On the day that most Americans celebrated the federal holiday commemorating the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a family that had accepted me into their grouping in 1970 included me in a Zoom meeting to discuss their history. My first bride may have lobbied for my inclusion, but I have done quite a bit of research into her family’s history, which has deep roots in Indiana. My editor recently agreed to repeat a column I wrote in February 2018, “A Black History Story,” a recounting of some of my research into the Hord family’s story. I was honored to be able to hear a presentation by one of the Hord family members, and to see my two oldest grandchildren on my Zoom screen.
A good friend of mine has in her home a graphic of a great blooming tree, whose branches and leaves list the antecedents and descendants of her family. I marvel each time I see it, for my family has very little information about who we are and where we came from. When my maternal grandmother died, one of her grandchildren wrote of how her mother — my great grandmother — was “brought from Madagascar,” to “work in the house.” Not included in the handout was how she was raped by “the Irishman” when she was working at a hotel in West Virginia; the resulting child was my grandmother. I got that information from her granddaughter, my aunt. But rape and violence seem to be a theme that runs through African American history. My paternal cousin recorded my grandfather’s words about his life as she worked on a project when she attended the University of Pittsburgh.
Clement J. Woods, Sr. (Poppa) was the child of a sharecropper in a small town in Louisiana. The owner of the farm his father sharecropped would routinely come by the house to rape Clement’s mother. His father decided to stop that: he killed the man. Since “voodoo” beliefs were common in Louisiana, the senior Woods cut off the man’s head, packed up the wife and kids (and the head) and moved to Houston Texas, where he buried the head. (If you separate the head from the body, the ghosts can’t haunt you.) The 1930 census shows my 29-year-old grandfather’s hometown as Houston Texas, effectively erasing Louisiana from the official record.
DNA tracing firms have made it possible for families to find other people that have contributed to their story. Years ago, one of those firms offered a free trial that I took advantage of but the biggest thing that I found was that the name “Woods” was the most common name in the United States in the 1920s. I cannot remember the source that I used to get a copy of the 1930 census information, but I have a screenshot of the handwritten record of my paternal grandfather’s wife and children, and from the U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, a record of my father’s entry into the United States Army, which is among the things that I plan to leave to my three children.
The Internet has made it infinitely easier to connect ourselves to the others who have contributed to our back story, the people whose toil and tribulations, living and loving, sowed the seeds of our own existence. Recording oral histories, as my cousin has, and writing of the things researched and remembered, as I do, are the links to our past and bridges to our futures that our children and grandchildren can use to weave the cloak of family.
As Sly and the Family Stone sang, “It’s a family affair.”
cjon3acd@att.net