriber.

Subscribing to code switch plus means getting to listen to all of our episode without any support breaks. And IT also helps support our show. And if you love our work, please consider signing up at plus that npr, that org slash code switch.

This episode was produced by Jason Christino cola and I was edited by courtney in our engineer was magi lufa. And a big shut out to the rest of the cosy ch. Massive lead dena loyalist, arga, gene denby, Steve drain, demote a and brilliant Williams.

Our art director is l. Johnson. Special thanks to britain, lose Tracy hunt, mister thy spoil redford and her book summer set homecoming, Karen hayes in the staff of summer and thanks to my mom for going on this journey with me. I B A. Parker, hy drink.

You've been listening to the sunday story. The sunday story is edited by genie hit. Our producers, our Andrew mobo and just Henry hoi and Emily silver are our fellows.

Leona simpsons is our supervising producer and iguchi is our executive producer. Am I shares go up first, is back tomorrow with all the new you need to start a week. Until then, have a great rest of your week.

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