In Search of Our Roots by Henry Louis Gates Jr

Author:Henry Louis Gates, Jr. [Louis Gates, Jr., Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-40973-7
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group

Amanda Winters, Oprah’s great-grandmother, was a trustee of one of the black schools founded by the NAACP.

I nodded in agreement. Oprah’s maternal ancestors clearly shared her willpower and her passion for education and the ownership of property.

Oprah now wanted to learn more about these people from whom she descended, and I did my best to oblige her, even though the chasm of slavery began to make things very difficult. Amanda Winters’s parents were the eldest generation on her maternal line that we could find. Their names were Henrietta and Pearce Winters. The 1870 census tells us that Pearce was born a slave around 1849, and the 1880 census tells us that his wife, Henrietta, was born a slave in Mississippi around 1854 (Henrietta’s last name is not recorded). This census also tells us that by 1880, Pearce and Henrietta were living in Attala County, Mississippi, with their five children, including Oprah’s great-grandmother Amanda. Sadly, we know nothing more about these people.

Oprah was disappointed to hear that we could not with certainty trace Amanda’s line any further than this. But by going back a branch along Oprah’s maternal line, we were able to learn more about the ancestry of her maternal grandfather, Earlist Lee. Earlist’s parents were Harold and Elizabeth Lee. According to the 1870 census, Harold was born a slave around 1855 in Hines County, Mississippi, whereas Elizabeth was born in freedom, also in Mississippi, sometime around 1875. The same census data revealed that Harold’s parents—Oprah’s great-great-grandparents—were named Grace and John Lee. They both were born slaves in Mississippi in 1833, which means they spent the first thirty-two years of their lives as a white man’s property.

It is very difficult to find any records documenting the lives of our slave ancestors during the years that they were held in bondage. As we have seen, the slave system stripped them by design of the last names that they created for themselves, as part of a larger process of officially and legally denying their humanity. Indeed, names, records, language, family structures—all were intentionally repressed by the slave owners.

In Oprah’s case, by searching over the records of slave owners in Mississippi, we were extremely lucky. We found an 1860 slave schedule for someone called S. E. Lee, who owned a female slave, age twenty-six, which is how old Oprah’s great-great-grandmother Grace would have been in 1860. S. E. Lee also owned a male slave, age twenty-six, which is how old her great-great-grandfather John would have been in 1860. Moreover—and this is very important—he owned a male slave, age five, which is how old Oprah’s great-grandfather Harry Lee would’ve been in 1860! No other slaves in the county match these three ages and relationships of proximity to a white person named Lee. You don’t exactly have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that these people are most probably Oprah’s ancestors, even though they stand nameless in their slave owner’s records.

Of course, matching ages and genders of slaves listed in the 1850 or 1860 slave

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.