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My Family Tree Did Not Spontaneously Appear in America

Our people were kidnapped from their Native land, their extended families, and their God and brought to America by force. Their lineage or pedigree goes back to creation. The reality of my genealogy, however, goes back only a few generations. I have endeavored to record and describe as many branches of our family tree as possible using the facts of limited records augmented by family lore or oral history. Each branch represents a real-live person who lived, loved, worked, passed down genetic code—and passed away. Each branch (person) left behind and passed on a lifetime of experiences and colorful stories. The Family Table, Too: Letters To My Granddaughter is an amalgamation of those branches, those wonderful stories. In retelling those stories, the American story is enhanced by adding the African American portion as an important adjunct rather than a marginally inconvenient and scarcely reported history. We need to continue recording stories from previous generations and complete all possible branches, and we need the younger branches to expand the visions that they must pass on to future generations.

The Family Table, Too: Letters To My Granddaughter is a series of letters to my granddaughter, Marley Milan Jeannette Chisley, and is intended to introduce her to our family history.  The letters in Volume I introduced Marley to several ancestors, branches of her family tree who she will never know because they passed away before she was born.  My work on the next volumes has already begun.  The letters in volume II will review African American history through the eyes of my maternal grandmother, Clare Keenon-Haddix - "Big Momma."  Big Momma was the matriarch of the Keenon Clan and lived in South Carolina during the most turbulent decades after the Civil War.  My letters to Marley in Volume III will be an accounting of my forty years as an educator within the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area.

I was inspired to publish The Family Table, Too: Letters To My Granddaughter at this time even as I am researching another book.  While celebrating the anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre in 2021 most Americans were unaware of the victims' trauma because their stories were never shared.  This glaring ommission in African American history emphasizes the importance of accurately documenting and passing on these wonderful stories including specific family history.

I have explained continuously that the best way to pass on the cultural experiences, social values and cummunal mores of our previous generation - in other words, our African American History - is the retelling of their rich colorful stories.  In these stories our elders discuss everything from expectation, responsibilities and pride to disappointment and betrayal to losses and victories.  These stories along with ritualistic traditions have always been and will always be breadcrumb trails to the past of those for whom we care so much, and this is important considering the scarcity of the written history in this regard.  So, thank you for taking the time to visit some of the Haddix family experiences, may I encourage you who are becoming ELDERS to consider writing down some of your stories, memories and recollections for the younger members of the family tree, and may I suggest that the future generations ask more questions than I did and listen to the responses so you can expand on the vision you pass on to the next generation.

You have years to form or determine your opinion of death - whether it's an end of life or a beginning of a future experience.  I do see death as an end, but an end to life not an end to relationships.  I believe a person's relationships die only when the last person who knew or had a relationship with that person dies.  To that end, I want you to know as many of your ancestors as possible.