I was going to a family reunion in Clarksburg, West Virginia. But just the thought of explaining this reunion made words seize up in the back of my throat, like cotton balls were lodged under my tongue soaking up any words, contractions, prepositional phrases struggling to break free. My great great grandfather Oscar was born a slave on a plantation in West Virginia. Richard never married, was never a husband. Phoebe birthed seven of his children, though.
I, probably like many African Americans, have wished for lineage that included African kings, queens and royalty. But what is most certainly true of my African heritage is that it is intertwined with slavery, rape and second-class citizenship. When it came time to die, my great great great grandfather Richard Boggess loosened his grip on human ownership, upended plantation protocol and local law. He changed his will, giving freedom to Phoebe and their seven children.
He also made Phoebe the sole owner of his acre plantation in For my Black ancestors, freedom arrived 16 years before the Emancipation Proclamation. The White Boggesses has been getting together for reunions for 26 years โ going through family history poster boards in the hospitality room, visiting new locations of family history and mostly eating, sightseeing and catching up on births, deaths and family folklore. Until about 7 years ago. For the first time, my immediate and extended family was going to join the group โ my Dad, Aunt Marsha, family matriarch great Aunt Virginia and car loads of cousins from California โ Will and Carol, Cynthia, her sister Margaret and her daughter Amber.
But my worries about this reunion went beyond the usual fear of embarrassment. I was afraid - afraid to spend more than 15 minutes talking to them, about their family, my family, for fear that barely simmering rage and pain would belch its way out of the bubbling pot of my emotion. Many of the members of the Boggess Family Association had assumed that Richard not having ever married had no children. I was one of his children. I was one of her children. Nearly years later, I would arrive in the same town to see where one part of my American story really began.
The Boggess family sought us out. Joanna Fox. Twice Removed. She told me she always knew she had Black relatives. It was just inevitable, she said. That was one thing upon which she and I both agreed. She spent nearly as much money researching family history as she did on clothing for an entire year. I first met her on the phone โ two months before the reunion. I had avoided her call for at least two weeks. Above all things, I always strived to be diplomatic and polite.
