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.