{"id":18,"date":"2022-04-26T18:02:50","date_gmt":"2022-04-26T22:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2022\/?p=18"},"modified":"2024-01-17T18:37:09","modified_gmt":"2024-01-17T23:37:09","slug":"uprooting-the-family-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2022\/uprooting-the-family-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"Uprooting the Family Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"

*Four people in this story have their names removed. Their pseudonyms are Lucille, Pierre, Jean Paul, and Jacqueline.*<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"The
A garlic field across Highway 115 in Bunkie, Louisiana.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Louisiana, people are buried above the ground. The land is swampy, waterlogged, and during heavy flooding, caskets can float to the surface, long-dead ancestors popping back up to remind you who you came from. Disturbing the dead, disturbing the living.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So they\u2019re encased in a cement shell and set to rest on top of the soil, in a casket-shaped mound called an individual crypt. Long rectangle slabs of smooth white marble, or pockmarked dark stone, with a cross, or tombstone, or placard at the head. Not long after burial, like everything in Louisiana, the land soon takes over. Wildflowers poke up along the base, moss blooms from the corners, and, still bound to that swampy, waterlogged soil, one end or the other will sink, titling the crypt just slightly as it settles into the earth. All lined up in rows, like a crooked set of teeth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When Karen Compton Ward first heard of the above-ground burials, she was disturbed.\u00a0 \u201cI told my kids, when I die, burn me and put me in the ocean,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to see the world.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Karen, 58, looks right into your eyes when she talks to you, and never with judgment. She\u2019s black, on the lighter side (the much lighter side); her skin has an amber tint where the sun reaches, and, where it doesn\u2019t, is \u201cwhiter than white.\u201d Her hair is countless reddish brown ringlets that fall in Mississippi-river bends down her shoulders, her eyes heavy-lidded, big and brown, always with a thick stroke of black eyeliner making them bigger and browner.<\/span><\/p>\n

Karen looked out of the passenger\u2019s side window. Her daughter, Laroya \u201cLa La\u201d Compton, was driving. Karen called her Princess La La, and the car was decorated accordingly: leather-and-rhinestone seat covers, bedazzled crown decals, fuzzy pink pom-poms swinging from the mirror. It was early April. Gusts of wind pushed the car as we drove south on Route 71 from Alexandria, Louisiana to Bunkie. Surrounding us was agriculture. Rows of dirt topped with tufted crops, grass-like, bending in the wind, the acres of land broken up by slow-moving bayous and dirt roads and clumps of mossy trees.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

170 years ago, Karen\u2019s ancestors were enslaved in this area.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI try to imagine what they looked like in the fields,\u201d Karen said. In her mind, the tractors and plows faded away, replaced by the women and men who worked the land with their hands. \u201cBent over, picking. The babies on their backs. Where the house would\u2019ve been.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The land, and her ancestors, are just starting to get familiar. Karen grew up with the same knowledge of her history as many black Americans; that her family was enslaved, but with no idea by whom, or where, or until when. That is, until recently. She first met her distant relatives over the internet 12 years ago. Then, in 2017, made the trip to Louisiana to visit some of those relatives. And in 2019, 170 of them gathered in a family reunion, flying in from across the country, all brought together by Karen\u2019s search to find out where she came from.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It all started with a picture.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Looking for Viola<\/b><\/p>\n

Growing up, Karen\u2019s mother said it more and more. When they passed each other in the hallway, she\u2019d look at Karen\u2019s face, and in a Southern drawl teetering on the edge of song:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere go Viola, there go Viola.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Karen had always been told of her resemblance to Viola Pearl Compton, her father\u2019s mother.\u00a0 Same eyes, same lips, same skin. But her parents separated when she was young, and she was raised by her mother\u2019s side of the family.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI knew I looked like Viola, but I didn\u2019t get a chance to meet Viola,\u201d Karen said. Karen was left with no face, no picture, just her mother\u2019s memory \u2014 \u201cthere go Viola, there go Viola,\u201d \u2014 of her paternal grandmother.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t think much about it. Her mother\u2019s darker skin, just a fact of existence. The Compton in her name, just remnants of a family she no longer belonged to.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But her father\u2019s whiteness followed her. He was African American, but white-passing \u2014 while no one would mistake Karen for white, she still stood out against her black schoolmates in Chicago\u2019s Washington Park Housing Projects. They would tease her, as kids do, calling her \u201cwhite girl.\u201d When she was twelve, her mother remarried, to a Navy police officer, and the family relocated to NAS Alameda in the San Francisco Bay Area. The kids there were more diverse, and the teasing stopped. But that feeling that she was different stuck in the back of her mind, right next to the mystery of Viola\u2019s face. Some part of her story was missing. But Karen\u2019s 20s were preoccupied with raising La La, who she had at 18, and her brother Brannon, who she had at 20.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt didn\u2019t hit me until I was in my 30s that I really, desperately wanted to know about her,\u201d Karen said. \u201cJust all of a sudden. I\u2019ve gotta know, I\u2019ve gotta know, I\u2019ve gotta know.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And so began Karen\u2019s search for Viola. Saturdays turned into her version of self-care days, trips from Bakersfield to Los Angeles filled with manicures, hair appointments, and hours in the Inglewood Public Library digging through records, hunting for Viola\u2019s face.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Months passed, then years. No picture. Compton this, Compton that, Viola nothing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One of those Saturdays in the early 2000s, Karen\u2019s eyes fell on the library\u2019s phone book section. She remembered something \u2014 a promise made by her older half-sister back in Chicago, before the family split over two decades before.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy sister said she\u2019s always gonna be in the phonebook,\u201d Karen said. \u201cAnd sure enough, there she was.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They hadn\u2019t talked in years, but Karen got straight to the point. Did her sister have a picture of their maternal\u00a0 grandmother? She didn\u2019t, but she knew someone who might: her half-brother, now in Mississippi.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Not long after, the picture arrived in the mail.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI opened it up and I got to see her face.\u201d Karen said. There were the lips: evenly rounded, with a flourishing V-shaped dip in the middle. There were the round cheeks, and the eyebrows, angled up and thin at the tails. And there was that same light amber-brown skin tone against Viola\u2019s polka-dot collar, obvious even through the black and white. \u201cI just sat, and I just cried. To look at the picture and say, wow, you did exist. You were real, you were alive\u2026. you had a life, you had children, and you have grandchildren and now you have great-grandchildren.\u201d By now, Karen could see some of Viola in her own children. \u201cIt was like a whole different world opened up to me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Viola Compton was the first of many.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I was finished,\u201d Karen said. \u201cI thought I was gonna be satisfied just seeing her face. But then I wondered, well where did you come from?\u201d The fire was lit. \u201cWell who was her father? Who was her dad? And who\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Twenty-two years later, it\u2019s still burning.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s past obsessed?\u201d her black DNA cousin, Brenda Compton, said. \u201cIs there a word that\u2019s past obsessed?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

DNA cousin is a not-so-scientific term. It\u2019s what those in the Compton lineage call the family members who pop up as branches on their Ancestry.com trees, branches connected through blood tests and gene sequences and great-great-cousin-aunt-uncles they\u2019d never heard of. Karen\u2019s search for Viola has evolved into two Facebook pages, one big family reunion, and a web of 400+ blood relatives all connected, somehow and some way, to the Comptons.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She started with Facebook, friending every black person, last name Compton, she could find (\u201cYou got my last name, I\u2019m asking questions\u201d). Messaging them. One of those Facebook Comptons created a page, Compton Family Connections, to crowdsource their history. People slowly joined, posting sepia toned photos of great-great aunts in front of churches, microfilms of property deeds and census records, going back decades, some in fading, slanted cursive. The pieces of the Compton family puzzle began to fall together. Before dispersing to big cities (Chicago, Houston, St. Louis), the Comptons populated Rapides Parish, a collection of smallish towns, one biggish town, a major highway, and farmland smack in the middle of Louisiana. That\u2019s where Viola was born in 1899. And that\u2019s where the first sign of the white side of the family appeared.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Enslaved people are voids of information, genealogically speaking. Only after the Civil War were they recorded as human. Venture beyond the 1870 Census, and family timelines fade away into sales records. Personhood reduced to age, gender, and skin tone. The only way to regain footing is through last names passed down from white slaveholders. In Karen\u2019s case, from Leonard Briscoe Compton. Grandson of wealthy Englishmen, the family immigrated to Maryland in the 1700s, where he was born. He and his three brothers then moved to Rapides Parish in 1799. They purchased land, and purchased people to work that land.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fauchon Morres was one such person. Leonard bought her in 1819 for $16,000. She was 35. On the sale record, she\u2019s described as mulatto, and \u201coverwhelmingly European.\u201d Upon giving birth to Leonard\u2019s first son in 1825, he freed her. They lived together as man and wife, sharing the estate, sending their son to Ohio to be educated as white. And when Leonard died, he left Fauchon everything. Everything, including a tract of land along the Red River, 91 bales of cotton, and the people he enslaved, including the seven children she had before him, the seven black children he had purchased along with her. Legally, she owned her own kids.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to think that they did love each other,\u201d Karen said. \u201cBut what else was she gonna do? Because she was his slave\u2026.she had an obligation. She wasn\u2019t gonna leave her children.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For a brief few months, Fauchon was the wealthiest black woman in Louisiana. Until Leonard\u2019s brothers sued her, taking her inheritance. The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that, as a formerly enslaved person, she couldn\u2019t own property. Fauchon died a year later. The only thing passed down from their relationship was a blended skin tone and the shock of white faces popping up in a black family tree.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Bunkie House<\/b><\/p>\n

\"A
The walkway to Brenda’s house in Bunkie, Louisiana.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Brenda Compton hosted the first meet-and-greet at her home in Bunkie, Louisiana. Now, the house is empty; Brenda\u2019s getting ready to sell. But five years ago, it was full of furniture, gumbo, family maps, and strangers-turned-family as it hosted the first Compton gathering.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The house sits across highway 115 from garlic fields, simple and sturdy, sun-basking on a healthy blanket of grass. A wide-angled roof, fading brick, wrought iron over the windows, and a cotton plant that keeps peeking up no matter how many times they try to bury it.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a kid, Brenda\u2019s family made the 4-hour drive from Houston to Bunkie for summer breaks, winter breaks, every holiday \u2014 \u201cnot just the major ones,\u201d she said, \u201c<\/span>e-ve-ry<\/span><\/i> holiday\u2026if school was out that Friday, by Saturday we were in Bunkie.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Brenda is quintessentially Southern, speaks slowly and laughs quickly. She\u2019s 73, wears her hair short, lipstick red, and usually doesn\u2019t have \u201cwhite folks\u201d in her home.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was scary at first,\u201d she said. Originally just Brenda, Karen, and their siblings, two of their white DNA cousins who lived nearby joined the meet-and-greet. Lucille and her grandson Pierre. Karen had been warned about mixing with whites in the South; that things were different than in California, discrimination was worse, the police would be after them. So she and Brenda were nervous, very nervous. Luckily, Brenda\u2019s brother Donnie would be on the lookout for cheeks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou know what,\u201d he told her, \u201cI think that when white people doesn\u2019t feel comfortable around you, they cheeks get red,\u201d Brenda laughed. \u201cI said what in the hell, where did you get that from\u2026that\u2019s foolish. But my brother is funny, he\u2019s comical.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The white folks arrived a half hour after Karen and her Mississippi brother. It was pecan season, and nuts dropped from the shady tree out front. Pierre got out of the driver\u2019s seat, Lucille from the passenger\u2019s. She was a little old lady. Wavy gray hair, sharp brown eyes, purple blouse, purple cardigan, purple reading glasses. They\u2019d driven in from Pineville, another Louisiana town 40 minutes away. And though they looked different \u2014 very different \u2014 there was one thing they\u2019d for sure have in common: Southern hospitality.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSome people<\/span> say <\/span><\/i>they can make gumbo, and some people can\u2019t,\u201d Brenda said. \u201cSome people can\u2019t make gumbo.\u201d Thankfully, Donnie could. It filled their mother\u2019s biggest pot \u2014 chicken, okra, file in a thick green stew \u2014 and after 82-year-old Lucille tried a \u201clittle bitty bowl,\u201d plates abounded. Mustard greens, cornbread, fried drumsticks from Chicken Palace. That was when Karen and Brenda learned that their chatty tendencies weren\u2019t just on the black side; \u201c[Lucille] can talk,\u201d Karen later told me, \u201ctalk talk talk talk.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Lucille told them about how she was a descendant of John Compton, Leonard Briscoe Compton\u2019s older brother. A generation ahead of Karen, she was John\u2019s second-great-granddaughter. The brothers were business partners, and had neighboring land along Bayou Robert and Bayou Boeuf \u2014 land that Route 71 now cuts through, where Karen looked out of the car window, imagining her ancestors in the fields. Leonard\u2019s choice to marry Fauchon had divided the family, and John was the one who led the charge in taking her inheritance. Leonard\u2019s children were left out of the family genealogy book: \u201che never married,\u201d it reads, with no mention of the nasty legal battles after his death.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But the family knew that Leonard had mixed. According to Karen, Lucille told her\u00a0 John\u2019s white descendants always suspected they had black cousins \u2014 \u201cwe just never knew how to find you, where to find you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Even with that suspicion, not every white Compton was on board with the blooming family tree. One, still living on former plantation land, had shut the door on a relative who\u2019d gone looking for bibles he\u2019d inherited \u2014 bibles that often had enslaved people\u2019s names and family trees written in the lining. One even ghosted Karen after months of emailing back and forth when she finally said something that revealed her blackness.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Not Lucille though. Not only did she enthusiastically bound into the meet-and-greet, the records she brought with her were more than Karen and Brenda could have imagined. Once the meeting, greeting, and eating were done, the DNA cousins got down to business sharing their genealogy collections.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey brought it all in one book,\u201d Karen said, the same book that conveniently left out Leonard\u2019s black wife and children. \u201cThey unrolled the maps, and they had pictures of the plantations, and the bayous, and oh man, it was just a wealth of information.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The discrepancies between the black and white collections were obvious. Since finding Viola, Karen had spent hours upon hours in different genealogy libraries, finding the tiniest scraps of information to piece together her family puzzle. A social security application, a marriage license, a property deed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But they lacked much of the big-picture story. One piece in particular had evaded their grasp; Leonard\u2019s property, called the Lodi plantation. Where Fauchon and her kids lived, where the family first mixed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew that it existed because of word of mouth,\u201d Karen said. No one on the black side had been able to find definitive proof of the Lodi plantation. \u201cEven when we went to court houses and all of that,\u201d she said, \u201cwe just <\/span>could not<\/span><\/i> find that information. And then when we met with the white cousins, they had it right there in print. Everything.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It was nice, to hold a photo up to your face instead of zooming in on the computer. To flip through pages and pages of your family\u2019s timeline. To trace your finger along a bayou, find the exact section of riverbank where your ancestors must have seen gators and turtles bobbing their heads.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey really existed,\u201d Karen proved to herself over and over. \u201cIt\u2019s something I have to take a picture of, or I have to get a copy of, or I have to possess the realness of the fact\u2026.It\u2019s not an idea. It\u2019s not a thought. It\u2019s not a what if. Here\u2019s an actual fact of something that existed.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Four hours of amateur genealogy and steady chit-chat came and went. Karen and her brother had a long drive home. Full of sweet potatoes and sweeter tea, the cousins said goodbyes, leaving Brenda with her brothers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOkay, Donnie, you were gone watch cheeks. What did you get?\u201d she asked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBrenda, they were comfortable around us. I was reading cheeks.\u201d She called him silly again. \u201cNo no, they were real comfortable around us.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Brenda felt relief \u2014 awe, not just at unflushed cheeks, but at how well they got along. How the white folks didn\u2019t deny their kinship. How they didn\u2019t need the DNA tests to feel like family.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was just bomb-diggity,\u201d Brenda said. \u201cThat\u2019s my word for it. Bomb-diggity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Princess La La<\/b><\/p>\n

\"Looking
Princess La La driving her princess-themed car.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

La La was stranded in the desert. It was 2018, and she\u2019d been trying to move from Bakersfield, California to Mississippi, where Karen was living at the time. In the middle of the four-day drive, her car broke down in New Mexico. Or maybe it was Arizona. Somewhere with miles of empty dirt and no one around to help. She was with her youngest son, and starting to panic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She caught rides from gracious strangers, ending up in Arlington, Texas three days later. There, a bald black man with La La\u2019s same sparkling smile picked them up in his Toyota Camry. They\u2019d never met before, but it didn\u2019t matter. It was her cousin Ben. Karen had connected with him as a DNA match on Ancestry.com a few years ago; when her daughter was in trouble, she knew just who to call.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t feel like it was a stranger helping me,\u201d La La said, even though it was the first she\u2019d heard of him. \u201cI felt safe with him. And I was safe with him, thank god.\u201d He took them into his home in Irving, Texas until she was able to get back on her feet. She now lives nearby, and they\u2019ve been close ever since. \u201cThat\u2019s family. I can\u2019t explain it,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t take much for La La, 41, to laugh. Contagious giggles punctuate many of her thoughts, whether absurd, or poignant, or just plain funny. She has a thing for glitz; this is Princess La La we\u2019re talking about. When I met her and Karen in Louisiana, she was wearing knee-high leather boots, jeans, a black beret, and a bedazzled Gucci shirt. Her father is black, and she takes after him: her complexion a little darker than Karen\u2019s, head a little bigger, and ringlet curls a little tighter, jet-black, and shiny. She was grateful when Uncle Ben took her in, but she wasn\u2019t surprised. She would\u2019ve done the same.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe give,\u201d she said about the Comptons. She\u2019s noticed some similarities among the DNA cousins. \u201cWe\u2019ll always be the first ones to say, I\u2019ll do it. I\u2019ll pay, I\u2019ll\u2026.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Before moving to Texas, both she and Karen had careers in social work. La La worked for AmeriCorp, specializing in the end-of-the-road schools no one else wanted, mentoring kids just out of juvie, or still inside. She remembers candy-striping with her grandmother at NAS Alameda, where she grew up before moving to low income neighborhoods.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m from the hood, so to speak,\u201d La La said. After moving out of NAS Alameda when she was twelve, the family made its way south along California\u2019s San Joaquin Valley. NAS Lemoore, then Hanford, and finally Bakersfield. All places where miles of flat sidewalks bounce the sun into a haze, dissolving any moisture in the air, all places where grass browns in the summer and rainfall is a pleasant surprise. And all places where La La had to come to terms with what it meant to be black in America.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first started seeing family members getting harassed by the police for nothing,\u201d she said, remembering when she noticed something was off. \u201cYou\u2019re trying to understand what went wrong, and you loved the police, and you\u2019re just a kid, you don\u2019t know nothing.\u201d She struggled to make sense of the world. \u201cOr being in school, and someone\u2019s getting more privileges than you\u2019re getting, or something goes wrong and they <\/span>immediately<\/span><\/i> turn to you. That\u2019s learned. I didn\u2019t grow up thinking that.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As she got older, she was the one to get pulled over by the police, forced to get on the ground for loosely fitting a description. She saw how the media generalized people who looked like her, as though they were all the same person. \u201cYou see a black person rob somebody, we\u2019re all robbers. And it\u2019s hard to grow up, and to know that. It\u2019s hard.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

La La was raised in a melting pot. Being a Navy brat, she had friends of all races, grew up around different cultures, languages, religions. It opened her eyes to how similar we all are as human beings, taught her that the conversation doesn\u2019t have to end just because someone isn\u2019t like you. But it also made the differences in how she and her family were treated so much more obvious.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cYou start to grow this fear, and this hatred,\u201d she said. \u201cA lot of it\u2019s towards maybe policing and government,\u201d she said, and though much of the discrimination came from white faces, her feelings weren\u2019t necessarily towards individual people. \u201cI\u2019ve never hated anybody. I don\u2019t hate white people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

There was one white man, though, that might deserve a little hatred. She told me about being on the track team at NAS Alameda. About being the third-fastest, and almost making the junior Olympics, and how \u201cit was, like, the best thing ever.\u201d About their coach, and how the team worshiped him the way kids worship their favorite teacher, hanging onto his every word. And about the time, one day in the weight room, that coach called her the n-word.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was a kid. And it broke me. It broke me. I loved that man, that was my coach, he was everything,\u201d she said. La La was ten or eleven at the time. \u201cAnd he called me a nigger.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She quit the team. The coach arrogantly tried to make her apologize, which she refused to do. To this day, she wishes she could talk to him, tell him how much she had loved him, and how much he hurt her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you start seeing that stuff, from childhood on, it\u2019s just like, ding, ding, ding, it\u2019s clicking in your brain, till it finally just stays there, and you\u2019re like, this is just what it is. How do I survive it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

First Encounters<\/b><\/p>\n

After Brenda\u2019s Bunkie meet-and-greet, the groundwork was laid. The other cousins on Facebook were jealous of the mini gathering. So, the Comptons banded together and organized a blended family reunion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

170 of them met at the Courtyard Marriott Inn in Alexandria, Louisiana. It was October 18th, 2019. The day was sunny, the air was humid, the parking lot was crowded, and La La was afraid.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was standing behind my mom like a lost puppy,\u201d she said. \u201cI was scared.\u201d A big group of whites and blacks, getting together, in the same place? \u201cI didn\u2019t know if they were gonna hate us, if people were gonna fight, I just didn\u2019t know.\u201d She\u2019d never seen it before. None of them had. While they all shared DNA, the individual family units were all-white or all-black. Black kids with black parents, white kids with white parents. It seemed like the Comptons had all stuck with what they knew, and La La was second guessing everything. But she knew how hard Karen had worked for this moment, to see everyone finally in a room together. So La La got out of her car and walked inside.<\/span><\/p>\n

She approached the registration table in the hotel conference room. The volunteers, all Compton family members, had alternated black-white-black-white. As people checked in, La La saw them working together, figuring out who belonged to which family line, finding name tags. The churning in her stomach stopped, replaced by curiosity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, this is pretty cool\u2026 <\/span><\/i>she thought. Let\u2019s just see how it goes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They\u2019d all shown up at the same place, but the distance was still there. Especially at Kees Park. They gathered there in matching cerulean blue t-shirts, pulled taught over drooping bellies of old men, hanging loose on skinny children, styled into teenaged scoop-necks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Compton Family Reunion, <\/span><\/i>the shirts read, with a medieval-looking family crest. <\/span>Alexandria, Louisiana. 2019.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The blended Compton family had set up a tent canopy, picnic tables, folding chairs, and an awkwardly unintentional racial division. \u201cThe whites sat on their side, and the blacks sat on their side,\u201d La La remembered. Stereotypes ran through their minds. Were the whites expecting them to be loud, acting foolish? Were the blacks expecting them to be stuck up and snobby? They eyed each other from across the way, but no one really knew how to start. So La La and Karen began crossing lines, going to the different sides, asking people how they were doing. Conversations started: \u201cbefore you know it, everybody\u2019s talking to everybody,\u201d La La said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The adults were easy. They\u2019d shown up. The decision to have an open mindset, get to know their colorful cousins, was already made \u2014 once the ice broke, they had no trouble talking. Lucille was there, genealogy book in hand. Her grandson, too, and son, and Brenda. But the children were struggling. Luckily, La La had plenty of experience dealing with kids at AmeriCorp. And she liked hanging out with them more, anyway.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She sat with a group of black girls. \u201cI was helping them do little crafts, stuff like that, and a little white boy comes over, just talking, dadadada.\u201d The girls ignored him.\u00a0 Didn\u2019t make room for him in their circle. \u201cI\u2019m like, <\/span>ohhh no<\/span><\/i>.\u201d Most of the families were from the South, where, so it seemed, there wasn\u2019t much mixing between the races.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe little boy had a comment,\u201d she remembered. \u201cHe said, there\u2019s nobody that looks like you where I come from!\u201d La La laughed. \u201cOh, he\u2019s in shock! They\u2019re more in shock than us, because they don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on. They\u2019re kids. Like, where are all these black people coming from? Mom, what\u2019s going on?\u201d It was refreshing, seeing their honest reactions. \u201cKids have no filter,\u201d she chuckled. So, just as she had with the adults, La La played ice-breaker. She asked the boy his name, showed him the crafts, and soon the girls were playing along without a thought.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Comptons had quite the weekend planned. A BBQ luncheon, smoked brisket and baked beans and gallons of Southern sweet tea. A Mardi Gras event, purple and green and gold glitter, beads and masks and a hidden King cake baby. Presentations on family history, from 16th century England to 20th century America. At Kees Park, the kids jumped in the bouncy house, grandparents danced the electric slide, and the Compton blended family looked forward to their next few days together.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But again, La La was reminded of where they\u2019d all come from. She overheard phone calls between white women and their husbands who \u201cweren\u2019t too happy, let\u2019s just say that.\u201d They were telling their wives to come home, stop the mixing, skip the rest of the weekend.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat was kind of sad, because they were open, and their other half was not. So that was a hard thing to hear\u201d she said. \u201cI hope this isn\u2019t hurting nobody\u2019s family.\u201d But the ones that did show up knew it was the right decision.\u00a0 \u201cMan, if he could only see,\u201d she thought. \u201cEverybody\u2019s dancing together, drinking together, having a good time, telling stories,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was just great.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

They all shared the same mindset: we\u2019re family, there\u2019s no way out of it, so let\u2019s just enjoy it. As with any family reunion, they started finding similarities. A chin, a nose, a smile, a laugh. A strong faith in God, love for all his children, prayers before every meal. And that ability to go on and on and on about anything, with honesty, openness, and good humor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt broke a lot of barriers,\u201d La La said. \u201cWe\u2019re more alike than we know.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The reunion helped put some of La La\u2019s negative feelings to rest, her fears that differences would overcome similarities. Until she ran into the same revelation Karen had at the Bunkie House meet-and-greet: the whites had the records. Lots and lots of records. Along with the history presentations, the family archives had been photocopied, laminated, and compiled into binders. La La flipped through, and it left her heartbroken.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up, it felt like we\u2019re the only culture that don\u2019t really have a culture. We had to make our own culture, because it was stolen from us,\u201d she said. \u201cSo to know that you have some records that would probably help lead us back to some form of an identity, yeah, that was hurtful.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She had assumed the black side of history was just lost to time, lost in the minds and hearts of people who weren\u2019t allowed to read or write or raise their own children. The world had just left them behind, she thought, forgetting that black people were there, that slavery happened. But clearly that wasn\u2019t the case. \u201cThat gave me the chills,\u201d she said. \u201cThey have the pictures. They know what happened, they have records of who they owned, like wow.\u201d She was shocked. \u201cAll the stuff that we need answers to, you have already.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Suddenly their absence felt more sinister, intentional. The truth had been hidden, but only from black eyes. And that hurt. But it also made her think.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are they going through, too?\u201d she wondered about her white cousins. \u201cThey have to deal with the fact that, I come from a family who has slaves,\u201d she said, that their not-so-long-ago ancestors had done horrible things to innocent people, that everything they have today came from suffering. \u201cWho wants to admit that? Who wants to say, oh yeah, I\u2019m part of that family who did that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It was decades too late, but the fact that they\u2019d brought the records to the reunion helped. Opened her up to more understanding, and less hate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe it\u2019s not so much that they were purposefully trying to sweep it under the rug,\u201d La La said, \u201cit\u2019s just that they\u2019re hurting too. We\u2019re hurting, but they\u2019re hurting, because we\u2019re in a different era. To know that you\u2019re a part of that? It probably affects them a lot more than we know,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think we need to not forget that. Both sides are hurting.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At the blended Compton reunion, the DNA cousins watched their family grow, strangers turn into aunts, uncles, cousins, friends. They learned dances, jokes, traditions from people they would\u2019ve walked past on the street without a second thought.<\/span><\/p>\n

La La had a good time, she said, and didn\u2019t tell the white cousins how much their records, sealed away for so long, had hurt her. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be the cause of any more pain. I just wanted to be happy,\u201d she said. \u201cJust accepting that you\u2019re family, we\u2019re family now, that\u2019s all I can take out of this. I don\u2019t want no animosity, and I don\u2019t want any anger. We\u2019re in a different era now, let\u2019s just grow each other and love each other.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A Word from the Whites<\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"
Jean Paul standing on the road by his house.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Were my ancestors enslaved?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

For most black Americans,\u00a0 it\u2019s hardly even worth asking. The answer is built into the color of their skin.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Did my ancestors enslave people?\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

For whites, the answer is less clear. Whether or not they\u2019ve benefited from it \u2014 that\u2019s obvious. But if their ancestors were directly responsible? If stealing generation after generation of time and health and family is baked directly into their DNA?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Once you find out the truth, what do you do?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t ever talk about it,\u201d A white Compton DNA cousin, Jacqueline, said. \u201cIf the white family talks, we only talk about the good part.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jacqueline is in her seventies, and grew up in Louisiana. Her ancestors owned neighboring plantations to the Comptons, and the family lines crossed at multiple points throughout the years. A DNA test with Karen proved that they were related.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a two sided coin. You\u2019re proud of your heritage, you\u2019re proud of your grandparents, they did well in life and they handed things down to you, property, buildings, money, prestige, the name.\u201d Her family heirlooms include old black-and-white plantation photos; she took them to frame shops, has them displayed them in her house.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut the same didn\u2019t happen for them,\u201d she said about her black cousins. \u201cThey were cattle.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One plantation photo shows a two-story house, long rectangle windows, wraparound porches with pillars shaded by large trees. There are figures standing in front of it \u2014 someone holding a baby, riding a horse, sitting on the porch. Behind the house is a fence, and what looks like a barn, washed out by sunlight. When Karen visited Jacqueline at her ranch, Jacqueline felt the need to hide those plantation photos. Felt like she had to explain why she had them, why they were in those frames (oval, gold, inscribed in loopy cursive). Absent her black cousins, the old family land was a source of pride. Now, showing them to Karen, Jacqueline was embarrassed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIs my family directly responsible for you not knowing your language, or who your three times great-grandmother was? Is it specifically my family? Is it an overall thing?\u201d It was a different time. A lot of people owned slaves. But not everyone. And not everyone now lives on a ranch, like Jacqueline does. \u201cAnd then you feel\u2026guilt. Guilt.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since meeting her black cousins, she\u2019s thought more about what it must have been like for their ancestors 200 years ago.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI try to put myself in that position,\u201d she said. \u201cWell, what would I feel like if they had taken everything from me, including my name? Well, how would I feel?\u201d She thought about her own family. \u201cI look at my grandchild and I think, oh my gosh, what would I do if somebody owned me and just walked up and took her?\u201d she said. \u201cWhat if they sold her to some abusive master? What if I never ever saw that child again?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She was happy to find Karen, of course. Her black DNA cousins are lovely, sweet and nice and \u201cjust so good to us.\u201d But when she talks to them about their shared history, she still feels that queasy burst of shame, embarrassment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI know how I got my name, and my money,\u201d she said. \u201cSometimes I wanna run away from that guilt, just, out of sight, out of mind. But then I would miss the people that I\u2019ve met that I like so much.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A Facebook Story<\/b><\/p>\n

A few months ago, Karen got a call from a DNA cousin. <\/span>Did you see what Jacqueline posted on Facebook? <\/span><\/i>No, she hadn\u2019t. So she logged on, searched up Jacqueline, but instead of her profile picture, Karen found a padlock icon and a message: <\/span>this content isn\u2019t available right now.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Jacqueline had blocked her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Karen was confused. For older ladies, Facebook is sacred, like the watering hole, the town square, the bingo tournament. There are unspoken rules: always wish people a happy birthday, check in safe when there\u2019s a disaster nearby, repost anything and everything relatable. And never, ever block someone. Karen called up Brenda to ask if she\u2019d seen the post. Brenda looked, and found the same blank page. She, too, had been blocked.<\/span><\/p>\n

Neither of them ever ended up seeing it. Their other cousins told them it was a political cartoon about Kamala Harris, who Karen loved. Something mocking her. Something Jacqueline knew would offend her black cousins. But she posted it anyway, and tried to block Karen and Brenda from seeing the post, but accidentally ended up blocking them from her account entirely.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The blended Compton family was born on Facebook. They grew together, sharing, posting, commenting. It was instrumental in Karen\u2019s search for her family, in the reunion, in keeping the relationships they\u2019d made since. Some had friended each other outside of their genealogy group, occasionally seeing glimpses of their lives outside of the Compton bubble. There were political differences, of course. To be expected in a family with hundreds of members and vastly different backgrounds. But it had never really been an issue until after the reunion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLater, when the election started,\u201d Brenda recalled, \u201cOh my goodness. We saw different things. We saw true colors.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Jacqueline\u2019s blocking wasn\u2019t the first upsetting thing she\u2019d done on Facebook, but it was the most jarring. She and Brenda were already at odds at the time we spoke, before the blocking occurred.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFirst time I met her, I loved her,\u201d Brenda said. \u201cJacqueline is another me. She\u2019s a white me.\u201d They had a good back and forth. \u201cShe\u2019ll say stuff to see what your reaction is gonna be, but I\u2019ll counteract her, I think that\u2019s why we like each other.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In November of 2021, Brenda recounted, Jacqueline shared a picture of George Washington, with a caption about \u2018taking the country back.\u2019 Brenda replied in the comments, with an emoji \u2014 an emoji with a little more attitude, one that rolled its eyes and said, <\/span>keep scrolling\u2026.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Jacqueline shot back. She didn\u2019t think it was fair that Brenda\u2019s emoji was looking side-eyed at her post. Jacqueline didn\u2019t look side-eyed at Brenda\u2019s posts when she saw something she didn\u2019t like.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Brenda replied. \u201cIt\u2019s okay if you do,\u201d she typed. \u201cYou can look side-eyed at what I say, and you can say, keep scrolling, and I will still love you. \u2018Cause you\u2019re my cousin.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, one of Jacqueline\u2019s friends \u2014 \u201cone of her little racist friends,\u201d as Brenda calls them \u2014 replied saying she didn\u2019t think anything was wrong with the George Washington take-back-the-country post. In fact, she thought it was perfect.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s when Brenda got annoyed. Her little friend had no business popping in on that post. No one was talking to her in the first place. She could have really gone off.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn my head, lord, Michelle Obama says, when they go low, we gotta go high,\u201d Brenda told herself. \u201cAnd we gotta stay high right now.\u201d So she reigned herself in, replied, <\/span>agree to disagree, <\/span><\/i>with a smiley face. It was the end of that conflict. She didn\u2019t post anymore, Jacqueline didn\u2019t post anymore.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But tensions were high, and Brenda remembers another incident soon after when her brother Donnie posted a photo of the black Peanuts character, Franklin, at a Thanksgiving table with other multiracial Peanuts characters. Jacqueline commented: <\/span>where are the white children?\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Brenda grew up in segregated Houston, in a redlined neighborhood. The deed to her house still says it should be sold \u201cstrictly to a colored.\u201d So she knew it was entirely possible that Franklin didn\u2019t have any white friends to sit around and have a holiday meal with.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So Brenda replied. <\/span>Did you go to school with any colored people?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Jacqueline: <\/span>I went to high school during segregation and I enjoyed it because I got to meet new people.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Brenda: <\/span>You did not answer my question. Did you go to school with integration?<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jacqueline: <\/span>I went to high school and I was so glad to meet new people.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Brenda was annoyed. \u201cI stopped. I said, we need to talk. She said, well, if you would call me, we could talk now. I said, no, it will be a face-to-face conversation, and I need to talk to you face-to-face. And then she didn\u2019t answer me anymore. I don\u2019t think she liked that. But it\u2019s okay, and I\u2019m not angry with her, I\u2019m really not.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Brenda\u2019s okay with disagreement. \u201cIt would be weird if we all agreed with each other,\u201d she said. There\u2019s a reason God made us all different, in her eyes. We shouldn\u2019t all think like each other. But she does, of course, disagree.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re still stuck,\u201d Brenda said about many of the white Compton\u2019s political views, \u201cway back in prehistoric times, far as I\u2019m concerned. They mad about the statues being pulled down,\u201d referencing the Confederate monuments that were removed during protests. \u201cY\u2019all, what about us? Yeah, I\u2019m going along with Black Lives Matter! I\u2019m black!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

La La hears about the back and forths on Facebook, but mostly through her mom. \u201cI keep my distance,\u201d she said. It\u2019s sad, seeing some of the posts from people she laughed and talked with at the reunion. \u201cIt\u2019s hard for me, when I see stuff like that, because it just goes to show that the racial tension is still there,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we have to understand too, these people had a life before us.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To Jacqueline, it\u2019s a matter of sensitivity. She feels like her comments are taken out of context, blown out of proportion depending on how easily hurt someone is. Most of the black cousins, she classifies as \u201csensitive.\u201d Brenda less so, but there\u2019s still some tension there. But she can talk to Karen about anything. Everyone can.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cKaren\u2019s very comfortable, being that bridge,\u201d Jacqueline said. If anything\u2019s bothering anyone in the blended Compton family, they call Karen. That\u2019s what happened when Jacqueline posted that political cartoon.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a big weight to carry,\u201d La La said, and Karen often takes time to react to any situation, no matter how much it hurts her personally. She\u2019ll hear someone out, then call La La, who keeps herself removed enough to be a good sounding board.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll just talk about it and she\u2019ll just try to find the best course of action while still keeping the family together,\u201d La La said. \u201cOne thing that\u2019s big for us is, family\u2019s gonna fight. They\u2019re gonna go through things. But like, whatever you do, don\u2019t push them off as family.\u201d Karen will wait for things to calm down, sort out her thoughts, and explain why she thinks something wasn\u2019t okay. \u201cShe has a good deliverance,\u201d La La said, \u201cshe has a calming weight to say what she has to say.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a job for everyone. But Karen doesn\u2019t see it as a burden. She likes being the person that anyone can go to, accepts, even welcomes, the fact that she\u2019s probably the first black person her white cousins have expressed their honest opinions to. In some cases, the first black person they\u2019ve had a close relationship with.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI get to be the one,\u201d she said, \u201cI <\/span>get <\/span><\/i>to be the one that they get to spend time with and get to know.\u201d She said Jacqueline had told her once, \u201cI\u2019m so glad that you don\u2019t make me feel responsible about how we got to be cousins. I\u2019m glad that you don\u2019t put that guilt on me. We just get to be cousins.\u201d Karen will disagree with some Facebook posts, she says, but she\u2019s not gonna love them any less.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But still, some of them sting. They sting Karen just as much as they sting Brenda, just as much as they sting the black cousins who have decided not to put up with it any more. The blocking has gone both ways, and the Compton Facebook family has shrunken since the election, since COVID, since the George Floyd protests.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do you have to say such hateful things,\u201d Brenda said about the Facebook posts. \u201cThat hurt my heart. Well, what do we have a reunion for, to get to this?\u201d She\u2019s tired. \u201cI don\u2019t wanna be angry. I\u2019m already angry, about the way I see the world, and the United States.\u201d Brenda intends to wean herself off of Facebook. But she\u2019s still a firm believer that God made us different for a reason, and the last thing she wants to do is shut down conversation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI would still rather them be part of it,\u201d Brenda said about her white cousins. \u201cWe just need to sit around, have a round table discussion,\u201d she said. \u201cIf it gets heated, whoever gets heated, we gone call a stop, have the time out, let us go breathe and drink some water, get you a shot of whiskey or whatever it\u2019s gotta be. But we\u2019re coming back to the table, \u2019cause it shouldn\u2019t be like that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But that round table is a pipe dream, and for the most part, they\u2019ve talked less and less over the years. She thought they could get past it. They all did. But still, their agree-to-disagree political differences always seemed to boil down to race.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe had nothing to do with our ancestors. Who they slept with, who they didn\u2019t sleep with, who\u2019s black, who\u2019s white? What daughter they put in the big house, who had to pick the cotton, we had nothing to do with that,\u201d Brenda said. \u201cBut now all of a sudden, we let an election come between us? And it\u2019s back to black and white, slaves and masters? That kinda hurt my feelings. A lot.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Coming Home<\/b><\/p>\n

\"The
The back of Jean Paul’s house in Pineville.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was late afternoon in Rapides Parish. Sunlight hit the sequin ornament on La La\u2019s review mirror, sprinkling pinpoints of light across the ceiling. She and Karen were reminiscing about their younger brothers, singing along to Phil Collins, when we drove across a bridge. A river ran under us. Deep blue, with folds of muddy auburn swimming in shallow wind-rippled waves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was either the Red River, or the Atchafalaya, we weren\u2019t sure. This was Karen\u2019s first time giving a tour of the area; usually, Brenda, or Lucille, or Jacqueline guided her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s the Atchafalaya,\u201d Karen said, explaining how some of the unusual names in the area came from Indigenous-turned-French-turned-English pronunciations. We crossed. It was wide, not Mississippi-wide, but healthy, with bright green banks snaking off into the distance. On the other side of the bridge, once we\u2019d reached land again, the GPS did a funny thing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The blue Google Maps arrow pointed to go straight, straight, straight \u2013 then abruptly circle around on a side road and turn back. Back the way we\u2019d come.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat \u2014 I\u2019ve never seen it do that,\u201d La La said. Strange. We made sure the address was right. It was. That blue arrow was definitely telling us to reverse direction. So La La circled around in someone\u2019s driveway, heading back up the road, approaching the bridge once again. On this side, there was a sign, white letters on emerald green:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

RED RIVER<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They both gasped. The GPS seemed to take on a life of its own. \u201cIt just wanted her to see the Red River!\u201d La La said.\u00a0 \u201cAnd to <\/span>know <\/span><\/i>that it was the Red River!\u201d I\u2019d gotten a picture the first time we crossed, thinking it was the Atchafalaya. We were moving on down the road. But that little blue arrow told us to turn around.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe it was a glitch. Maybe we\u2019d missed a turn. But to Karen and La La, someone was sending a message through Google Maps.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThose ancestors were pulling us that way,\u201d Karen said. \u201cThey\u2019re speaking loud and clear. And when we come to town, they get active. They get seriously active.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Karen feels them every time she visits Louisiana. Like she enters another dimension, she said. Weird things happen when she visits. The GPS was just the first.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat was incredible,\u201d Karen said after we crossed the bridge a second time. \u201cSomething significant happened on that Red River,\u201d she said. \u201cWe gotta research it.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The GPS had no more tricks up its sleeve, and we were on the right path now, to the Solomon Northup House. Solomon was a free black man living in New York City who, on a 1841 trip to Washington DC, was drugged and kidnapped into slavery. He got sold into the Alexandria area, cut off from his friends and family, eventually suing his way back into freedom and writing a book about it \u2014 <\/span>12 Years a Slave<\/span><\/i>. He\u2019d helped build a Creole cottage while enslaved, which is now a museum on LSU Alexandria property (officially called the Epps House, after the slaveholder, but Karen and La La use Solomon\u2019s name). Every time Karen visits the area, she goes to see the house. But she always comes on weekends, when the doors are locked, and she has to peer through the windows to catch a glimpse of the artifacts inside.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was windy; La La giggled at Karen as she tied her hair into a springy top-knot, keeping her Mississippi-river curls from flying in her face. We approached the house, and Karen began peering into the windows, as she always did, always unable to get inside.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCan you see the rocking chair?\u201d she asked. She always looked for the child-sized rocking chair in one corner of the room. But a dresser had been moved in front of the window, blocking it from view. \u201cOh, shoot,\u201d she said, disappointed. We circled around the back, looking for more windows to peek through, when we heard a bang and a shriek.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOh my god!\u201d La La said, \u201cthe door, the door just opened!\u201d A gust of wind had caught the back door, blowing it open just as she rounded the corner. \u201cY\u2019all, I swear to god it was not open before,\u201d she said. We approached. The latch was broken, and the screen door unlocked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ancestors again. Looks like Karen would finally get to go inside the Solomon Northup House.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We walked into the cottage. La La and Karen were spooked, wide eyes, giddy smiles. There was a desk with a computer, an office chair, sticky notes and pens, a rack of historical site brochures. But besides that, everything was dusty. The house was filled with artifacts recreating the lives of enslaved people. Brooms, buckets, washboards, carved wooden bowls, mallets and farm quilts. No one had been in there for months, or if they had, they hadn\u2019t bothered cleaning up. A thick layer of grime coated a display case of intricate woven baskets; dust rose when I titled the rocking chair Karen had only ever seen through the window.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Looking
The display of sweetgrass designs in the Solomon Northrup House.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We wandered around the four rooms, snapping pictures, moving swiftly. The heebie jeebies were creeping up on us. There was a banging sound coming from the attic; probably the wind, but it was locked, so we couldn\u2019t investigate. Before we left, Karen beckoned me over to a map on the wall titled, \u201cThe Bayou Boeuf Country.\u201d It showed the divisions of land in Rapides and Avoyelles Parish, a grid of uneven rectangles labeled with plantation owner\u2019s last names. She leaned in, trying to read through the rusted wagon wheel leaning against it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s my great-great-great-grandaddy\u2019s land.\u201d She pointed to a large square on the map with <\/span>\u201cLODI\u201d <\/span><\/i>in the center. Bayou Roberts crossed through its upper right corner. Just above, on the banks of the Red River, there was another square with his first name. <\/span>Leonard<\/span><\/i>, in cursive. Another <\/span>L. B. Compton <\/span><\/i>a few miles down the road, next to a <\/span>J. Compton<\/span><\/i>. His brother. The more you looked, the more <\/span>Compton <\/span><\/i>plots appeared. Neighboring other plantations, isolated, by water, on the main road. The Comptons had surely left their mark.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We exited the Solomon Northup House through the blown-open back door, the fateful gust of wind confirming to Karen that their ancestors were guiding us (\u201cI\u2019m telling you, they\u2019re here\u201d). It was nearing sunset, and we set off towards Pineville, driving across what very well might have been Compton land not too long ago.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

La La turned down Taylor Street. It was the kind of road with couches on sidewalks, corrugated steel roofs, leathery old men waving from porches and stray cats underfoot.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We were there to see Jean Paul. He was a white DNA cousin, Lucille\u2019s son. He greeted Karen and La La with a glowing smile, big hugs and chatter about how he finally understood what depression meant. They told him about the GPS and the blown-open door, and he agreed that it was the ancestors looking out for them. Jean Paul helped set up picnic chairs alongside the park benches, folding chairs, and stools circling his fire pit. The backyard was overgrown in a comfortable, loving way. Long wispy grass, vines curling around a chicken coop, a curtain of bamboo rods casting light green shade over wildflowers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jean Paul is lean and sinewy, with sun-spotted skin, a ponytail, and barefoot feet. He\u2019s the outdoorsy type, who married each of his ex-wives exactly ten years apart (\u201877, \u201887, \u201897), who can tell you his Myer-Briggs personality type (INFJ) and the genus of each and every little weed in his backyard.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re gonna like him,\u201d Karen and La La told me on the way there. They certainly did. He carries the chatty Compton gene, and as long as he\u2019s comfortable, as long as anyone\u2019s listening, he\u2019ll go on about his life philosophies with a self-assured confidence that no one really sees the world like him, and he\u2019s okay with that. Jean Paul talked about what race Jesus was (\u201cwake up people. He was clear. He\u2019s invisible. He\u2019s a spirit. Duh!\u201d), how he\u2019d rather be in nature than out partying (\u201cif I wanna be a tree, all I gotta do is say, I am the tree, and the tree is me. It\u2019s that simple.\u201d), that Compton generosity (\u201cI\u2019ll eat tuna fish and crackers all day, old beans, but I\u2019ll buy someone else a $9 hamburger\u201d). Karen nodded along, laughing, adding her own thoughts about our spirits and alternate dimensions. They were glad to have each other, to see the world through the same lens.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sunlight stretched through the trees, turning the backyard golden green. We were about to leave, and I needed some background info, so I asked Jean Paul how old he was.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI just turned 63,\u201d he said, \u201con the 29th of March.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I smiled, surprised. \u201cOh, that\u2019s my birthday!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Karen and La La whipped their heads around to look at each other. The same wide eyes and giddy smiles as when the wind blew that door open. \u201cNooo way,\u201d Karen said. \u201cWhat!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI told you,\u201d La La said, \u201cGod is in the works. This is crazy! Ha-ha!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If your great-great-great-grandma could send signals from the dead, what would she say? Where would she lead you? I probably wouldn\u2019t notice if she smacked me across the face. But Karen and La La felt their ancestors there, pulling, speaking through the fields and houses and rivers. If the ancestors weren\u2019t there, something was. Maybe just a feeling, maybe something contrived. But I saw it in La La and Karen, in Jean Paul, in the way they thought, and laughed, and looked out over the land. In the way they wondered who was there, what it was like, where they\u2019d come from. They felt their ancestors inside them, right alongside them, sure as they felt themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Matriarch\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

\"A
Karen always put on white gloves after getting into the passenger’s seat of La La’s car.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After leaving Jean Paul\u2019s, we met Lucille at Outlaws BBQ in Alexandria. Lucille, who had showed up to Brenda\u2019s Bunkie house, took a nibble of gumbo, and cracked open her genealogy book. She\u2019d brought it to the barbecue restaurant, too. Lucille was 84 now, but still drove her car, took care of her daughter, and made sure to Facebook message her black cousins whenever they were in town.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve gotta meet Lucille,\u201d Karen said. The old lady ordered the loaded baked potato, sat across the linoleum table from Karen, and talked under a humming fan and wailing country music. And she can really talk. Like Jean Paul, but instead of musing about invisible Jesus and becoming one with the trees, she went on about old family lineage and new family drama. Her son\u2019s ex wife, her deceased Air Force husband, her great-great-grandmother\u2019s marriage to her great-great-grandfather. The chatty Compton gene, respect for elders, and Karen was accustomed to listening, uninterrupted, to Lucille\u2019s long daisy chain strings of thought.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally I got a question in:<\/span><\/p>\n

Before all of this, did you ever think you could be related to black people?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cWith my ancestors being \u2014 I don\u2019t like to call them slaveholders, but they were plantation owners,\u201d she said. \u201cThere were blacks all over the place who needed to work. And they\u2019d been brought over here, and if you run a plantation, if you run a plantation you have to have workers, you know?\u201d Karen was sitting to my left. There\u2019s no way she agrees with that, I thought. But she didn\u2019t react, so neither did I. We both kept our eyes on Lucille, listening. \u201cThe Compton family were a good family, and they were not mistreated. But I\u2019m sure sometimes somebody\u2019s been mistreated, \u2018cause we mistreat our own children sometimes when they get out of hand.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Lucille went on. \u201cKaren was saying my grandmother or great-grandmother was raped by the plantation owner, and I said, well, you don\u2019t know that Karen. There were beautiful black girls, good-looking white men, they were human beings! She might\u2019ve done some little smiling and batting her eyes at him, or, you don\u2019t ever know. And especially, I\u2019ve read that they put the prettier ones in the house to do the seamstress, or to cook, or to be the house cleaners.\u201d Karen\u2019s eyes were still trained on Lucille, ears still open, not a word. \u201cWell, here these kids grow up,\u201d Lucille said, \u201cand the black mammies nursed the white babies, and we haven\u2019t ever talked about that, but they did, they nursed the white babies.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Karen nodded. \u201cRight along with their own kids, yep,\u201d she said. Lucille continued.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it\u2019s the milk, it\u2019s the milk from God, and God created us all, and you\u2019ve got a lot of stupid people here in America, probably all over, that\u2019ll wake up and smell the coffee burning, but we\u2019re all children of God, and we all have souls. The only reason we have different colored skin is because of what part of the world God put us in. And that protected us,\u201d she said with a rightful nod.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Karen, sitting across from Lucille at the barbecue restaurant, had heard it all before. She selectively nodded, with a quiet <\/span>mmhm,<\/span><\/i> at things she could agree with \u2014 yes, the black mammies nursed white babies. Yes, we are all children of God. The other things Lucille said were met with silence. But not the cold, disapproving silence you would expect. Karen just looked at her with her big brown eyes, warmly, with the same unwavering eye contact, not one speck of judgment.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGod knew what he was doing,\u201d Lucille said. \u201cWe\u2019re the stupid ones.\u201d A nod from Karen. \u201cBut I think it\u2019s fascinating, I really do.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Lucille\u2019s talk about God, about milk and souls, reminded me of Jean Paul\u2019s philosophical ramblings. There were definitely parallels. But Jean Paul disagreed with his mother\u2019s views on slavery, he\u2019d told us earlier, disagreed with her on a lot of things.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou give it your all, and then you either give in or give up,\u201d he said. For his three failed marriages, he gave up. His mother, though? \u201cI can\u2019t give up on my mother,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I had to give in.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Reconstruction<\/b><\/p>\n

\"A
The Pineville Expressway, crossing the Red River from downtown Alexandria into Pineville.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cMy family was so little,\u201d La La said. \u201cAnd my family is so big now. I feel like I belong to something.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

La La doesn\u2019t pursue individual relationships, like Karen does, or talk to her white cousins one-on-one. She doesn\u2019t want to get hurt, caught off guard by a racist comment, or have to sit through whitewashed myths about slavery. \u201cI just wanna be happy,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen the happy things come, I participate.\u201d So she\u2019s there for the reunions, the Rapides Parish trips, the times her mom finds a new ancestor to fit into their family puzzle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you don\u2019t know something it\u2019s hard to put it behind you. How do you put it behind you when you have missing pieces?\u201d she said. \u201cYou need every piece of it to start letting it go, to heal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A few weeks after my visit, Karen texted me. She\u2019d found out the significance of the Red River. She and La La had toured the Kent House, an Alexandria plantation site, and their tour guide showed them something. Look closely at the red pillars in the slaveholder\u2019s house, the ones holding up its wide Southern porch, and you\u2019ll see small oval divots in the brick. On one end, a ridge where someone pushed into the wet clay to turn the brick in its mold. On the other, a faint streak \u2014 like a comet tail, fizzling out into the pillar, frozen in time. They\u2019re fingerprints, Karen told me, fingerprints and footprints from enslaved people who made the bricks. Most likely children; t<\/span>heir fingers were smaller, could slip between the brick and its mold. <\/span>And they got the mud from the Red River.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Brenda\u2019s ancestors, enslaved somewhere along those lazy bayous and twisting rivers, might have made those bricks. Pressed into not-yet-dry clay, felt the unfinished brick slip under their thumbs. I asked if she\u2019s thought about her black ancestors more since the family reunion, what life was like back then, and she took a deep breath. It\u2019s hard for her to think about. \u201cThey were mistreated, they were killed, they were maimed,\u201d she said. \u201cThey told us we came from monkeys, we weren\u2019t human, we didn\u2019t feel pain.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But Brenda\u2019s made it to 73, alive and well. \u201cWhen I look at, from that time, down to this time, I\u2019m proud of my black ancestors,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m so proud of them. They endured so much for us to get to this point.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Brenda sees her white cousins on Facebook, mad at BLM protesters, wanting to take the country back, mocking the first Vice President that looks even a little bit like her. And she doesn\u2019t understand why they\u2019re still so angry.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s anything, you all oughta be happy that you got free labor,\u201d she said. \u201cYou got free labor. Come on now. Y\u2019all didn\u2019t know how to do any of that. You don\u2019t wanna do all that hard work, you don\u2019t wanna plant tobacco and pick it, you don\u2019t wanna stay in the hot sun, you don\u2019t wanna stay in a shack and eat the trimmings from the chicken and the hog, all of that. You didn\u2019t wanna do that.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Brenda still sees that inequality today. And La La sees it, has been seeing it since she was a child, in big businesses with generations of white CEOs, in her caucasian cousins with nicer clothes and cars, in the AmeriCorp kids she mentored, their programs cut, roads potholed, schools out of books.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThey\u2019re living off of something we built. And we\u2019re still struggling, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s changed,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re living off of generational wealth off of the backs of us. We built this, and we still can\u2019t catch a break. Nobody, <\/span>still<\/span><\/i>, acknowledges that we were done wrong.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

157 years since emancipation, and no form of reparations has ever seriously been considered for black Americans.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do you not want to help us? Why do we have to fight so hard just to get a little piece of survival, just to have a home, just to have a family? Why do we have to fight <\/span>so <\/span><\/i>hard, when others don\u2019t?\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of healing that needs to happen, but it\u2019s not gonna happen until they acknowledge us. And try to make some kind of amends. They\u2019re not even trying.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t hate her white cousins. She loves them. She\u2019s changed since meeting them, grown, become more understanding. But it was never really about them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt hurts me a lot because I feel like the government\u2019s betrayed us. I don\u2019t think that part of it\u2019s changed.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

_______<\/span><\/p>\n

In Louisiana, people are buried above the ground. But they weren\u2019t always.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Leonard Briscoe Compton was originally interred on the Lodi plantation in 1841. He was 59, and for years before his death, he maneuvered his assets around, disguising donations as sales and granting favors to politicians, trying to pass his wealth to his children and common-law black wife. He failed, of course, and Fauchon died one year later, at 58, leaving two free white-passing children, seven enslaved black ones, and no record of her burial.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Leonard\u2019s body was moved to a different plot of family land a few years later, according to Lucille\u2019s genealogy book:\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When removing the casket, so it is said in family circles, it was noticed to be exceedingly heavy<\/span><\/i>. <\/span>On being opened, it was found that the body had become petrified.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

In August of 2018, Karen visited his grave in Lecompte, Rapides Parish. Jacqueline and Lucille led them through the pines, and Karen and Brenda followed, machete in hand, hacking their way through the woods. It was before the reunion, before the election and protests and Facebook blockings. Lucille was joking around, Jacqueline\u2019s heart was full at helping her cousins find their roots.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They reached a clearing in the trees. The Compton family cemetery was surrounded by a low stone wall and wrought iron fence, a sparkling spot of green in the forest. Leonard\u2019s resting spot was marked by a grave ledger; a long rectangle slab covering the full length of the grave, head to toe, flush to the ground. Splashes of watery white and dark gray, like someone had tie-dyed the marble and stretched it out to dry in the sun.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Karen knelt down, laying across the grave. It was on a bed of pine needles, tufts of grass growing along the base. Her Mississippi-river curls spilled over her shoulder. She thought about the man six feet below. Sunshine warmed the marble, and in the summer glow, she pretended like he was holding her. \u201cFinally,\u201d she said, \u201cI get to sit on my third great granddaddy\u2019s lap.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*Four people in this story have their names removed. Their pseudonyms are Lucille, Pierre, Jean Paul, and Jacqueline.* In Louisiana, people are buried above the ground. The land is swampy, waterlogged, and during heavy flooding, caskets can float to the surface, long-dead ancestors popping back up to remind you who you came from. Disturbing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":143,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-all","8":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUprooting the Family Tree - Shoeleather Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2022\/uprooting-the-family-tree\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Uprooting the Family Tree - Shoeleather Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"*Four people in this story have their names removed. Their pseudonyms are Lucille, Pierre, Jean Paul, and Jacqueline.* In Louisiana, people are buried above the ground. The land is swampy, waterlogged, and during heavy flooding, caskets can float to the surface, long-dead ancestors popping back up to remind you who you came from. 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