Events & Calendars Held in the Balance: The Trask 250 by Nicka Smith

Transcript of Held in the Balance: The Trask 250

- Good evening, I'm Elizabeth Herbin-Triant, I'm a faculty member in Black studies and history, and I wanted to welcome you all, thank you so much for coming. I'm delighted to be introducing Nicka Smith tonight. Nicka is a professional photographer, speaker, host, consultant and documentarian, with more than 20 years of experience as a genealogist. She has extensive experience in African ancestor genealogy and reverse genealogy, and is an expert in genealogical research in the Northeastern Louisiana area and in researching enslaved communities. Nicka has diverse and very varied experience in media with a background in audio, video and written communications. She's appeared on the Today Show, CNN, MSNBC, and on the series, Who Do You Think You Are? And she's been interviewed by the Oakland Tribune, The Undefeated, National Geographic, and Time. She's the host of BlackGenPro LIVE. I'm sorry, BlackProGen LIVE, an innovative web show with more than 125 episodes focused on people of color genealogy and family history. Today's talk is a culmination of nearly a decade of work for Nicka, including extensive research in the Amherst College Archives. And speaking of the Amherst College Archives, I'd like to encourage students to attend an open house in the archives on Wednesday afternoon from four to 5:30 with Nicka, you'll have the opportunity to view many of the documents that she'll reference in today's presentation. This will be a low key drop in opportunity for students to follow up with Nicka. Nicka, we're so grateful to you for joining us to share your extraordinary research, thank you so much for coming to Amherst College. Please join me in welcoming Nicka Smith.

- All right, let me turn this thing on. Hello.

- [Audience] Hi.

- Hey, I don't do quiet crowds, okay? This is not stuffy, don't say anything to me. No, no, no, no, no, I don't do that, okay? Especially not with the subject matter, this is a big, big deal. You are sitting in a very historic moment and I really want you all to realize this. I've called several people that I know that are in this space, and we believe I'm probably one of the first descendants of an enslaved community tied to a college or university to come and present their research on this level. So , thank you for indulging me for today before I get started, I want to start with a story. 20 years ago this year I was sitting in a seat just like you. Now I may not look like I'm 22 anymore, but, or maybe I do, but I was sitting in a college, on the college campus and I was in a classroom with theater seating, I was in a history of Africa class, the irony, right? Sitting in the history of Africa class, I was on a college campus where I was one of very few Black students, and this was in the Bay area. I was literally a mile plus from Stanford University. And I left my cell phone in my room that night. You know, we had cell phones then, and you know, the internet had just come out when I started college. That sounds crazy to you, but it really did. I didn't get my first email address until I was in college. I know we'll talk about that later. But either way, I left my phone in my room and I walked back to my room and I had missed a bunch of calls and I didn't know what was going on, and my sister picked up and she said, I'm going to mom's house. And I was like, okay and she said, I'm going to go check on her, see what's going on. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And she said, they didn't tell you dad died. And it was a month before I graduated from college. And I share that story because this is my father's side of the family. So in order to have his voice reflected here with me, you're going to see videos of my dad when he was in his early twenties that he left behind for me. And I really want to implore you, you know, you've got iCloud, I don't know what Android users have 'cause I don't use that. But you've got your iCloud, you've got all these different things. Make sure you back your memories up, make sure there's a place for you to put them because I would not have videos to show my son had my father not archived his life. And really just mundane things, you'll see him doing or smiling. But I really want to just dedicate this to my father. 'Cause he didn't even know a lot of the names that you're going to hear tonight. And there's a lot of reasons for why that is. You're going to go through a lot of emotions, hearing this information. Some of it you're going to want to punch someone in the jaw and that's okay, other parts of it, you're going to be excited, you're going to be happy, it's going to be new information, but I really want all of you to know that when I was sitting in your chairs, I didn't know that I would be here doing this right now. There wasn't a genealogy field like it is right now. So there may be things that you have ideas about, and you're not really sure how you're going to execute them, or you don't really feel like you have the support, but if I could be here doing this, having this hobby and no one would even really consider it a job now, just what the world is going to look like for you in 20 years. Okay, so if you don't take anything else from what I said, take that. All right, so let's get started. How in the world did I get to this information, okay? And that's a lot. We're going to start with the 1900 census. If you've never seen a census, well, you did one last year, right? They asked you a bunch of questions, now, before we would self-report information, meaning they send you the form and you fill it out and all that kind of stuff. Someone would go door to door to your house and ask you questions, and they'd go in order. And if you lived in a major metropolitan area, they'd write down the street number and they'd write down the street and all kinds of stuff. And so when I first started research on my father's side of the family, I only knew back to my great grandparents. That was it, and the thing is these great grandparents raised my father, and not only my father, but they also raised my aunt and they raised my aunt and my father's three first cousins. And that was the story, right? They lived in this big family house on the south side of Chicago, but I knew my grandfather was from New Orleans. And so using census information, found him on the various years and then when I got back to his father, I found him in a household with people I had never heard of. Let's see, maybe I walked away too far, maybe not, all right. So there's my great-grandfather name is James Benjamin Soul. And he was born in July of 1887, okay. Now for genealogists, if you're finding a grandchild in the home of grandparents, this list is like a lucky thing, right? Because you get to skip some generations, right? Like, yay, I get to give back two generations. But for me, this was not lucky because how are these people connected? He's in his household with people with the last name Reader. Where does Reader fit in with Soul? Could it be his mom? I'm not sure, and then there's another child in the household, Eleanor Spears, who is that? Is that his sister? Or is it his first cousin? I had all these questions. I said, okay, well, this is great, but how can I find his mother? I had no idea how to find his mother or his father. Now here's the interesting thing, I literally had to guess when it came to his dad, because when I went on to additional records like his draft card, instead of listing just a place of birth, meaning a state, it listed an exact city or town. And in this instance it says Vidalia, Louisiana. And that is not New Orleans. That's further north it's on the Mississippi Delta. In fact, today, I just learned that Bill and Melinda Gates through several entities own more than 20,000 acres of farmland in that parish today. You know, I was researching to see where it was because I wanted to see if it was on the land where my folks were, I wanted to see that wasn't able to confirm that, but yes, 20,000 acres of farmland, if you are interested in looking in that there was a whole story and piece done on in the New Orleans Times, Picayune about the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, having thousands of acres of land in the heartland in the Louisiana, Mississippi I'll call all across the country. So I had Vidalia, I knew this was honey 'cause that's what we called him. That was his nickname was honey, I knew that because Theresa was my great-grandmother, I knew 4902 south Michigan because in my family, my parents don't say great grandma's house or grandpa's house. They use the address to tell us where you're at. 6131 South Ray seed. I got a cousin who is sitting here in the front row. She can say it that's uncle King's house, she knows. Cause we don't use people's names we use the address. So I tried to find him and other records, but the problem is he was born during a time span. We don't have a lot genealogically speaking for children. The 1890 census was partially burned and then the census bureau burned the rest of it. So we don't have that to you, so the first census I had for him was the one in 1900 that I just showed you. So how could I find his parents? Now, the question is, well, I mean, don't you have other relatives, didn't you say that your father was raised with his first cousins and yeah, that's true, he was. And ironically, one of my father's first cousins is what people call a human computer. She can rattle off what she had for breakfast on March 1st, 1978, I'm not joking, what she was wearing, what she did that day, she remembered all those things. And she told me, she said, well, I don't remember Honey's mother's name. But I do remember we have a cousin that lives in Oakland. And at the time she was telling me this story I was living in the Bay area, I was living in Oakland and she said, yeah, you know, because me and your dad, we went with Honey on a train to Oakland when we were kids. And I'm like, my dad never told me he left Chicago because after my family left New Orleans, they moved to Chicago, which is where he's doc. This is Honey's draft card in Chicago and I said, you guys went to Oakland and she said, yeah, because aunt Nora lived there, remember the girl on the census with him, that was a sister. Okay, and she said, yeah, aunt Nora lived in Oakland and their mother was dying, she was dying. Okay, but she's not in Louisiana. So then how does she get to California? Well, they had taken her from there and brought her to California. What's her name? I don't remember her name, but I bet you aunt Nora's house is still there. Here's the address, she gave me the address to aunt Nora's house and told me they probably still owned it. And that if I called our cousin who was named Morrie Turner, he could probably tell me Honey's mother's name, which would be my great, great grandmother. So, you know, what do you do when we had still had phone books? Have you guys ever seen a phone book? Okay. You may or may not have that's all right, right. We got to get that in the archive. We got to get that in an archive, that sounds so crazy. So she said tracked out Maury. See if you can find Maury, Maury can tell you something he's a famous cartoonist. So this explains why when I had to do a project in second grade called maize is corn and I didn't know what I was going to do on that poster board, but my dad said, we're going to draw Thanksgiving and you're going to color it in and I thought he was absolutely nuts until my father drew a Thanksgiving scene and I colored it in. My niece is an incredible makeup artist. We have so many people that can draw my family, I'm like, this is a thing. So when the phone book went online, the virtual one and I found Maury and I called him and I'm thinking I'm cold calling this guy. Like he's probably going to think I'm a telemarketer or something. At the time I was not married. And my maiden name popped up on the caller ID. And he said, Hey, and I'm like, hi, I'm your cousin, you're on of uncle shug's people. Sugar. Honey. Same person. So I said, yeah, I said, I'm calling you because my cousin gave me information and I should call you and he says, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Turns out he really was a famous cartoonist. In fact, he had the first syndicated minority cartoon strip in the country called Wee Pals. They even did a television show off of it, called Kid Power. We forged a relationship, me and good old Morrie Turner for many years before he passed away in 2014. And his death was so important that he got a New York times obituary, not everybody gets those. And so we kept talking and he was honored by the state of California for this and for that, this man drew his comic strip all the way up until he died. And I said, here's my question, who is their mother? He said, I don't know her name and I'm thinking, oh my gosh is everyone that I asked this question going to say that? He said, but let me tell you what you can do. Go to Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland. And this was a cemetery I passed by every single day. I went to work in downtown Oakland and he said, go find my mother, go find my father and her headstone is right next to theirs. So I walked out to the cemetery. Now, you know, I didn't know where in the world I was going. And I was hoping and praying that the people, the grounds folks would stay around so that if I went to the wrong spot, they could be like, no baby, go over here, right. Just like I was trying to find this building the day I was like, Ooh, am I going to the right place? I'm so glad I used Google maps and did the street view. So I know what the building looks like, but you don't have that for cemeteries, so there was a grounds person. He took me right over there. And well, what do, what does she say about her mother? Do you remember anything about.

- Well, I'm in, I know I went to what? Imagine we went to message and I remember the place. I remember the house, I remember the house being separated from the kitchen and is a separate building. In between that and the house, there were animals like cows and a whole bunch of stuff, roaming free. I wasn't afraid of all those things. And then when she got much older and we went to Mississippi and got her and brought her Bergen and she was, constantly walking away the house, please bring her back.

- So he shared many stories like that with me. And I found out her name was Easter Williams. And it had been sitting in a cemetery for all the time that I had been looking for. So sometimes the information is literally right up underneath your nose, but we think it's going to come in this big fireworks display. Drake is going to come out and perform. You're going to get flowers from Beyonce or maybe that nice necklace she's wearing in that Tiffany and Company commercial on Hulu, that I've seen 175 times watching The Wonder Years. Is it just me? I don't understand, it's weird. Either way. I finally got her name. Her name was Easter Williams, and this is when this story goes off the rails and just really kind of changed.

- [Woman] It's very important to me because of the fact that we have such a long line of lineage with our family. And a lot of us never, you know, we weren't able to really learn because some of the older people just never talked, but my father Clinton Palmer, he was the one that was able he did tell me a lot of information and I just want to pass it on. So our family would know just how important we were to society back then and how important we are now and how rich we are with so many resources that we don't even know that we have.

- So how do we go from New Orleans to Vidalia Concordia parish? And then when Maury starts talking to me, he mentioned Mississippi. Now where Honey was from, was along in the Mississippi Delta, okay? Literally right along the river and right across from that area, it was Natchez, Mississippi. And when Maury and aunt Nora, when they went to go and get Easter when she was senile and walking around and just, you know, just not having her bearings about herself, she was living in Natchez. So that gave me even more of a clue as to where to look, so at that point, I said, all right, Honey's not old enough to have been on the 1880 census, but now that I know that Easter is his mother, and I know that Letty who was on that census was her mother, maybe I can find them in that same parish. You know, Louisiana's contrary, we say parish, not county, right? So what if I look for them in 1880? And that's exactly what I did. Now, you noticed, you got to read cursive, sorry guys, they weren't printing back then. I hate to break it to you, but the only way you get better reading the cursive is to keep reading the cursive because, well, you need to keep reading the cursive to read the cards. So I found Letty and I found her mother and I knew it was them because look at who is next to them, Smith Reader, who was on the 1900 census, so I knew these were the right people, but they had the last name Fountain. Now, the reason why this is crazy and you're like, well, why are all these star names involved? We're dealing with women, okay? Every time we get married, we have to change our name, right? And if you have children and you're married multiple times that, hey, that's what happens. The other thing you need to understand about enslavement and slavery for the enslaved was matriarchal. The disposition of a mother determined what happened with their child. So sometimes when you're trying to find enslaved people, you cannot find them because you're looking for them and under their father's surname, but the surname that they took was their mothers. Okay, so at this point again, I knew Easter had died in California. So her birth certificate told me they went under fountain at one point and it pointed me back to Mississippi. So I tried to find them on the 1870 census. You see I'm going back every 10 years because the census is every 10 years. But I wasn't having very much luck trying to find them in Concordia parish, so of course, it's, you know, when you start doing genealogy, you're going to learn who your trouble lines are in your family, it just going to keep giving you trouble over and over and over and over again, eventually you get a break, but they just, you know, I think sometimes they're in the wherever they are, they're sitting there giggling, laughing at us. Oh, look at her, isn't that cute? She's trying that again, either way. The other thing that emerged is that Easter had three sets of children, which further complicates the last name scenario, right? So we have aunt Nora, Nora lived to be almost a hundred years old, thankfully. And she was the keeper of all these pictures. Thank God nor kept all the pictures, our side had none. So I'm Nora that's where Maury, who you heard from comes from, right? Then it's my line that comes from honey, James Benjamin Sewell and then there were more kids from last relationship or actual marriage, she was the widow of a man named Samuel Williams. Now, the reason why I'm showing you this tree is not because I love my use of color on it, but it's because everyone that's in green is DNA tested. Now, why does this make a difference? Well, here's the thing. Most people think that DNA testing is just about getting a little pie chart, right? Oh, that's cute, but 25%, so-and-so 35%. So-and-so yes, that's great. But the power of DNA testing is actually in the DNA matching where I can literally identify relationships between two different people based on the amount of DNA, the two people share, that's what genealogists are doing now. Right? And you all might see it on TikTok with somebody who's saying they met their brother for the first time and they didn't know they had a brother. Why are you all acting like you're not on TikTok, right. You know, the of video, I did an ancestry DNA test. And then the next piece, and I found out I had a brother and then he's waiting in the chair and my brother and I are going to meet today and they get up and they hug, right? All of that is because of the DNA matching technology. She's laughing because it's true, there's so many of those videos out. Either way, the reason why I'm showing you this is because of these three relationships, right? All of us that are in green, we all share DNA as relations, but where this really helps you genealogically is because we're not dealing with two sides of our family that we share the same DNA on. We're only dealing with one because Easter is the common denominator amongst all these people. So what does that mean? That means that if our document trail runs cold and we don't know what to do, we could potentially turn to our DNA matches to see if there are patterns in things that are showing up that will give us the roadmap as to where to go next. Now, from this incident, what started to pop up, right? This is a map, and here's the area we're talking about. This is literally the Mississippi river, all the way down. And I found my people in 1880, I knew that that was them. But what started to pop up was the fact that there was a couple of individuals in a household that looked like they could be Letty Easter, but I wasn't sure they were them because they weren't in the same place. How would I know it was the right people? Remember they could be under a different surname. All kinds of stuff is going on at this time, the country. What's happening during 1870-1880? Come on, who said that? Thank you, wave cap. I don't even know your name with the t-shirt on. Yes, reconstruction, the country is restabilizing itself. We have just ended the civil war, the country, literally people were starving. They needed food, they needed shelter, they did all these things. So that meant that you may not necessarily stay in the same place you were living in that you were enslaved in. You could move around, right? Because you didn't have to get permission from anybody, who going to check you? Nobody's going to check you because you're free. So could it have been there? I don't know, but what happened is that a third location started to pop up and it wasn't because I found them on a census, it was because we had DNA matches there. How does that happen? Because I know Concordia parish based on the documents. And then there's a possible place in 1870 in this town called Woodville in Mississippi, I know my folks at one point lived in Natchez was just north of that, and then we have DNA matches down in a place called Venturous. And it's all on this side of the family. How do you have people who are genetically connected to each other from three different areas and nobody can figure it out? Slavery, that's how you have it. Just like how you can get back to Cameroon and Ghana and all those places through your DNA, you can also retrace the slave trade through DNA. So let's have a conversation about researching the enslaved. There is no central repository to get this information. And this is probably going to be the biggest let down, you are going to have this entire presentation. There is no slavery.com where I just go in, stop laughing at me, where you just go in and type in Nazir Jones, search. There could have been a slave named Naz, we don't know, I haven't found them yet, but either way, there is no central place to go. You have to pull from a number of different resources in order for you to get access to the information that documents enslaved people. Letty was born around the 1830s, Easter in the 1850s, slavery was officially abolished except in the instance of punishment for a crime in 1865. So if you go earlier than the 1870 census, we're dealing with the early seeds of reconstruction and we're also dealing with slavery era document, then there's a lack of access, what do I mean by that? Are the records digitized? Has the municipality made it a priority to digitize these records and make them available to people? Not only that, are they searchable? Can you go in and type a name and to find it? Or do you have to manually search? Have you all ever heard of microfilm? Okay, I'm not even talking to the old people. All you post 99, 2000 born people . Have you ever heard of microfilm? Oh, okay, you see phonebook, microfilm, open ? Got it, we're pulling out all the old tech. Maybe I might, I could bring a 45, Jean has some 45s. If you've never seen a record, have you guys seen records? Okay, good, okay. All right, so with microfilm, it was a great way to preserve records, you photograph them, they'd be on a roll, and in order for people to have access to them, they'd have to pull out this drawer, get the roll, load it on the machine, you get an army, start cranking it, you got to go through all the images and then when we got real high tech, we put that machine on a computer, that was all. That was real high tech. But imagine how tedious that is. If you have to bounce from one location to the next, if you can't literally create some sort of a spreadsheet with all these names on one image, think about it. There were 4 million enslaved people in this country before slavery ended. Think about if you had to track all of them in that fashion. That's the world we're living in right now, but thankfully, some efforts are being made to make it easier to look through this information, but it hasn't always been that way. Now who's heard of 1619? That should be all you all, if not, we got to add that too. Okay, now I love that project, love it. Nicole Hannah Jones, great, love her hair too. But the issue with 1619 is that it takes you a number of generations for you to even trace back that far for just me and my family, that's to my 13th great-grandparents and I'm older than you all, I can be your mama, I could. But that means the 15th great grandparents. And I'm telling you I'm just to, in this presentation, my great, great. So while there are individuals who can trace the 1619, the vast majority of us, that's a bit, there's a very high likelihood, we will never get there, okay? So let's go back to 1880, because this is where my stand still was, I knew these were my people, I knew it, I knew it, but I couldn't be sure that those folks across the river were them, so I said, you know what? Since I like to do unorthodox things and go in the opposite direction that people tell me to go in, what if I started looking at the people living around them? What if they are the clue to finding my folks in 1870 and before. See in genealogy, there is this thought process that look for the nearest white person, 'cause they're going to, you know, they're going to be consistent, they're going to be documented on every census, right? And that's not always the case, right? And this scenario, do you see anybody with a W on this page? B B B B B B, Moo moo moo for mulatto. No. The other thing that I noticed was that there were some Fountains, or people with the surname Fountain, living near them. Were they related? What did I have to lose? Right, why not check them out? So at that point I did find two of those same Fountains. They were living in the same place, 10 years earlier, right, where I was hoping to find my people, I found them. So I said, okay, well, let me see if I can try and find them on something else. Now here's where, whoops, let me go back. I'm over here, just skipping stuff. Here's where my suggestion is for anyone watching tracing enslaved people. Do not go to the nearest white person on the census. That sounds crazy, but that is literally the practice. Don't do that, why? Because a lot of times enslaved communities are preserved in these records. People's neighbors were enslaved with them in community. And when you chase down the nearest white person with a high number or high value of real estate on the record, how do you know that your folks didn't move to that area soon after slavery? How can you make an assumption that that nearest white person was their slave holder? You don't know that, but it's less of a likelihood that the Black folks living around them had moved or that they weren't in community together, right? You guys know about the great migration, okay. People leaving the deep south, going to areas like Chicago, San Francisco, New York, right? And people going together in large groups, you have to think about it from that perspective. So with that said, I have three things that I use primarily when I'm researching enslaved people. And I almost never strike out trying to find them enslaved by using them, one of them is the Freedman's Bureau. If you have never heard of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, I suggest you search it out. And if you end up on Ancestry, you might see a video with the person that looks very much like me on that page, telling you about the Freedman's Bureau. And it was established by Congress, 1865. It is one of the largest scale social service programs. And it primarily documents people who were formerly enslaved in several deep south states, probably about 15, why? Those records say former owner, it just says it. You're not going on a wild goose chase, trying to find who the individual is, okay. There's also things in there called labor contracts, which I'm going to show you that in a second. Civil war pensions, ever heard of the movie Glory? Really nice looking man named Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, right, right? Okay. More than 200,000 Black men fought in the civil war. And as a result of their service, they received pensions from the military. Now, why are those good? Because when they were enlisting, they could potentially name their slave holder. So you're again, you're not chasing down, Oh, let me look at this census, please give me a sign, no, it says it right there, in fact, for some of the 250, the slave holders are the witnesses in the file and they say, I owned the soldier. Plain as day. Wills and probates. Why would I look at wills and probate? I love the eyes going up cause lets me know you're thinking. Slaves were property and if I wanted to bequeath Nazir Jones to Nazir Jones, I could say in my will, I leave to my son Nazir Jones, my Negro man Naz. And if I don't say what I want to go out in my will, it will be included in the inventory of my estate, along with my house and my carriage. And my feather beds, will be a Negro man named Naz. And based on the dollar value, if they didn't put an age for him, I could figure out approximately how old he was based on looking at valuations of enslaved people during their lives. So let's take a look at a labor contract, woo. And when I tell you all, if you're gett in the Freedmen's Bureau, this is some good research right here, okay. It's real good. I found an 1867 labor contract in Concordia parish, Louisiana, and the land owner was a man named A.T Welch, right up there at the top. Goodness, this thing keeps skipping around. Now notice those names on the labor contract. Don't you love the name, Patience Fountain? Like does patience come out of the fountain or do you wish for patience when you throw a penny in the fountain? I haven't quite figured that one out yet, but we find Patience Fountain, we find Henderson Fountain. They were living next to my people in 1880. I found them at 1870, along with two other individuals who appear to be their parents named Delpha Fountain and Isaac Fountain. Now you probably are wondering why are you chasing down this family that you don't know is connected to your community? Maybe if I chase them down because they're more consistent than mine, I might find my people. So let's talk about what happens once you actually go through these records, because here's the thing, this ain't for everybody. You have to have a certain amount of emotional intelligence researching the enslaved. There are going to be things that you were going to read and see that are going to infuriate you. There may be days that you might not even touch the research because you are so emotionally damaged by what you just came across. There are other days where you might cuss the people. Sometimes I do that because they couldn't. You have to learn how to compartmentalize your emotions around this to get to your people or whoever you are researching. You have to turn off your emotions and think like a capitalist. How would I do business? What would I pay? What would be the paper trail that's left behind? That would document my transaction. See, it's easy, she's got a laptop it looks just like mine. How do we know the difference between them? Hers has got stars on it? Mine doesn't. She could decide to charge an extra $10 for her stars? How would I know? Found the receipt from Apple. That's how people were documented. Literally.

- You know, like Jackie said, I'm sorry. Like Jackie said, you know, we have to beat their voice because they can't, and it's still so sad that so much information. I have so many brick walls because of slavery. You know, it's so heart wrenching when you can't even find your people. It took me 30 years to find out who even owned the other side of my family. It's horrible what they did to our history really.

- Go back to what I said about access. There are people who can go online and type in one name and go back seven and eight and nine generations without even trying, and yet we wait for access to improve or get better or even if it is digitized, how are the archives processing it so that I know the names of my people are in those documents? Think of how dependent we are on search engines and keywording. If something is just scanned and it literally says Macbook Pro with stars on it, how do I know it belongs to her? How do I know that she's even associated with it? So there's something to be said for just digitizing and putting it online, but how is that any different from making my computer a microfilm reader? How do we innovate to solve for this problem? You guys might have the information sitting right here in this room. I think you're a lot smarter than I am. There might be an engineer sitting in here right now who can figure out how to make this better. If Google has an algorithm that can run a movie through its system in a minute and tell me how many times a woman speaks in a movie, why don't we have this process more available and accessible? If my airpods know when I take them out of my ears and it knows when I put it back up to reconnect, why do we still have this problem? If my Apple watch knows when I'm walking real fast through the airport that I'm exercising. If you try to use a coupon code for a headband wig and it knows you already used it, right? I love headband wigs by the way, the best technology during a pandemic. But we can do better. So this is where you pivot because in order to research formerly enslaved people, you have to research the slaveholding family. Remember what I just told you about compartmentalizing your emotions? You have to disconnect yourself, you have to literally walk back in that house or into that cotton field for you to find your folks. And this is why certain people can't do this. So I have to get in bed with these people who did this to my family. And that's the only way I can find them. Now on that labor contract was a man named A.T Welch. His name was Augustus Trask Welsh. And while he's on the labor contract as the landowner, right, what labor contracts do is they have a land owner and they have the employees who are working for them. And a lot of times that land owner, the employees, were slave holder and the formerly enslaved. That's why they are a huge clue. So I knew that if I looked up A.T. Welch and looked at his family history and tracked his family, that I could potentially find these individuals that I've been looking for and my people within their enslaved community. Here's the problem. A.T. Welch was in the Freedmen's Bureau. So that meant that he didn't die before the war. And that meant that he didn't have a probate or will, for me to look at that listed the enslaved on there. And the other problem with that is not only did he not have one, but all these people, whoops, let me go back, Oh Lord, okay. I'll appreciate that computer. There we go, all right A.T. The problem is that he died after the war. So that meant I had no probate for him. And that meant that I also didn't have a probate for anyone that was in his generation of the family. Seems like this thing died, maybe it did. Thank you, alright. Because A.T passed away after the war, I had to go out to his first cousins. Why am I looking at his family? Just like the enslaved children were passed down through their, you know, their disposition was based on their mother. If their mother was free, a child was free. If a mother was enslaved, the child was enslaved. This meant, it means the same thing on the slave holding family side, enslaved people were passed down through families. So just as we have Israel Trask being a trustee of this university or school, college, right. He doesn't operate in a silo on his own. It's not just Israel. It's his family. Okay, and there are a bunch of people who were associated with them. Thank you. Look at you, magical helper. Alright, let me turn this on. Okay, I might be up. That's all right, it's okay, hold on. Yeah, no, that's okay. All right, I might have to stand here. That's okay, yeah, I don't think it's connecting. Yeah, it's not. There we go. All right, okay, that's what I'm saying. Cause this is the part you all need to really pay attention to. So I could not use any of these other people in his family because they all died after the war. So some would think that's it party's over, right? You all these people in his generation died before the war, right? So, or after the war, so you can't do anything, not when you have a whole generation and another one above it, of people who died before the war. And if you were researching edslaved people and you find an unmarried uncle, ding, ding, ding, go to the unmarried uncle for records, why? Because he had no children, he had no next of kin. And he had to leave their property to somebody, which could include a niece and a nephew. Oh, it's Augustus Trask Welch, the nephew of James Trask. And it isn't James Trask the brother of Israel, Elliot Trask, and then also the brother of Augustus Trask and the brother of Sarah Trask and Emily Trask, this is one family. And what happens when you go up to this generation with the blue circles, these people were born in Massachusetts. This ain't Tara, this is Brimfield, Springfield, Amherst. Town records going back to almost Jesus in terms of the birth dates of the people. So it wasn't all one, could this be the wrong family? No, not when the town's been recording birth since 1000. So at this point, I say, wait a minute, these people are on the Mississippi Delta. How in the world did they get from Massachusetts down to Mississippi and Louisiana? Oh boy, you all ain't ready for this next part. How'd they get there, how they get there? Come on now? She right, they didn't walk. Maybe now we're talking about the enslaved, look, her face. You should see her face, you all, she's like this. They walked , they did. Now James Lawrence Trask died in August of 1855. On his estate inventory, were more than 250 enslaved people. You are looking at his estate inventory. These dollar values next to people's names are not what they got in his estate. That's the value of these enslaved people. So whose names do we find? Whoops, come on you, right? 'Cause it could be John and Sally, right? Somebody could say, how do you know it's the right people? How many households do you know with an Isaac and Delpha and Nathan and Amos and the Patience and the Henderson all in one household. And then note also on this inventory, not only do they put them in family groups, but they totaled the family groups so that if they had to sell off property because the estate was insolvent, they had $3,400 right here. Let me just get rid of that and then that way we could pay that bill. So what happened? Put them side by side, look like the same names to me don't it? Right. Now, here's the thing. James Trask didn't die in Concordia parish. He died in Wilkinson county, Mississippi just across the river where we had DNA matches. Remember that nice map and how I wasn't sure if these were my people or not? So I said, okay, let me look at this same inventory and see if I can find Letty on it. Easter was born around this time, she might not be on it, but I know Letty is. I'll go to the next page. Hmm, I see a man named Old Randall worth how much? A grown man worth a dollar. Why? Because he was of no financial benefit to these individuals at this time. So because we are going to respect him because he's old, we'll put them on the inventory and make them worth the dollar. The most important information for me was that there was a woman named Letty on this census 'cause I didn't have her name when I started with that census in 1900. Actually I did have her name, but I didn't even know how she was really connected to me. I didn't know her daughter's name, I knew her, I knew her grandson's name. So using this information, I could consider that these were my people and that they were not living in Concordia parish, they were in Wilkinson county because that's where they were enslaved. Now, how do we get here again? Just compare the names. There's a 17 year old boy in that household, he was worth $1,250. But the nanny he was named after was worth a dollar. There's 15 years between these documents. So here's where the story gets even more hard to listen to. The same month, the James Trask died, earlier in that month, he gave an entire plantation and enslaved people to his niece, Charlotte Pinch Ventress. That same month that he passed away, he gave a plantation and the slave people to that same niece and a nephew name, Augustus Trask Welch. And they divided the enslaved people between the two of them, 50/50 interest. One year after James Trask's death, Charlotte and Augusta said, well, you know, I want my property. So I want to do stuff with it, so let me quit claim certain slaves over to you. And then you quit claim others to me so we can separate it. And they quick claimed an infant child away from her mother. The infant child that they quit claimed away was Easter, she went to A.T. Welch and that's why my family, again, he was living in Concordia parish, this is all one network, You all one letting went to Charlotte. You all. When find them in 1870, they've been reunited because they were separated by slavery. This document is what starts the trail of grandparents raising children on this side of my family. When people tell you that the remnants of slavery do not exist today, let me take you back here because don't you remember me telling you when I started this, that my father was raised by his grandparents and then you saw my great grandfather raised by his grandparents, the seeds of it are here at 1856.

- What does this mean for us? Identity. And I think that we, as a people have been in a constant flux wondering who we are, who do we descend from? And if you're constantly told that you are the butler, the maid, the cleaner, I heard some great things about some of the family members who are achieving different things. But I can't say that everybody in the family's achieving, everybody is going for that. And some of them were stuck in the rough because they still don't know who they are, they're searching, they're crying out for help. They need somebody to guide them and that's why I love the history, the information, being able to dig it up and being able to show them, listen, no, no, you're, you're not a nobody. We have documented points showing these connections to it, you know, and that's what's so beautiful about this experience.

- So let's talk about the operation because there is no way I would get up in front of you, not with the information that I have on these individuals. And people saying that you can't quantify this and qualify it with the names and individuals and not bless you all the next generation with knowing how to find it in calling their names out. I would never squander that opportunity. So let's talk about it. Here's your boy Isreal. Take a good look at him with his little feather in his hair. And yes, I do call him by his first name 'cause I can. Who going to check me, right? The brothers who were involved with this operation primarily were Israel Elliot Trask, who was a trustee of Amherst College. We can not truly quantify his influence on this college because we know he gave a certain amount of money, but we know he also helped secure the charter. Would we be sitting in this building right now, without that. Okay, it was him. It was James who you saw his inventory of his estate, along with their other two brothers, William Porter Trask and Augustus Trask along with them were the nephew and the niece, Charlotte Pinchon Ventress from that transaction where they quit claimed the baby away from her mother on Christmas day of 1856 and A.T. Welsch who was on that labor contract. Intermarried families are the Carters, the Poindexters of course, including George Poindexter, who was the governor of Mississippi. And the Ventresses. The father of Old Miss, you know, an Oxford, go rebels, he was married to Charlotte. So this enslaved population is tied to two schools to one in the north and one in the south. So here's a rough timeline of what we're talking about Israel and his brothers. Well, you know, Israel, he got advice from someone named Alexander Hamilton to go down to Louisiana and Mississippi and practice law. And oh yeah, by plantation too, right? You can make some money, so he leaves the north and goes down and then James follows and then so did the other two brothers. And initially they were in two completely separate operations. And then they joined forces and that's when the real money started rolling in. And eventually Israel said, you know what? Hey, I'm going to let you have that, but I'm going to keep loaning you money. Well, you know, he had been splitting his time between Springfield and Woodville, not Springfield, Mississippi, I don't even think there is one. I'm talking to Springfield here. His wife and his family lived here and he would go down and send letters back. Where are the letters? Here. Writing about the conditions of the plantation. Oh, James and he's reckless with his money and all this other stuff, right? What's the newspaper say about Israel. This is a clipping from 1960, you guys ever heard of next tale? You know what NextTel is? You heard a Sprint, right? Okay, you ever heard of Dayton, Hudson? You know what that is? That's Target. There's a reason why I'm bringing that up because slaveholders are very, they it's easy for them to be rebranded. Historically, when we write about them in the archive, we say things like he acquired a plantation in Mississippi and accumulated so much wealth that he soon was able to retire really? In a state with a whole slavery, He acquired so much. Well, how did he do that? Right, he didn't do it by himself. Oh, wait, no, ah, you can go back into the archives. This is a Springfield union, this is the newspaper right here, is that in the south? Nope, here the north they're going on and on about him establishing the law practice. First law practice of an American in New Orleans, but they are forgetting all these enslaved people my favorite part of the story is when they talk about his house, the Alexander House, which is currently on the market and started all of it more than $800,000, I know you have enough money to buy that, right, and you do, and who's going to buy it whenever they talk about the house. They don't talk about how he brought in slave people up from Mississippi to work in his house and open view, and then had to free them because slavery was not legal in Massachusetts. Yeah, so consider how we're rebranding our historical spaces as much as I'm all for tearing down of the monuments, what is going to happen in 20 or 30 years? When people forget there was even a monument there, are they going to say that Michael Jackson came and danced on it with no proof? We don't know, but when we rebrand people into these sort of deities and whatnot and not consider the sum total of who they were and what they were involved with people forget that sprint bought next to, or that Dayton Hudson is actually target. It's the same thing, so here's how this masquerades and the documents, when Israel died here in 1835, you can pull this probate and the long with, you know, him and Downing a couple pews at that first church of Springfield down in the courthouse, you go right over there and building is super old. Okay, there's a second page that says that his brother owes him $140,000 in 1836. If you adjust that for inflation, that's more than $3 million today that his brother owed him. Does it qualify what the debt is for? It just says this James got a bond, when Israel, if you don't read between the lines and go and research this, you don't even know it's for plantation operations. You have no clue, you have to dig further. Now, why would they go down to Mississippi and Louisiana? Well, because there was a surplus of enslaved laborers in the upper south. And as the Western part of the country starts to develop, right? When we go in and do that whole manifest destiny thing, you know, cause there's nobody on the land, right. There's no one living there, you know, forget the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, the Cherokee, the Creek, right. Tunica, all the nations, right? 'Cause there's no one living there. So, you know, let's do a halfway treaty and get them off their land. Ooh, I could come back and talk about that. It's the other side of my family, but either way you have these areas opening up and there's a surplus of labor in the upper south states like Virginia and the Carolinas and these plantations, these massive spaces have thousands of acres and they don't have anyone to work them. So what you start seeing is literal shifts of the out migration of enslaved people going from places like Virginia and the Carolinas they're leaving there. And they're going to other spots like Mississippi and Louisiana, because they needed the workforce. Boom, I'm going to share this for a second because I feel like we need a little truth in here. I can't find my cursor, there we go.

- I know you're asking today. How long would it take is asking how long we prepping this blind, man, I come to say to you this afternoon, I have a difficult for moment. I have a frustrating the hour, it will not be long because the truth will rise again. Not long because no lie can live forever. waiting for future behind the dam are known standards. God, within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

- Here's how I'm going to get my justice.

- You know, they would mention about the sharecropping and how like Papa, no, I was told, never paid his debt. It was never enough, you know, just like we've seen in the PHIMS they didn't talk too much about sleep. They were always talking about making a better life. And I'd like to even credit that maybe to being a part of the grains plantation, they were paying attention. I mean, and that spilled over and they wanted to be landowners and education was big with the grain, with what our ancestors education, politics, civil rights, you know? So my, my folks followed that pattern and I followed along. I'm still there, but they didn't talk a lot. I think it was because of the pain and there was even one cousin when she saw a cotton field, she would, as she approached that kind of feel most of the time it was on highway 61 living, you probably can identify with that. There was big, huge on both sides, just plantations cotton fields and it was like, let me know when we pass it, she would close her eyes. This would happen every time it was so painful until she passed that cotton field, that's just how painful. So it wasn't a lot that I could actually say that I heard them talk about.

- Kind of always known that we were just sending a slave slaveholder. But what I didn't know was that he was my grandmother's father. After the secret, as you want to say was out, she still never spoke about it, never a word.

- This operation was more than $24 million today, okay. That's a lot of money, you have $24 million. I knew she does, she's not telling the truth. It was massive, all of these states were included in this because what started to happen is as they made more money, they needed more money. So after Israel died, that debt passed onto his heirs, which included his children and his wife. And they still lived in Massachusetts, in New York. And they kept loaning money to James, even as they married into abolitionists families like the Tappin's you ever heard of Amistad anti-slavery societies and whatnot. Yeah, one of their daughters married into that family and was loaning money to her uncle to finance a plantation and collecting interest off of it in this little cute virtue signaling or back in the day. Right, it's like that. Right, where did I find all the documents, ancestry, family search, the Mississippi state archives. This a little place called Amherst college. I don't know where that is and Harvard Israel's papers had been divided between two colleges. So some of them were at Harvard, the business documents were at Harvard, but the letters were here. This is one of the enslaved elders of the trash 250. And by the time he died, this was the number of slave holders he had. This is what I can trace, notice the double sets of brothers, really three sets of brothers. Remember what I said about slavery being familial. These were partnerships that brothers would start and then they would pass them down to their children. Now let's talk about how the enslaved were monetized. In my opinion, they were monetized three different ways. Their literal physical labor generated profit. The air out of their lungs was made profitable. And you're sitting here saying, what do you mean the air out of their lungs? They were mortgaged against their personhood was mortgaged against. And not only could it be mortgaged against, but five different people could have title to my physical labor and my vital labor. So that means that if somebody defaults on a, on a loan, that's been secured against my vital labor or the air out of my lungs. We see these cases where it is laptop versus NAS versus Mike Kelly. Why are there three different parties in this case? Because all three of them had titled to that bile labor, then they've can even monetize their Viro, their photo labor, meaning their children. Oh yes. Their children. So what does this look like over time? Well, when you talk about the physical labor, you are literally looking at a list where they were counting, how many bales of cotton they produce in a single year and the weights on those CA on those cotton bales, 18 27, 600 bales of cotton, 400 bales at 18 28, 900 bales of cotton. Can you even imagine what in the world that looks like six to 700 in the year, 1832, but let me, let me make this even more real for you. 1835, they produce 725 bales of cotton. In that same letter, they say the cotton was going for 14 cents per pound. If you think about how many pounds of bale ways do the math in 1835, that was $48,000 today. That's over a million for that one year one. This was a 58 year operation. Any math majors in here, econ, it's my friend in the front. So excited. Cause I'm not good at math. She's better than me. What the lists let's take it from the perspective of a man named Sago Palmer, who was my fifth great grandfather. By the time he was 60 years old, he had a value of $550. Why? Because he was over the age of 40 and he was not worth that much because your value started to decline at that point in your late teens, your value started to go up and then after you turn 40, your value starts to go down. You'll also notice on this list, are people with trades and note that Randall who was worth a dollar on that inventory was worth $700 in 1838 because he was a carpenter. How else does this look? Well, let's talk about the number of times the traffic's mortgage against their enslaved. From the perspective of Sehgal Palmer, there was a $3,300 mortgage taken out in 1807 now because they don't have specific values for enslaved people on that mortgage. Let's go ahead and just average that out amongst all the people that were part of that transaction. So that meant it was about $90 a person then, and then the next mortgage was $80,000 because Israel wanted to buy this plantation on the German coast. That just so happens. That six months afterwards was a part of Louisiana slavery bowl. And my bull Ana came swinging in the blog, love her, talking about how they burnt his house down, right, as a part of the slave revolt. But in order for him to buy that property, he had to mortgage against the enslaved people in Adams county and in Wilkinson county for a total of $80,000, which was more than a million dollars today. And then in 1818, they mortgaged against Sega. Again, not only just once, but there was also a half interest in his life conveyed. And then again in 1822, we get two more transactions. Oh, let's keep going, Nico. There's more $170,000 in 1831 was the mortgage against the enslaved. And then again, two more mortgages in 1839, Israel died in 1835. So who was providing this money? His family living here and in New York, slavery was American. This isn't a Southern thing. This isn't a Northern thing. Slavery was American. How do you think the system perpetuated itself? And was it successful as it was, if it was just codified to one part of the country, how do you think Dr. Betsy even has a field of study about LOL in the context I'll mills there, if that wasn't the engine that was also financing this massive operation. So when southerners start telling you that you think you bet, and then we act because you live in the north, say, well, slavery was here to at least be acknowledged. You all don't right. Oh, we still got another look, one man mortgage seven, eight times. By the time he dies, what happens when those debts aren't paid? The people living up here then come and claim title separate you from your family. Even though they live in a state that does not, slavery is not legal in it. Let's talk about a zero labor cycle. Palmer had five children with his wife for Tema, okay. From there they have 23 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren that are all born before 1865. Why does this matter? This one, man added more than 46 people to this enslaved population. That's money because that means that the trash and the ventures is, do not have to go out and buy more enslaved people because their populations are generating them. Naturally. Every part of their lives was monetized. And I didn't just include this image for nothing. When it says, and there increase that's literal language from those mortgages, they themselves are mortgage and their increased meaning they're kids, their future children that aren't even walking around yet. And if they were slaves for life cycle Palmer is one of the few of the tracks. Two 50. We actually hear from in Israel's letters where he's actually quoted despite all of the money that they generated for this operation. You barely get their voices. Now, what do they say? This is Israel writing to his wife and his children here at what is the Alexander House now. And my personal favorite part of this is when Israel claimed he walked out in the cotton field and help them pick two for two hours, real sick. He walked out in the field and pick cotton for two hours with the Negroes. That's what he said, right? Virtue signaling in 1827. But he says, I walked out into the cotton field yesterday and help the Negroes pick cotton two hours. The Negro say they want to see massive William and ed all say, go said, when you fetch them, like, well, you don't get your kids. When are you going to bring them back? I said, perhaps by and bought, oh, massive buy. And by me be dead. Never see him. Now here's the irony, single outlet, Israel by 20 years. So he didn't bring them back. All right. So close out. I want to give honor to the elders. This is a list of enslaved people that were part of the Louisiana slave revolt. There were executed by the state for their role note. Their birthplaces Does not say America and note that they were born before 1800. See, there's this whole thought process that you can't trace black people back this far. I don't have a master's. I don't have a PhD, but I did it. And so can you Now there's also documents that tell us that Israel went to Charleston, South Carolina, not point comfort or Fort Monroe in Virginia and bought 12 African slaves. This is an 1805, but they didn't take the transaction to be documented until 1812. It also is not even index to Israel. It's index in his father-in-law and his and his brother-in-law's name. Again, going back to families. If I didn't know who those people were, I wouldn't have even have found this notation about 12 Africans and the pivot here. Again, notice it doesn't say Negroes. If it said Negroes, these would mean that these people who were enslaved were already stateside. The fact that they called them, Africans says they came straight off the boat. Okay? So we're going to honor the elders of the trash two 50. These are all individuals who were born before 1700 and many of them, their children lived long enough to be on a census where they noted where they were born. And they said Africa and several of us descend from several of them. So this is not just one branch of the family. It could be two and three, like Randall. That was worth a dollar and Esther, their descendants go by Talavera and Joshua Boyer and McCaya and Jenny and bill Chan and Clarissa. And why it calls it his wife, Julia and his wife, Hannah and Mussa, and Katie Dunbar, Jefferson Hawkins and Sada, Joe Mohs, Hannah Holoman, Linda Nancy, old Charles and Betty, Peter Paul Weller, Tom you're a book you ever heard of Yoruba? Anybody here know anybody's from Nigeria, these names aren't a coincidence shot. Do you notice the number of African names that are here?

- Oh, Nellie was the, she was my father's oldest sister and she was, she took over the cook position from my grandmother, Evelyn Bolden Palmer. And when it burned, she saved all of the silver and all of the stuff. So veterans also left her some land up there in Natchez. Hmm.

- Wonder why wonder why. All right. So let's talk about the future of this. What does all this mean in the grand scheme of things? As of last week, I have found more than 2,500 genealogical documents documenting this group of enslaved people. That includes more than 300 obituaries, more than 200 death certificates, more than 170 marriage licenses, 50 plus transactions, including 24 mortgages against their lives. Along with 11 slave lists, there are more than 6,300 individuals that I have traced to this enslaved slave population of people, more than 370 of them through DNA. Meaning you spend the tube. I spit in the tube. I look at who we have in common in terms of DNA matches. And if I see trash two 50 descendants, even if you don't have a D you don't even have a family tree, I can tell you how you connect. That's how advanced the technology is now and where the access is, but it can always be better. The majority of us are living in new Orleans Baton Rouge, and it will in Woodville, Mississippi. Some of those who are connected to us are very well known blues musician named buddy guy. In fact, he just had a documentary come out about him on PBS this year. And if you watch the first part, his mother is a towel over. That was the clue. And they lived in Louisiana pulled it up five minutes. I found it also, Dr. Corey, a bear who is a chief science editor at the black news channel. He is also part of this and he cut his teeth during hurricane Katrina.

- They're, they're bringing us to this point. They're opening our eyes. They're able to the whisper, those things that are on our beds at night to make us think about things that maybe we've long forgotten or even didn't know.

- A lot of financial gang was made up of back of slavery. The wealth of America was built up literally after blood, sweat, and tears. And what I want people to learn is to not be ashamed of our past. You know, the thing is the white washing of our history, as the saying the information that has been lost to me, that is the same.

- So I leave you with this. You've received a lot of information about slavery today, and you probably did not even know that there was any connection to the college that you were going to. And a group of enslaved people that never imagined that I would get here and say their names. And you could say to people who weren't here, they existed in that. The number of.

- The number of our kids upstairs here, I'm sorry.

- They thought they were forgotten. They really did, but they're not every single one of you here has a charge and a call to share what you learned tonight. And not just from the vantage point of the school that you will graduate from because I'm believing all of you will, but think about how you and what you were interested in can use this information and use what I have shared to make it so that it's not as hard for other people to get to what I got to. And it may be something really small. It doesn't have to be anything big because as I was sitting in my house, working on this for hours, not paying attention and not really caring, if anybody would even know about it, I had no idea that I will be standing before you sharing it. No clue. It didn't matter because I just wanted to get to my people. I just wanted to know their names. I wanted to see if I could get back to Africa. I wanted to see if I could have that roots experience that everyone has, because we don't have a ship manifest with names of our ancestors, our immigrant ancestors. We don't have an Ellis island. We have to create one for every single group of enslaved people. So think about how you, everyone here, everyone listening, how you can make decisions and, and choices with the information that you got here today to make it so that when it's 20 years later and you're standing in front of a group of students, things are different questions. You can ask me anything. Go ahead, NAS first.

- Thank you so much for doing this work as an. I asked if you have any advice or connections, especially when my trajectory is so different from my family, because everything this country and, you know, especially with.

- You know, if you have any advice on what I can make sure that can.

- Right? Right. So the question asked was how, how can they preserve their family history? Considering that there are a number of different things that have happened in their family that prohibit them from getting information like people dying, no one recording it, but they mentioned they had a grandmother still living interview, her ask very basic questions. In fact, you may even want to dedicate a time when you talk to her where you just, maybe it's once a month. There's, you know, whenever did you ask about family history? Sometimes what I feel works best with older people. Even if you buy them, if you buy like this really nice spiral, like a little a journal. So when she starts to think about things and she may not call you or talk to you that day, she can write it down. So she doesn't forget what it is. And the other thing is you may want to start to work on this while she's still alive so that when you look through documents and you're not sure if it's the right people, you can ask her, do you remember this person living nearby? Or did you remember them mentioning individuals? And, and really, even if you don't have a tree, just write it down, type it out, do whatever you need to do to preserve it. Because as each generation dies and passes away, we lose information. When I got to Maury, Maury did not remember Easter's name, but if I go back to an interview, he did 15 years earlier, he did. That's how quickly people lose information. And he was well, and with his faculties and everything, but he couldn't recall her name. So get to grandma and then potentially start fanning out to other family members who were older, who may be cousins. They may have pictures, they may have documents. They may have all kinds of stuff. And it may take you doing the research to find those people, because those living in your family today may not remember those individuals. And you may get lucky if somebody might've started the tree on ancestry already. And then that way, you know, if you run into me, right, the equivalent of me that will help you to any other questions.

- So, one last question, and then I oldest mentioned most of the students during my classes. So if you're going to come to class tomorrow, I'll ask you all today. You know, if this has been a weighty talk, great. So bring your five kids tomorrow and we'll be able to talk for, you know, live on.

- could definitely very much like a fugitive coffee, like moving forward. So I thank you that commanded for like all the work you've done. One thing you touched on that idea of just like how, like conceptually being in black study, I feel like a lot of the content that I have to research ought to be very personal and very dramatic, and me being a much more emotionally sensitive person. How do you do a self-care how you breath to take care of yourself after going through so much heavy contact.

- Right? That's a great question. How do you practice self care with this? Have a buddy or a friend that is in it, or has an interest in it that you can talk to about this? That's very key. I don't, I don't get here without the support of other folks who are doing research or who are in similar spaces. And you'd have to know when to push yourself away, you know, because you don't want it to be where you're, you know, that you're not in the right space. And sometimes when you sit down at the computer or you sit down and set of documents and you know, your Headspace is not right, and you won't be able to, to, to be as effective that day. So maybe that's a day where you do something where it's an easy win, right? Like you just, Hey, let me get something that I know I can find information for. Especially if you're working on a research project and try to work on your dissertation, find something where it's like, I know there's a ton of literature out there. I know I'm going to find something. Maybe let's not pier it into something that's really challenging today. And that's something that I suggest to genealogists too. I'm like if the new record collection just came out and it's really fun and easy, go do that for a couple days in between do a research on the enslaved because you don't want to traumatize yourself like that. And you really have to become very emotionally intelligent in order for you to, to just deal with the heaviness of being in this all the time. It's not easy. So for me, what I do is sometimes I work on what I call the easy part is let me go find some obituaries, because that means I'm going to have to add another hundred people, because we are just that prolific in terms of procreating and grading kids. And then there are other days where I want to track down those 12 slave people. Can I find that transaction? And that's not sometimes an easy answer. That's not something I can get to really quickly, you know? So that, that day I have to exercise a lot of patience. And then, you know, some days I just cuss at them. I do some days I do, I get mad. I'm like, see Israel, why don't you? This is you guys have the book. You guys have the 300 folders at the state archives, where is this transaction? And then I get the bright idea to try to order all the folders on microfilm so I can digitize and look at them at my house. So then that way I don't have to go there. And it knows cause Ann has been there, but you got to take your time, you know? And, and, and, and you got to have easy wins and you got to have somebody to help you process it. And sometimes it, there are things that you won't get over, but there's a reason why you are getting over it. And you got to really dig into why that is. And sometimes the answer's easy sometimes it's because that's helping you help another person get through what they are discovering, or it could be. You're supposed to learn something from that and pass that on in some way. And you haven't figured that out yet.

- Great. Well, let me thank you. On behalf of Amherst college, we need this information. So thank you for all of your work. And I'm really glad that we'll have the candidate talk further tomorrow and anyone not in my class, remember that our open house Wednesday night.