- Coming up on "American Black Journal," genealogist Tony Burroughs is here to talk about tracing the African American family tree.

Plus we'll meet a Michigan woman who set out to learn about her enslaved ancestors.

Also coming up Detroit-born screenwriter, Rob Edwards tells a story of a little known figure in Black history and his latest project.

Don't go away, "American Black Journal" starts right now.

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(upbeat music) - Welcome to "American Black Journal," I'm Stephen Henderson.

Tracing family roots has gained popularity in recent years as more people become interested in their ancestry.

A Detroit area woman who went in search of her history discovered some interesting connections and information about her enslaved ancestors and the families that own them.

"American Black Journal" contributor Daijah Moss met up with Rose Morton to talk about how she traced her roots and what she found out about that painful part of her history.

(soft violin music) - [Deijah] Rose Ella Morton's journey tracing her ancestors, took her to the Middleton Plantation in Charleston, South Carolina in 2002, where she discovered her direct relationship to a key figure in the American Revolutionary War.

- This would be my great-grandfather.

Wilford Harper Yancy, because he's the one that had a baby by, Ella.

Yeah, he had Ella.

- You did something so powerful and so unique.

You took a trip down your ancestral history, literally.

Take me back to the beginning, tell me about that.

- I was in front of my mother's house one day and I was picking up my kids and my brother was outside and he had been doing research and he had some pictures and he said, "look at this picture.

This is our last slave owner."

I said, what?

I said, let me see.

And soon as I saw the picture, I kind of like froze.

I got scared.

I couldn't understand what I was feeling.

Something about his face.

I felt he could hurt me right on the spot.

I felt like he could control me.

It was just, I was afraid and I didn't like to feeling and I felt it was really weird.

And that's what got me all involved and wanted to do my, to find out what had me so afraid.

- You tied together all of these different pieces that led you to different plantations.

You even wrote a book that highlights the story.

Tell me about your journey with acquiring all of the different documents.

- We went through the libraries.

I start doing my ancestry search on family trees and stuff and going through that.

And my brother, he had started at about 16 years old, he had, was going down to my grandmother's house in Alabama, and he would ask her, she was still alive then.

He would ask her about things and she would tell 'em stories.

At that time, I wasn't interested in everything, but then all the stories she told helped me into my journey because I started putting all that stuff together.

- And I know that of course you did a lot of the research and I know that your brother helped you along the way.

- My brother did have a couple of pictures, but he was more so he said, after I started journeying out into the slave owners, he wanted me to, he said, don't bother with them.

He said, just keep it in.

Just just find out things about the Black side, the slaves, the ancestors.

We don't want to go into that part.

And I was, I said to myself, that doesn't make sense.

I said, in order for me to find out more about my people, I gotta find the white people that had him.

So that's when I started, I took it out towards going to find the white slave owners and stuff, and going to the plantations and stuff.

I started out collecting information.

My brother had pulled up something about the plantations and everything that they were on, and it was like three plantations and the story sounded real good.

I said, you know what?

I think I'm going to visit every plantation my ancestors were enslaved.

He said, "well, if you're going to take a visit, I wanna go with you."

So that started off my first trip.

So we went to Charleston, South Carolina.

It was in February, 2002.

We went to the Milant Plantation.

- When you went back to these plantations, you were essentially in a way traveling back in time.

What was the feeling that you felt when you were there?

- As soon as I got on the ground, I could feel, like I said, I could feel it move up under my feet and everything.

It was kind of, it was beautiful, it was beautiful.

But I also know you don't go back to a ancestors' place where your ancestors was at or slave where they were slaves and died without them coming back with you.

Some coming back when you leave.

So some of 'em did follow me back, I know they did.

- So you are a part of the Daughters of the American Revolution, which not many Black women are a part of.

How did you become a part of that group?

- My great-grandmother, Ella, who I'm named after, Ella Snow, she's a product of the slave master's son.

His name was Goodlow Harper Yancy.

And she couldn't tell nobody that was her father.

Her great-grandfather, which was named James Yancy, served in the American Revolutionary War.

And so that was my connection.

- What does it mean to you to be a part of the Daughters of the American Revolution as a Black woman?

- The first Black woman, she joined the group in 1977.

And the reason that I joined was not, I'm so patriotic.

I'm not.

The main purpose, which only I care about is the taking my grandmother, great-grandmother from the position of couldn't claim her father to the father, her record being in Washington, that she is the daughter of this man.

And that's what I wanted.

- And I'm sure that you plan to pass this journey along to the generations to come.

Why is it important for them to have access to this information and to be able to continue that legacy?

- Well, I don't want them to ever be ashamed of where they came from.

And I want them to know it was very important people that they were, that were strong, that they had to be strong so they could survive.

You know, certain times bring about different feelings.

Like right now we're in the feeling where everybody wants to find out, but will they wanna find out?

Will they really care about it, I really don't know.

But if they do, everything is there for them.

- Internationally known genealogist, Tony Burroughs has consulted with celebrities like Smokey Robinson and Oprah Winfrey on their family history.

His book, "Black Roots: A Beginner's Guide to Tracing the African-American Family Tree," explains step by step how to get started researching your family's past.

He sat down with me to talk about the unique factors associated with tracing the family history of African-Americans, and the importance of knowing where you come from.

I wanna start with a little story about my family.

My father died when I was a teenager, and I lost track of a lot of people in his family, a lot of contact with his family.

But in the last decade, I've reconnected and done a lot of the kind of initial research to learn more about where we're from and what our history is.

And I can get back a couple of generations and then, whoa, it's really a much harder to find the records and to find the facts.

And of course, this is a common story for African Americans in this country.

We don't have the same kind of access or preservation of records that they do for other populations.

And so it's often harder for us to know where we're from and who we really are.

- I don't necessarily agree.

- Oh, okay.

- Yeah, in genealogy today, most people start off by going to the internet and, and they either use Google or they use ancestry.com, but they don't know a darn thing about genealogy and how to do genealogy.

- Well, that may be my problem.

- Yeah, no offense.

But they don't think about how do you do genealogy?

What is the methodology?

What are the sources, what are the techniques?

And how do I learn how to do that before I start searching for our ancestors?

But most people start off searching for their ancestors without a clue of what they're doing.

And that's more of a problem than lack of records.

There's records that exist then you can exhaust in your lifetime.

- So talk about the things that you should know then.

I mean, one of the things that I've found is that going back to the city where my father was from in the South, Natchez, Mississippi, and just kind of fumbling around really, and going to places that I know, going to places that seem like they might be connected.

It does give you, it gets you to places that you didn't expect.

There's a white cemetery in Natchez where I've found what I'm pretty sure is the family that owned our family, in that, just in, during slavery.

But I just kind of came across that, and you're right, I am an amateur at all of this.

So what are the things you're supposed to know before you go digging through this stuff?

- Well, it's a very methodical process.

Genealogy starts with yourself and it goes backward, one generation at a time.

So you really start by writing down what you knew about the family.

Okay, 'cause you probably hadn't written it down before.

Then you identify all your living relatives and interview all the living relatives because they have stories in their head that are not on the internet and a lot of clues, a lot of nicknames, a lot of given names, a lot of maiden names and all those different kinds of things and events that happen.

So you need to interview all your relatives.

Then you need to go through what I call the family archives.

Those things like the family Bible, the funeral programs, obituaries, discharge certificates, those things lying around the house that you didn't realize.

Those are very important for genealogy.

Once you do that, then you go to the family cemetery if it's located in the area where you live.

If it's out of town, then you probably have to wait till you go outta town to visit that.

But if they're in town, and you might have the older relatives that were born in the south, but migrated to the north, and so they're buried in the north.

And so you go to their cemeteries, you get that information, you go to the funeral home, get that information.

From there you can get death certificates.

When you get a death certificate that lists their parents' names on there.

And it takes you back another generation.

But it gives you all this other bonus information like social security information, military information, next of kin and those kinds of things.

From the death certificates, you can get birth certificates and marriage licenses.

From there, that'll give you enough information to go to the census and start researching the census.

So that will take you back quite a ways.

And then you learn about all the other records that exist.

And eventually you'll have to get off of the internet and like you think, go down to Natchez.

Or even go to a public library.

Like the Detroit Public Library is one of the best in the country.

They have lot of information for all around the country.

So you go to a good genealogy library, kind of exhaust those resources, and then you go on location.

So you need to do that like step by step.

- Yeah, I mean it's that methodology I think that maybe I'm missing, I jumped ahead in the process.

Or I've done some other things.

So, of course for me, this is a lot of fun.

In some ways it's this journey of discovery and reconnection, but it's even more important right.

To do this, to know, who you are and where you come from.

And that's especially true again, I think for us as African Americans, because so much of where we're from, got taken from us.

- I totally agree.

Since Africans came to the new world, our history, our culture, our religion, our art, all those things have been stripped away from us.

And we've been on a 300 year battle struggle to try to reclaim that.

And genealogist just one of those, you know, so you're absolutely right.

It's so much more important in our community.

So it helps us to know where we came from, hopefully why we are here, where are we going.

But even broader than that, we uncover new history that's not in the history books.

And that helps the broader community and the broader historical context.

So you're right, it's very, very important.

As one is rewarding and very exciting.

- Yeah, you were talking about how much of the public record is now available on the internet, and how many generations of records are available.

One of the things that's really interesting to me is the accessibility of things like slave journals and documents from plantations.

I found that that stuff is more easily accessible, I guess now than it was in the past.

And of course, technology is what's pushing all that really quickly forward.

- Absolutely, no doubt about it.

I mean, I started old school and there was no internet, nothing online.

We always had one location to get a lot of there.

Now you can just sit at a computer desk and get access to there millions of documents that you wouldn't even believe of in the past.

So yes, you're right.

The internet has a tremendous access.

But people need to understand, in spite of the billions of records on the internet, it's only the tip of the iceberg.

You know, so many more that are not on the internet.

The other thing is that technology is good, but it also is bad because it's a crutch for us.

And we don't understand the weaknesses in technology and in the internet.

For example, you can go to a website, look for your ancestors and not find them and think that they weren't there.

Not realizing there could be an error in the index, and so that's what's prohibiting your progress there.

Or you don't know all the techniques and you don't know what's online, what's not online.

So there are pluses and minuses of technology, and the more you understand that, the more successful you're gonna be.

- Yeah, what's your advice to people who know very little about their families, maybe as I was for almost 40 years, disconnected from part of your family?

How do you get started?

- I recommend people get a book on genealogy.

Just so happens I've wrote a beginner's guide to African-American genealogy called "Black Roots," and they don't have to buy anything, get it at the library.

But it gives, it starts off from square one and leads you to step two, three, four and five.

And basically the things we talked about a couple minutes ago.

Writing your autobiography, interviewing your relatives, looking for those things around the house, and then going to the cemetery, the funeral home, get the birth certificates, the death certificates, the marriage license, and then the census records.

In the old days, we had to write for those, today, many of those were online, or at least we can apply online.

And a lot of that stuff you do really before you go to the internet.

You know, unfortunately, people just start off with the internet thinking that's what you're supposed to do, but you really start off at home.

- Okay, Tony Burroughs, it's really great to have had this conversation with you.

Thanks so much for joining us on "American Black Journal."

- Thank you, it's been a real pleasure, I appreciate it.

- Finally today, Detroit born screenwriter, Rob Edwards, best known for Disney's "The Princess and the Frog" and "Treasure Planet" has a graphic novel coming out in February, it's called "Defiant."

And it tells the story of Robert Smalls, a little known, but significant figure in Black history.

Edwards met up with One Detroit's Chris Jordan to talk about how the comic book is a perfect way to teach African American history to kids.

- How's it going?

- Great.

- Rob Edwards, a lot of viewers will know your work as a screenwriter from stuff like "Princess and the Frog," "Treasure Planet," "In Living Color."

"Fresh Prince," very storied career in TV and film.

But now your latest project is a graphic novel.

About the life of the fascinating and way too little known still historical figure Robert Smalls.

- Exactly, yeah, And that's the tragedy is that this guy lived this extraordinary life and just nobody knows about him.

You know, you tell people, and the first question, they don't say like, well, wait.

and then what did he do?

They say, "why don't I know about this guy?"

- For those who are watching who don't know anything about Robert Smalls, tell us the short version of his story.

- He was a, you know, born a slave when he was about 23 years old.

He was, during the Civil War, he was basically signed to work on this ship, the planter, which ferried munitions back and forth.

And one night when the white crew took off, they commandeered the boat.

They all their families got onto the boat and they took off.

They went through five checkpoints, disguised as the captain, and then surrendered the ship to the Union army that was just outside of Charleston Harbor.

He then became rich because it was loaded with weapons.

And so it was the biggest haul in the Civil War.

He was famous for pulling this thing off.

He then ran for Congress five times and won.

He started a printing press.

He started a railroad.

He's the reason why we have Black people in the military because they showed courage, you know, intelligence and strength.

He's the reason why we have public schools.

So, because he really, really wanted to be able to read all of his life.

So that is the shortest version possible of the extraordinary life of Robert Smalls.

- How did you decide that you were gonna tell this story and that this was how you were gonna tell it?

- Well, actually, the story starts here in Bloomfield Hills, where a classmate of mine, a guy named David Baxter, I'd gone to Cranbrook with, he calls me up and he says, Hey, we got this script.

And he gave it to me and said, "you know, well, what do you think?"

And basically the story was well written, but it focused on the heist itself.

You know, just the taking of the planter.

And as I was reading it and then went down the rabbit hole of like, all the stuff that this guy had done, I said, well, I think that that's the beginning of the story.

I think that it's about a man who is free in his heart.

He becomes free, and then he does all the things that you, you know, you do when you've been caged for so long.

And I said, well, I hope you don't mind, but I rather than just give a bunch of notes on it, I'd like to take a crack at it.

And also I think it's important that a story like this be told by a Black author, just because it's, you know, times we live in.

And also my filter is different.

And so for me as a, I'm not a historian, I'm just a writer.

I just write Disney movies and stuff.

And so I took it as a character study.

What kind of person would do this thing?

And I discovered actually, as I was doing it, that in a lot of ways I was able to find things that the historians were not, because I was asking questions that they weren't, you know, I was always focused on like, well, where's the family?

And whatever, you know, and why would he do this?

Rather than what did he do?

Why would he do it?

And so it's just been a really great journey for me.

- Since you are a screenwriter, how did you end up deciding to write it as a graphic novel rather than just a screenplay?

- Well, it's interesting because I had just been into Netflix with a project and we just kept hitting against the fact that we didn't have IP, you know, that there was no intellectual property that it was based on.

And my heart had been broken so many times, you know, by the kind of risk averse world that I said, well, you know what, let's not go in just with the story.

Let's go in with something, you know, and the books that were out there were good, but none of 'em did what I wanted to do.

So I said, well, look, I'm writing the script anyway, you know, I know the story.

Why don't we just make a graphic novel of it?

If the graphic novel works, then we know we're in good shape.

And the graphic novel is fantastic.

I thought, okay, well this guy's basically larger than life anyway.

He's essentially a superhero, so why not?

It's a perfect format for 'em.

And also like for kids that will be hearing this story for the first time, what better way to hear it, you know, meet people where they live.

You know, I think for the kid that I most want to hear this, it's a graphic novel.

- It was funded with a very successful Kickstarter campaign.

And something that you had told me that really stood out to me was how many of the contributions were people buying boxes of the comics to have sent to schools and libraries?

- Yeah, people wanted to buy a, you know, boxes of them and take 'em to schools.

So we're actually starting another campaign on the Defiantproject.com website and also on the Legion M website for people to be able to do just that.

Because I do think it's important, you know, what better, you know, gift, you know, at, you know, Black History month or whatever to kind of like, you know, go outside and there's a great box of these fantastic comic books.

Hopefully they'll be fun to read and everything and inspirational, life changing, I believe.

I would think that if I was a kid, if I was, you know, 10, 15 or whatever, and I read the story, I would say, okay, that is the measure of a great man.

You know, what would it take for me to be like that?

Okay, I should read this story.

And then, wow, what did he do afterwards?

Well, okay, public schools, you know, whatever the military, you know, just proving one after the other to people that were skeptical.

Even, you know, Abraham Lincoln, you know, was, there were no Black people in the Union Army before that.

And just by his courage and thoughtfulness and everything, they said, okay, this is a good idea.

And that turned the war, you know, 'cause all of a sudden you had these, this just amazing amount of military and yeah, you were able to, you know, kind of tip the scales and the, all the more reason why, you know, you need this story to kind of emphasize why we need, you know, history, why we need to learn all this stuff.

- That's gonna do it for us this week.

You can find out more about our guests at americanBlackjournal.org and you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care, and we'll see you next time.

(light music) - [Announcer] From Delta faucets to Behr Paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for journalism at Detroit Public TV.

- [Announcer 2] The DTE Foundation proudly supports 50 years of "American Black Journal" in covering African-American history, culture, and politics.

The DTE Foundation and "American Black Journal," partners in presenting African-American perspectives about our communities and in our world, - [Announcer] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

Thank you.

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