What I’m Most Proud of About My Heritage…

As I write this my father is lying in a hospital bed as we pray for healing for bleeding in his brain. As I write this my nation is also bleeding from within as we go through the messy process of seeking justice and equity so that all Americans have a place at the table. The coalescing of these two realities has made me very thoughtful about the ideas of heritage and family legacy, and I want to say a few things about what I’ve learned to value in this dark time.

That picture above? That’s one of my distant ancestors. His name was General William Whipple (My mother’s maiden name). He fought with distinction in the Revolutionary War, and was a signor of the Declaration of Independence. I first became aware of this fact when researching my family history in college. I remember how proud I was to be a descendant of one of our nation’s founding fathers. You know all the guys you see enshrined in marble in DC? Yeah, I had the DNA of one of the marble dudes in my own veins. That’s pretty “star-spangled awesome” to an undergrad student just learning about ancestry…

Later, in my graduate school education, as I was studying genre fiction as a literature major, I came across a novel written by Octavia Butler. A woman, who is considered by many to be the pioneer of woman of color within the world of speculative fiction. I read through her novel, Kindred in the course of a couple weeks.

The basic plot of the novel involves a young, successful, professional black woman from the contemporary era being pulled back in time to the antebellum south and interacting with her ancestor, a white plantation owner who went on to father a child with one of his slaves that would also become one of her ancestors. As she travelled to different moments of Rufus’s life, she would sometimes be in his era of time for only moments, other times it was weeks or longer, where she would endure the treatment of a black woman in living in the south during the early 19th century.

I remember reading through scenes of violence, abuse, and rape. I remember weeping over that book. I remember feeling shame as I read through that book, even though I had never personally participated in any of those acts.

And then I did some more ancestral research… Yes, I was the proud descendent of a founding father… And I was also the descendant of plantation owners…

I struggled with loathing my own ancestry for a brief period of time. This was during a time in my life when I was working to raise money to combat human trafficking. How could I be taken seriously as a “modern day abolitionist” when I was descended from slave owners? Part of me wanted to find every friend of color I had, and hug them as tightly as I could weeping some form of apology. I still feel that way sometimes…

Today, as I spent time thinking about my father and his recovery, praying for him, and examining the kind of life he’s lived. I also thought about my grandfathers, they both live in Heaven now, and I began to think about my heritage again… And I began to do what Seth McGee does when he’s alone and thoughtful. I began to read. I began to research. I began to think.

And I think I finally made peace with my DNA…

Remember the guy at the top? General William Whipple? Yes, he was a revolutionary war hero, signor of the Declaration of Independence, even has his own Wikipedia page… And you know what else he was? He was one of the First founding fathers to espouse abolition ideology. William Whipple owned two slaves, and he freed both of them believing that “no man could fight for freedom and hold another in bondage.” His two former slaves fought at his side in the Revolutionary War as his equals, and he would later become one of the First founding fathers to write against slavery, and promote freedom for all Americans. (I guess the writer thing is just in my DNA?)

I’m not suggesting for a second that that would make up for him ever participating in slavery in the first place, but what it demonstrates to me is a desire to learn, change, and challenge the societal norms of his time. He wrote, “I hope it (emancipation) will be the means of dispensing the blessings of Freedom to all the human race in America.” He was willing to rock the boat. He was willing to advocate for change.

I think of the life of my grandfathers. They were truly great men, living in a not so great period in the South. They grew up in a segregated world, but I will always remember my grandfathers as men who rejected that system. My maternal grandfather lived in a part of Florida that had a high Hispanic immigrant population. A population that was often times marginalized and the butt of jokes. He spearheaded a place of worship for migrant workers and their families, and created a large Spanish church within the walls of the First Baptist Church of Okeechobee, Florida. Where others marginalized, he built bridges. He was willing to learn and to grow.

My own father as a young minister took his young family and moved into the inner city, and began a ministry that would be dedicated to the worth of the human soul, not the color of a person’s skin. When I think back on how my own father reached out to our community, I see a man who reached out a hand to everyone with equal love and concern. I grew up in a house where I wasn’t even really quite sure what racism was, until I got older and encountered it myself through the eyes of my friends. All I had known was an environment of love and acceptance, because that was the environment my parents worked hard to create.

And now the baton comes to me. I and my brother are the fourth consecutive generation in my family to choose lives devoted to ministerial service. As I think on the men and women who are represented in my genes I find that I, as many people find, am a mixture of ancestors to be proud of and ancestors to be ashamed of.

I am the descendant of Irish immigrants, seeking this country to pursue the American dream.

I am the descendent of an American Revolutionary War hero.

I am the descendant of plantation owners, who were part of one of the most shameful chapters of American history.

I am the descendant of a line of ministers who each stood on the shoulders of the previous one, and worked to unite their communities in shared brotherhood.

When I look at my family history now, from General William Whipple all the way to my own father, I see men who were flawed, but who were willing to learn, to grow, and to change.

I will follow in their footsteps, and continue to promote knowledge, growth, and change. I will continue to build on their work in a new century. I won’t stop until my ancestor’s dream of “Freedom to all the human race in America” is a reality.