I am curious about your family tree DV. They look beautiful and hearty. Where was this picture taken and when?Denmark Vesey said ...
Family tree? Well Mahndisa, Poppa Harris and his wife Elizabeth raised 10 children on land in Georgia, acquired by his grandfather before the civil war. According to entries in the family bible, his grandfather also purchased and later emancipated a number of slaves. According to my grandmother, Poppa Harris' said his people were never "in bondage", but were descendants of black people native to America. I assume he meant the Moors. Uncle George, who is the oldest son, standing in the back row enlisted in the US Army at the beginning of WWI. He sailed to France with the all black 370th Infantry battalion. The Germans gassed his unit at the battle of the Argone Forest. Uncle George survived but spent nearly 7 years in a Connecticut hospital while his lungs healed. Poppa Harris was very active politically. He was a charter member of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. He was a financial supporter and corresponded frequently with Marcus Garvey. Uncle Jackson who stands behind my grandmother moved to Harlem in 1930 after earning a law degree from Straight College in New Orleans. Apparently he had difficulty passing the New York bar and got into real estate where he made a fortune. He sponsored his younger siblings who joined him in New York. My grandmother met a young man named Conrad who came to Harlem from Conyers Georgia alone at the age of 14. Homeless for a while, he later lived at the YMCA and shined shoes to support himself. He put himself through school and earned a law degree by the late 30's. They married and had my mother after WWII. The New York and GA factions of the family stayed in close contact and the children traveled back in forth to Atlanta where Uncle Victor had gotten into the construction business by the 1950's. Rumor has it that while still a teenager Uncle Bob, (front row second from left) killed a white man who had hit his sister for ignoring him, and got away with it. The family was conservative, Christian, funny, Plantation free, and black with a vengeance.
6 comments:
Nice ancestral totem pix of the fam DV. I love the fact that your ancestors reminds us that black people have been here longer than Columbus and that all black people weren't enslaved and all white folk weren't free!
great story and grat pisture too. its has to be empowering to know you history and the legacy you come from. i suspect thats has contributed to the outspoken and aware person you are today
i wish i had a picture or old aritfacts from my past...its funny cause american people want to forget about slavery and they dont try to forget when they go on those antique shows cashing in those plantation artifacts for cash...its empowering mentally and financially to have a artifacts from our past
Those are some mighty pretty black folks, and I'd guess Creole and/or Native American mixed in with African and European. Nice accomplishments too, and nicer to read positive stuff than the usual version put forth by the media and history books.
Thanks for sharing.
Indigenous blacks? Huh wtf??
Prroof?
Proof?
Our existence is proof.
You show me proof that every black person in America was brought here from Africa in the bottom of 18th Century sail boats.
If black people left Africa thousands of years ago and settled in Australia ... why would it be so difficult for black people to have settled in North, Central and South America which is much closer to Africa than Australia?
lol... public schools got ya'll twisted.
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