We are fascinated by slavery today. And it's not a minute too soon. We see what has happened. We know that she who does not know where she has come from cannot possibly guide a path to where she has to go.
Maya Angelou was born April 4, 1928, in St. Louis. Her birth name was Marguerite Johnson, and she was the second child of Bailey Johnson and Vivian Baxter Johnson. Her first name was changed from Marguerite to Maya by her older brother, Bailey, when they were very young — and essentially alone.
Angelou grew up with little knowledge of her parents. "I was 3 years old when my parents separated," she said. "And they sent me and my brother — who was 5 years old — to my father's mother. And over the next 10 years, save for one disastrous visit, we never heard from them."
Angelou rejoined her mother in 1940 and lived with her through her teenage years, gaining exposure to her mother's views about the world while finding herself drawn into the world of dance, literature and drama. Vivian supported her daughter in all these pursuits — emotionally, if not financially (indeed, Angelou worked as a cocktail waitress and a brothel madam in her years as a struggling artist).
"She is the bravest human being I ever met," said Angelou. "She was a small, very pretty woman. But she was really tough. She'd fight in bars with her brothers. She was also very generous.
"In Stockton, Calif., there's a library named for me on one edge of town. And on the other edge of town there's a park named for her. She had an organization called Stockton Black Women for Humanity, and they were generous and caring about those in need."
Her mother was devoted to a great number of causes — from union rights to civil rights to feminism. She worked as a nurse, a real estate agent and, almost unbelievably, as a merchant marine. "She was marvelous," said Angelou. "A lot of women sailors ship out of San Francisco today — white, black, Asian, Hispanic — because of her. They call her 'the mother of the sea.' She was the first. She said, 'I'm going to be a seaman.' I wanted to write a book about her, but she said no. So I write essays. I write around her."
While Angelou is able to celebrate her mother, her feelings about her father remain tortured. "He had been in World War I. He was a proud man, very proud. I didn't like him. I mean, he was likable — but not to me. He was a user of violence. He lived in San Diego and had another family in Mexico. He did things that I don't agree with as a person, a human being."
She seemed palpably relieved when we stepped back and began to talk about his mother, Annie, Angelou's paternal grandmother — the single most important person in her family throughout her childhood. She essentially raised Angelou and saved her from disaster, sheltering her through years of silence and pain, allowing her to grow into the remarkable person she is today.
In Angelou's books Annie is referred to as Annie Henderson. Angelou's eyes lit up at the very mention of her. "My grandmother was God to me. She would say, 'Mama know when you and the Good Lord get ready, you are going to be a teacher. You'll teach all over this world.'
"How could she look at me, physically and psychologically bruised as I was, and say, 'You're going to be a teacher and teach all over the world'? Every time I stand up before 5,000 people who pay to come in to hear a black woman speak, I think about my grandma."
Annie was born in Columbia County, Ark., in 1877, the child of freed slaves. During the course of her long life, she would become a leader of the black community in Stamps, Ark., owning the only grocery store in that small town.
"She controlled the African-American area of Stamps and was the arbiter of right and wrong," Angelou said. More than six feet tall, powerful and commanding yet immensely kind, Annie left a searing impression upon her granddaughter.
We researched Angelou's great-grandparents, moving back to the previous generation in her paternal line. Annie was the daughter of Mary "Kentucky" Wafford and Emanuel Taylor. Both were born into slavery — Emanuel around 1850 in Louisiana and Mary on Aug. 20, 1853, in Columbia County, Ark. We do not know any more about Emanuel, but Mary lived until 1935, and Angelou has vivid memories of her from her childhood. We continued to follow Angelou's bloodline using modern genealogical tools and methodology.
Angelou clearly enjoyed the story of her great-grandmother's name and of the power she wielded in her community. But although Angelou knew that Mary Wafford spent the first twelve years of her life in slavery, as did many of her relatives, the fact was never discussed in Angelou 's family.
As curious as Angelou and her siblings and cousins may have been about their elders, they never asked about their slave pasts. This, as I have found throughout this genealogy project, seems to have been the rule in black families. We simply did not talk about slavery. Angelou agreed and is as fascinated by the subject as I am.
"We talked about it by not talking about it," Angelou said. "Like quilts, right? Younger people don't realize the value of quilts. But during slavery, when people were sold, the slave would cut off a little piece of his father's shirt or a little piece of her mother's skirt and pin it inside their own shirt. And they would finally make a quilt of those little patches.
"A patched quilt had a lot to do with saving one's sanity. You could keep a small piece of your family. To touch it and smell it. And when you had children, you would tell the story. This was your great-grandfather's; this was your grandmother's, this skirt here. But slavery wasn't spoken of …
"I had grandfathers and great-grandfathers who were killed, who disappeared, because they spoke back to some white man. That was never spoken about. We just did not ask, 'What happened to Grandfather So-and-So? What happened to him?' We just did not. Grandmother would not admit to anything. You know?
"This generation is avid, eager, champing at the bit to know: 'Tell me more, and let me tell the people more about their history.' It's very important. But it wasn't always so."
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is editor-in-chief of The Root.