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Finding Your Roots - Season 12 - Episode 05: Love & Basketball
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00:04I'm Henry Louis Gates Jr. Welcome to Finding Your Roots. In this episode, we'll meet basketball
00:11superstars Chris Paul and Brittany Griner, two people born to play a game. I was in volleyball
00:21practice and they were like, hey, go dunk this. And I was like, okay. So I just ran with the
00:27ball
00:27and just dunked it. Literally the next day, the coach came and was like, you come on over
00:34here to basketball when you get done today. I'm just crazy competitive, right? I don't
00:40care what it is. So if we playing checkers, if we playing chess, if we playing cards or
00:44whatnot. What if you're playing with a six-year-old child? Are you still ruthless? Absolutely.
00:50To uncover their roots, we've used every tool available. Genealogists comb through paper
00:58trails stretching back hundreds of years. That is cool. While DNA experts utilize the latest
01:06advances in genetic analysis to reveal secrets that have lain hidden for generations. My palms
01:14are sweating over here. And we've compiled it all into a book of life, a record of all of our
01:21discoveries. It's mind-blowing. And a window into the hidden past. If you was to make this into a
01:29feature film, you would look at it like, that's not true. There's no way that that happened.
01:34Did you think we'd get back this far this quickly? No, I didn't think it would go like this. Honestly,
01:40I'm like, shook right now. Chris and Brittany are both phenomenal athletes. In this episode,
01:49we'll explore what lies behind their greatness. Could it be that they were molded in ways they
01:56never could have imagined by the lives of their ancestors?
02:39Chris Paul is basketball royalty. The future Hall of Famer, a 12-time NBA All-Star,
02:49is one of the greatest point guards ever to play the game. Second all-time, both in
02:56steals and assists. His secret, practice, practice, practice.
03:05Chris is legendary for his work ethic and for the passion he brings to the court. Traits
03:14that were first nurtured in him by his father.
03:18When you're a kid, you take on the likes of your parents. My dad was a huge, huge football
03:25and basketball fan. And as a kid, my dad coached us. So now having kids and going to their games
03:32and seeing the people that take the time to actually coach them and go to practices and whatnot,
03:37my dad did that for my team, my brother's team. And it's crazy to think he still found time to
03:44go to work.
03:45Yeah, that's amazing.
03:47Yeah, that's amazing.
03:47Unbelievable. But the biggest thing that my dad did was when I was in the fifth grade,
03:52he had a basketball court built for us at our house.
03:55Wow.
03:56Right? And when I say that, it wasn't a full court by any means, but there was this hill behind
04:00our house.
04:01And actually our football coach had a cement company.
04:04Uh-huh.
04:04Right? So he came and laid down like pavement, like right down on this hill.
04:09And we put two basketball goals and it was not a full court by any means.
04:14But he basically said, if you guys love this and you really want to do it, here it is.
04:22Chris took his father's words to heart. By the time he was in high school,
04:28he was one of the best basketball players in his home state of North Carolina
04:34and was being recruited by the top colleges in the country.
04:39An accomplishment made even more remarkable by the fact that Chris stands barely six feet tall.
04:47And back then, he was even shorter.
04:51I was always the smallest guy on the team, you know?
04:57And I was the kid that used to like pray for height.
05:00When I went to bed at night, I was like, God, please just make me tall.
05:03Please don't. And it still hasn't happened.
05:07But you got to work with what you got.
05:09When did you first realize not only that you were good,
05:13but that you had a special talent and you could make a career out of basketball?
05:17Right. Even when I went to college, I didn't know I was going to the NBA.
05:21Uh-huh.
05:22Right? I hoped.
05:23But when I got to college, my work ethic went up just a little bit more.
05:27Uh-huh.
05:27Right? And now you start to have a little bit of inclination
05:32because people can hype you up and say that you're really, really good, but you know.
05:36Uh-huh.
05:37Right? They can't hype you up so much.
05:38Uh-huh.
05:39But as I continued to get better, I started to say like, man, I might be able to do this
05:45for a living.
05:47Chris, of course, has done much more than just make a living at basketball.
05:52In 2005, after two years of college, he was drafted by the New Orleans Hornets and won Rookie of the
06:02Year.
06:04He's gone on to thrive in a league of much taller men through an unparalleled combination of talent and effort,
06:14becoming one of the highest paid athletes in the world.
06:19And through it all, Chris has never lost his grounding.
06:24He remains intensely grateful to the people and the game that have brought him so much.
06:34I've been in the NBA now since I was 20 years old.
06:36Uh-huh.
06:36Right? And at 39, there's a lot of things that I did and experienced like when I was a child
06:44and coming up.
06:44But then when I got into the NBA, there's been a lot of things that have been taken care of
06:49for me.
06:50Uh-huh.
06:50Right?
06:51Uh-huh.
06:51And so I didn't go through the struggles that my parents went through in trying to get a house.
07:00Uh-huh.
07:00Right? And working that type of job to try to accumulate wealth.
07:05All of this happened for me at 20 years old.
07:08Uh-huh.
07:08Do you still feel joy, pleasure in the game?
07:12Absolutely.
07:13Did you ever burn out as a player?
07:15No. No. I don't think I ever burnt out as a player.
07:18But I'll tell you something wild that happened this summer.
07:22I went into the house and I told my wife, I just need to go outside and shoot.
07:26Uh-huh.
07:26Right? Just go outside and shoot because at some point, you almost get programmed to every time you go to
07:33a gym, it's to train.
07:34Uh-huh.
07:35Right? And I fell in love with the game as a kid just in the backyard.
07:39Uh-huh.
07:39Right? Just playing around with my brother, practicing things and whatnot.
07:43So I went outside and just shot for 45 minutes.
07:46Wow.
07:47And just dribbled and started to use my imagination.
07:49And I won't say I fell out of love with the game.
07:52Uh-huh.
07:53Ever, you know, but just sometimes just remind yourself why you love it so much.
07:59Right. For the pleasure of it.
08:00Yes.
08:02Just like Chris, Brittany Griner is a sure-fire Hall of Famer, a 10-time WNBA All-Star and three
08:13-time Olympic gold medalist, widely recognized as one of the greatest players in history.
08:26But Brittany's story is fundamentally different from Chris's.
08:31Growing up in Houston, Brittany towered over her peers from a young age and suffered mightily for it.
08:41I hit my big growth spur probably seventh grade until 12th grade.
08:46It was just a constant, like, uphill climb for me.
08:50Uh, seventh and eighth grade also was big on the bullying.
08:54The, you know, the girls pointing out how I look different than everybody else, literally physically coming up to me
09:00and touching my chest and saying, like, look, she has no chest.
09:03Like, she is a man.
09:05Mm.
09:05Um, just my voice wasn't as, I guess, high-pitched as everybody else's.
09:12Mm-hmm.
09:12Um, so yeah, got a lot of picking on, pointing at, like, just being told how different I am from
09:18everybody else.
09:19I recall when you said that, just to have someone touch you.
09:22Yeah, that was a tough time back then.
09:24Oh, I'm so sorry you had to go through that.
09:26Yeah.
09:27Ironically, Brittany's height would provide her salvation.
09:31She started playing basketball in ninth grade when a coach saw her dunking a volleyball on a dare.
09:41Within a year, she was dominating on both offense and defense and attracting attention from college coaches across the country.
09:53That's when I really felt like, okay, I got this.
09:57I started getting a lot more, um, scholarships as well, like, flooded.
10:03And it wasn't like the typical, like, oh, we're just sending this out to the kids.
10:07Here's like, you know, you could come to this school.
10:10It was more like, no, we want you to come here.
10:13Like, you could tell it was a little bit more tailored to me.
10:15And I was like, oh, I'm liking this, this feeling wanted.
10:19From going from, you know, being bullied before high school and not being the cool kid and just kind of
10:26being on the outside to now, I am the cool kid.
10:29I am the athlete.
10:30And people want you.
10:31Brittany Griner, superstar.
10:37Brittany's star has risen higher than anyone ever could have imagined.
10:42She led Baylor University to an undefeated season and a national championship before becoming an icon in the WNBA.
10:54She's also used her talents to impact the world well beyond sports.
11:00A prominent social activist, she's championed women's equality, LGBTQ rights, and after her infamous imprisonment in Russia, she's been advocating
11:16for Americans detained overseas.
11:23But Brittany told me that many of her greatest triumphs have occurred in private, stretching all the way back to
11:30when she was a teenager and she came out to her family, something her father initially found hard to accept.
11:50Brittany Griner, superstar.
11:55They felt like they were born and all the way back to the men of winning special and
12:10and stuff because he saw my potential and he knew that brands would hold that against me of course
12:16like not saying that it was right but like i can understand you know because at first i was just
12:23upset like why is my dad like like he don't love me like he like is he disappointed in me
12:28but it
12:29was more so he just didn't want me to have to deal with that that uphill battle and you could
12:35tell
12:35it didn't really put that much of a hindrance in between us because he was at literally every
12:40single game yeah and now i mean you see us now we're great you can't separate us my two guests
12:49have achieved incredible success both on and off the court but along the way they've had little time
12:56to learn about the ancestors who may have laid the groundwork for their accomplishments that is about
13:03to change i started with chris paul and with his paternal grandmother a woman named charlena sloan
13:15charlena has been chris's biggest fan for as long as he can remember and the two share a profound bond
13:26my grandmother is uh she's everything you know and um she man i'm tripping so um
13:38she calls or texts me after every game oh wow and she's in north carolina obviously i played for the
13:46clippers on the west coast all these teams on the west coast so if my game starts at seven o
13:53'clock
13:53pacific time that's 10 her time right my grandmother watches every game and she texts me or call me after
14:01every game every guy i could pull out my phone and show you our text thread after the games and
14:07she um
14:10has just always been a constant wow that's a blessing oh absolutely
14:17chris's grandmother was born in 1944 in anderson county south carolina and we were able to trace
14:26her roots in that county back more than a century all the way to a man named james clinkscales james
14:36is
14:36chris chris's fourth great grandfather we found him in the 1870 census for anderson county living with
14:46his parents zachariah and cena clinkscales dang so you just read the names of your fifth great
14:55grandparents great great great great great grandparents that's crazy so first of all what's
15:01like to see that you you carry dna from all those people man it's um it's wild uh we had
15:08this question
15:09at our house the other day where we was talking about if you had the choice would you go back
15:13and
15:14learn who your great great great great great grand people were or would you rather go in the future
15:18and learn who your kids kids kids kids kids are okay what did you say i said i want to
15:24go back yeah i
15:26said i want to go back and to actually be sitting here actually going back that's wow unfortunately this
15:34story was about to take a painful turn zachariah and cena were both born around 1815 in south carolina
15:46which means almost certainly they both were born into slavery
15:54searching for evidence of their lives we focused on a white slave owner with their same surname
16:04mary clinkscales in the 1860 census mary filed a slave schedule indicating that she owned 13 human
16:15beings there are no names on this schedule only the color gender and age of each enslaved person
16:27but given what we knew about chris's family several entries stood out one mulatto male age 49
16:35one mulatto female age 39 one mulatto male age 12 one mulatto male age seven one mulatto
16:45male male age four we strongly believe that you are looking at your fifth great grandparents zachariah
16:52and cena their three sons as well as your fifth great grand uncle robert bob clinkscales listed there
17:02as property with no names that's that's crazy so you'd be right there enslaved with your kids
17:10mm-hmm oh yeah what would they have a four-year-old doing you know maybe bringing a cup of
17:16water to
17:16people you know they're growing into the job so whatever the lowest level task was they would give
17:24it give it to the children and as a mom how are you able to take care of these kids
17:31yeah well precisely
17:33how do you think it was possible for zachariah and cena to raise a family together in enslavement and
17:38think about this knowing at any moment since you had no control they could take they could be taken
17:45and sold down the river yeah i think about um how protective i am of my kids and um i
17:52cannot imagine
17:54them having three kids 12 seven and four and probably seeing the things that might have been done to
18:01them you know and powerless and you can't do nothing about it regrettably the relationship between chris's
18:11family and the family that enslaved them did not end when freedom came we uncovered a labor contract from
18:21the year 1866 it shows that mary clinscales hired chris's ancestors to work her plantation under what was
18:31known as a share wage agreement these agreements were common across the jim crow south and they were not
18:41favorable to the formerly enslaved men and women who signed them these said free persons agreed to board
18:50and clothe themselves and to obey all orders from said owner of plantation or her agent and also do
18:58hereby agree to work for the said mary clinscales in the capacity of laborers and faithfully honestly
19:05diligently and to the best of their skill and abilities to perform such labor in the care of said
19:11plantation signatures zach his mark cena her mark bob his mark james his mark wow this
19:20is very likely the first labor contract that anyone on your entire clink scale a branch of your family
19:28tree ever signed and it was the first time they were ever at least theoretically compensated for their
19:34work what do you think that meant for them that moment you remember when you signed your contract
19:40yeah this is their contract that's a whole different feeling yeah a whole different feeling
19:47yeah i'm still processing according to this agreement chris's ancestors were to work mary clinscale's land
19:58at her direction much as they had under slavery and they were to be paid not with cash but with
20:09a portion
20:10of the crops that's crazy i mean you're free technically but does that sound like freedom not at all no
20:20and in a good crop year share wages could offer better returns and cash wages but in a bad crop
20:26year
20:27share wage labors did very poorly and your ancestors had very little control over how the crop would turn
20:34out they were rolling the dice and on top of that people working on shares had to pay for their
20:39own food
20:40and clothing during the year while they're waiting on the harvest right yeah so they was basically
20:47just working to stay alive you got it it was called slavery by another name that's crazy chris what's it
20:54like to know that your ancestors had to go through that you know imagine you get the news we're free
20:59finally we're no longer property and then they're thrown into um a labor contract like that it literally
21:07makes me think about um how strong their minds had to be right like their will um it would have
21:16been so
21:17easy to give up but given their situation they whether they complained or not they they figured it out
21:27chris is correct zachariah and cena did indeed figure it out
21:35they likely worked at least 10 hours a day six days a week growing cotton but they survived and they
21:45moved their family forward incredibly by 1880 their son james even had a small farm of his own
21:57what do you think kept your fifth grade grandparents going because after all if they hadn't gotten up
22:03done the 10 hours in the field there'd be no chris ball yeah to me it immediately goes back to
22:12like how they had to be wired you know and the perseverance the ability to to fight through and the
22:22ability to i can't imagine like being able to i guess see the bigger picture and knowing that
22:31whatever they endured at the time that hopefully it would mean a better life for their kids right a
22:39better day is coming and for my grandkids it puts stuff into a whole different type of perspective
22:46much like chris britney griner was about to gain a new perspective on an entire branch of her family tree
22:57following her maternal roots we traveled from britney's hometown of houston texas to new orleans louisiana
23:06and introduced britney to her third great grandmother a woman named katherine neal
23:14oh wow you've never heard this name before well katherine was born around may 1868 three years after the
23:23end of the civil war in louisiana in 1883 when she was about 15 she married a man named felix
23:29balthazar
23:30and felix is your third great-grandfather your great great great grandfather felix balthazar ever hear
23:38him no did you know you had roots in new orleans no how about you do yeah i didn't know
23:45that did you
23:45think we'd get back this far this quickly no i didn't think it would go like this honestly i'm like
23:52shook right now
23:56katherine and felix had at least nine children together
24:00including britney's great great grandmother laura but sadly five of the children died in infancy
24:12and in the louisiana state archives we saw that katherine's health suffered as well
24:20state of louisiana versus katherine balthazar
24:24in this case it is ordered judge and decreed that the said katherine balthazar be declared insane
24:33and that she be incarcerated in the state insane asylum at jackson louisiana any family stories about
24:41this no yeah none at all that's wild in 1898 katherine was committed to the east louisiana state hospital
24:50segregated state-run mental hospital located in jackson louisiana and you could see photos
24:55of it from the early 1900s on your left wow what's it like to see that i mean that makes
25:03me very upset
25:04that somebody in my family had to go through this and the family members had to have to go through
25:08this
25:09too seeing her in there or not seeing her in there i don't know if they you know they will
25:14even visit her
25:16the hospital's files show that katherine was committed in 1898 released and then readmitted two years later
25:30the files also contain a transcript of an interview that a doctor conducted with katherine
25:37offering a harrowing glimpse into the kind of care that she was receiving
25:45what kind of place are you in kind of a storeroom are you crazy that is what they say
25:54did you ever see any ghosts yes sometimes was it a white or negro ghost wow that's crazy
26:04is it cold now just so old this is wow um i'm sorry they were white what did they say
26:13to you
26:13they didn't say much try to be good did you ever see god no those are your ancestors actual words
26:23how
26:23does it feel to read that i mean the answers to these questions are are weird and then the questions
26:32too though honestly like i feel like the questions are weird too you mean like i mean do you see
26:38go
26:39you see negro ghosts or white ghosts i mean that was a weird one i mean right that was a
26:44weird one
26:44and then did you did you ever see god i'm just like okay i'm not saying someone couldn't but it's
26:54a very
26:54hard thing to prove we don't know why katherine was asked these questions or how to interpret her answers
27:07but she would never leave the hospital
27:13she died within its walls in 1939 more than 40 years after she was committed
27:23how does it feel to learn this to learn that you're i mean you were incarcerated your ancestor
27:28was incarcerated yeah she was legit incarcerated is what happened to her i mean i i hate that that
27:34happened to my ancestors i thought i was the only one honestly um that have been in like that um
27:42i just hate that she had no voice no wonder i love maybe it's just embedded in me the fact
27:48that i
27:48want to give people voices that didn't have voices but maybe there's a deeper reason to why i feel like
27:54that this could be it digging deeper into the past we encountered another story that resonated with
28:05britney's life today it begins over a hundred years earlier with her seventh great-grandparents
28:14a couple named marie kwan kwan and pierre mattois records show that marie was born into slavery in louisiana
28:25around 1742 while pierre was a white man born in france around the same time
28:37they met in louisiana in the 1760s when pierre leased marie from a neighbor so that she could work in
28:47his home
28:48over the next 10 years they would conceive several children together
28:55a fact that outraged a local priest so much so that he filed a complaint against the couple reading
29:06it over britney began to have serious reservations about pierre's treatment of marie during those 10 years
29:17i mean the fact that she was what loaned out basically to uh she's a slave she's literally
29:25a slave and i mean was it against her will at first and then she fell for him or was
29:31it
29:31she felt mutual like those are the questions that are going through my head we don't know
29:36how it started but we know how it ended okay please turn the page i know i got a lot
29:43of questions when
29:44i get home this is the same market we just showed you only we've highlighted a different portion would
29:50you please read that transcribe section kawin kawin and mature in whose house and company the said
29:58unmarried negris has produced five or six mulatto children
30:03not counting the one with whom she is now pregnant this cannot happen in the house of an unmarried man
30:10and an unmarried woman without the public thinking and judging there to be illicit intercourse between
30:18the two partners in concubinage got it from from this there has ensued a great scandal and damage to
30:28soul damage to soul damage to soul this white man is living with his lover they have uh six children
30:36right and this priest is going nuts and he files a complaint against them i mean their priest has said
30:42this is a sin in the sight of man and god and they said we got to do something about
30:47it i know that
30:48priest was losing his wig oh my god we have no idea how britney's ancestors felt about the priest's
30:57accusations but we do know how they responded in july of 1778 less than a year later pierre purchased marie
31:10from her owner and then he freed her whoo what do you think that was like for marie finally to
31:19get her
31:19freedom i mean i would think she would feel safe this man has done everything for her honestly like she
31:26has a family through him he bought her and set her free and made sure she had her freedom um
31:33there are
31:33a lot more cases of a white male fathering children with a black woman who was never freed yeah now
31:41britney did he love her or not he loved her although marie was now free she and pierre still faced
31:49a terrible
31:50problem they had seven children who remained in bondage because the law dictated that the
31:58children of an enslaved woman followed the condition of their mother and thus were the property of her
32:05owner even if the man who had fathered them was free fortunately pierre had a solution
32:13he did what the law demanded and purchased each of his children and emancipated them securing his
32:22family's freedom for generations to come
32:28now that's a story that's a story that's a story that's a story that's a story i can be proud
32:33of
32:33honestly and then um it makes me think those 10 years were not hell for her now like to someone
32:41that
32:42did all that and then to go by the seven children um as well to go above and beyond and
32:48do that as well
32:49let you know like he actually did care like at some point his mind changed and i can respect a
32:55family
32:55member that that does that like yeah you had some bad intentions maybe potentially in the beginning
33:01but i see you made a change i can respect somebody that makes a change
33:08like britney chris paul was about to meet an ancestor who'd completely changed the trajectory of his
33:16family the story begins in winston-salem north carolina with chris's fourth great-grandfather
33:27a man named peter oliver chris had heard of peter before
33:33indeed he knew that winston-salem had long been planning to name a park after his ancestor
33:41but chris wasn't sure what peter had done to deserve such an honor
33:50the answer lies in the archives of a north carolina branch of the moravian church
33:57in 1786 this church purchased peter from a slave owner in virginia and then baptized him
34:08likely at his own request and who gives the name the moravians the moravians yeah now we don't know
34:16if he said i want to be peter or if they said your name is peter but he got the
34:19name from the moravians
34:21yeah in that moment of baptism initially he was known simply as negro oliver then when he's baptized
34:28he takes on the christian name peter and after 1786 he's known as peter oliver how do you think
34:35he felt that day probably felt about as normal as he possibly could i mean as as normal as you
34:42could
34:43in 1786 but to actually have a name and not be called negro right right it's wow
34:53the moravians were unusual in that they allowed enslaved people into their congregations
35:00and treated them as religious if not necessarily as social equals providing opportunities generally
35:10unavailable to other enslaved people for peter these opportunities would prove life-changing
35:19roughly a year after his baptism he was purchased by a master potter named rudolph christ
35:27pottery was a valuable craft at the time and peter would rapidly excel at it becoming one of the only
35:35documented african-american potters of his era in all of north carolina
35:44this is wow what's it like to see that and it's just so much connectivity right and you realize
35:52everything happens for a reason and the stories that we sort of all tell about ourselves we're always
35:59connected to to something something that came before us and it's amazing to hear right like this is a
36:06different connection with peter oliver than just sort of like a a park being renamed in our in our hometown
36:13and um even though i wasn't in slavery or anything like that like i the way he used pottery is
36:21kind of
36:21how i looked at the game of basketball that's right and i mean and it's been able to take uh
36:26me and my
36:26family outside of our hometown and show us the world a skill at which he excelled yep and which the
36:34society
36:34placed value on for sure moravian records show that by 1799 after just 13 years in their congregation
36:46peter had not only mastered pottery he'd also joined a choir and a firefighting team
36:55and he'd done something else as well something that must have required extraordinary effort chris he'd
37:03also learn to read and write he was different he's a bad brother man especially because reading and
37:13writing was sort of forbidden so when it makes you wonder when was that taking place who was teaching
37:18him right well his master was saying obviously he's so bright let's teach him to read right right he
37:26probably said look i'm more valuable to you if you let me learn to read or write for sure you
37:31know did the
37:31rope of dope on him we didn't have time to do all this unfortunately despite everything he'd
37:40accomplished peter remained enslaved but that was about to change in 1800 he was sold yet again
37:51this time to a moravian man who lived in lancaster county pennsylvania
37:56and we believe that peter himself pushed for this sale so why the pennsylvania please turn the page
38:07chris you're looking at an amazing document it's an affidavit presented to a man named frederick kuhn
38:15one of the associate judges in lancaster county would you please read that transcribed section
38:20peter oliver verily believes that he is entitled to his freedom by virtue of the laws of pennsylvania
38:28having been held as a slave by virtue of the said bill of sale in this commonwealth and that deponent
38:36is not confined or restrained of his liberty for any other cause whatsoever and further saith not
38:43signed peter oliver sworn before me june 13 1800 he goes to a judge and says your honor i believe
38:53that
38:54i am a free man in the commonwealth of pennsylvania and that was part of probably why he got sold
38:59up to
39:00pennsylvania that's right right they were enabling his freedom yep yep because pennsylvania had abolished
39:08slavery had abolished slavery right and north carolina didn't abolish slavery till the civil war made it
39:14abolished slavery they did him basically a favor in selling him that's right up north isn't that amazing
39:21yeah yeah absolutely
39:26there is a final beat to this story in 1802 less than two years after winning his freedom in pennsylvania
39:36peter returned to the south got married and settled on a four-acre farm that he leased from
39:45the moravian church outside of salem north carolina wow he goes back to north carolina which is why your
39:55family is from north carolina from north carolina yeah so he went up to pennsylvania got his freedom
40:01got his freedom and said i'm going back home came back down so he must have loved north carolina because
40:06me i would have stayed in pennsylvania what do you make of this it's uh even more meaningful now because
40:15of course you know of your immediate family i always knew that i was born and raised there but knowing
40:20that
40:20it traces back all the way to 1802 it's amazing yeah and to move away and to come back um
40:29what he
40:30demonstrated is exactly why they put in a park and all of that yes in winston yes you know and
40:39the
40:39importance of this is i mean i remember my mom getting on zooms with the family members or whatnot
40:45talking about peter oliver and me i'd be like okay okay you know but you don't know what you don't
40:51know no of course right so yeah to hear all of the information that i heard today it makes me
40:57understand why yeah he was a go-getter we'd already traced britney grinder's mother's roots in louisiana
41:07a place she'd never associated with her own family now turning to her father's ancestors we found
41:16ourselves on more familiar terrain britney's home state of texas the story begins with britney's great
41:25great grandfather a man named henry adams britney knew that she has relatives who still carry the
41:34adams surname but she had no idea where it came from we tried to learn and ended up back in
41:45the slave era
41:47pouring over the estate records of a white texan named thomas adams senior
41:55they list 36 enslaved human beings among them is a boy named henry
42:04worth 125 dollars a site that caused britney to recoil
42:14i mean seeing a value placed on any person is just it's like i can't really imagine it i can
42:22because i know the history and the sick history but to see that it's just i mean it's just a
42:28boy
42:29it's just a kid henry was around two months old and i got a seven month old at home i
42:36couldn't imagine
42:37him being born into this like
42:44and the adams senior disease so got the name from slave owner yep there's your great-great-grandfather
42:53henry listed as the property of a white man named thomas adams senior given a value in an estate record
43:01just like you would do a sofa or a cow or a horse i'm literally gonna say a cow a
43:06pig or an animal
43:08yeah like that's just sad i mean two months oh i mean like
43:16i ain't even started life yet no already belonging to somebody else
43:23thomas adam senior was one of the wealthiest men in his county
43:27when he died in 1859 he was worth around 40 000 or roughly 1.5 million dollars in today's money
43:41a big part of that wealth was human property
43:47and as we comb through his estate records we came upon henry's parents
43:53sam and palace adams as well as a curious detail according to this record sam was 32 years old and
44:03palace was 12 and they already had a child your great-great-grandfather henry but we puzzled over
44:10this we don't know palace's age is correct there her age on census records suggests that she was about
44:1625 not 12 so we can't be sure okay but it's possible that palace had henry before her 13th birthday
44:24i mean it's possible i mean it wouldn't be uncommon back then it wasn't like they didn't care
44:29i mean people had kids way earlier but that's crazy to think that she was like she had already
44:35lived that much life at 12 13. this story was about to take an even more troubling turn
44:45thomas's estate records were filed in january of 1859 meaning that his slaves were divided up
44:53amongst his heirs more than six years before the abolition of slavery which raised a chilling
45:02question so what do you think happened to your family were they able to stay together or were they
45:07split up oh they all got split up i mean they probably took joy and i know they some people
45:12took
45:13joy in splitting up families because they didn't want them to be together have a sense of all you're
45:18supposed to do is work i don't need to worry about your wife your kid or any of that right
45:22work so i'm
45:23i wouldn't be surprised if they didn't split up every single person on here please turn the page
45:28let's see this is the same estate inventory we just showed you only we've highlighted a different
45:35portion would you please read that transcribed section to abel adams palace age 12 years to harman
45:46adams henry age two months to thomas adams jr sam age 32 you were right your family even the two
45:57month old baby separated from his parents your ancestors were split up among three different sons
46:02of their enslaver palace goes to abel henry to harman and sam to thomas adams jr
46:13inhumane it makes me look at the people that we got this name from like we we literally took a
46:19name
46:19from these inhumane people makes me look at the name adams so different and i know there's some
46:26really good adams out there on my side of the family but it makes me look at that name differently
46:29of where we got it from happily britney's ancestors were able to reunite when freedom came
46:42in the 1870 census they were all living together in the same household
46:49but this census also tells us something far less joyful just a few doors down from britney's family
46:59lived a man named fabian adams one of the sons of thomas adams senior the very same man who had
47:09enslaved them how about that while fabian didn't inherit any of your ancestors from his father's will
47:15the fact that the families were living so close five years after the end of the civil war suggests
47:21that your ancestors even though they were free still had to work for the people who had held them
47:26in bondage 100 when i saw the occupation farmer white and then i see farm labor farm labor oh yeah
47:34they was definitely still working there can you imagine living next to the people who used to own you
47:38and not getting paid properly either probably sharecropper here we'll put that x there you know that's
47:45they just the new new age slavery that's all it was for them like that's crazy to still live there
47:52just the trauma of that knowing because they i mean they lived it they were separated brought back
47:57spread out through the siblings brought back together fabian didn't own any but he's definitely
48:03benefiting from y'all working there now and you know like it or not and it shouldn't surprise us
48:07but most formerly enslaved people stayed where they had been enslaved because they didn't have a choice
48:13they couldn't read they couldn't write that was illegal the system was rigged against them yeah
48:18where were they supposed to go with what money britney's questions are good ones and the answers
48:25would prove sobering her ancestors would not leave the county where they'd been enslaved
48:32for almost a century but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't make progress
48:39by 1910 less than 50 years after the end of the civil war her great-great-grandfather henry had not
48:48only managed to become a landowner but his children had too and seeing the journey of her family laid out
48:57from slavery to freedom would prove deeply moving to britney your people are survivors you feel a connection
49:06i feel a deep connection it just makes me understand myself a little bit more like knowing my background
49:17my history you think you're blazing your own path in life but you're really kind of like reliving some
49:22of the things and some of the choices even places where you're living that your ancestors went down yeah
49:29it's kind of cool to walk the same road that they they walked in the same sense it was a
49:33hard road they
49:34walked but i mean i wouldn't be here today if they wouldn't have walked this road if any of these
49:40little small things would have changed a husband not been somebody's husband they would have fought
49:46they would have ran you know tried to escape that could have altered everything and i could not be
49:53here that's right poof yeah you know as much as i want all this to change and just be all
49:57happy go lucky
49:59without this happening i might not be here right now that's right so um i'm super appreciative
50:07of this information that's for sure i know my family is going to be very appreciative of this what's your
50:13father going to say he's going to be blown away i already know he's going to be he's going to
50:17be shot
50:18he's going to be like what he's going to try to figure out how how y'all figured all this
50:21out
50:26the paper trail had now run out for each of my guests
50:31it was time to show them their full family trees oh my goodness now filled with names they'd never
50:40heard before this is awesome yeah i'm gonna put this up in my house thank you thank you
50:48for each it was a moment of joy offering the chance to connect with the women and men who laid
50:56the groundwork for their success to see this is the wildest thing i think it just makes makes me
51:06appreciate things a lot more right even though i know i should already but just understanding what
51:16many generations have went through before me in order for me to be sitting right here with you
51:22my ancestors had some fight in them um to to make it through to push through living next door to
51:31the
51:31people that had them enslaved to being put in a sane asylum and having to deal with that and cope
51:40it definitely helps me understand me a little bit more yeah my fight it all comes from from my family
51:48everything that i've been through everything i've gotten through how i've gotten through it it makes
51:52sense that's the end of our journey with britney griner and chris paul join me next time when we unlock
52:01the secrets of the past for new guests on another episode of finding your roots
52:0840s
52:0970-80 years
52:0937-90 years
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