What are the chances that a person who owned my ancestor has a street named after him?
I opened Google maps and looked for a street in Mississippi bearing my surname. I found it in my father’s birthplace. It’s not a boulevard or an avenue – just a road. The distinction is interesting. I Googled and learned that roads are the most basic public way that connects to points. Stallings Road is basic. It is treelined but not necessarily by design. It’s not wide like a boulevard with a variety of structures like an avenue.
Calling it a road feels too formal. It is more of backroad. I could not access Google Street View because no one was contracted by Google to drive down its unpaved streets. No streetlights, only a dead end and a desolate intersection that never would have inspired Garret Morgan – except to leave before sundown.
That may not be the town’s story today – and I’m not going to name it – but my ancestor was taken from Georgia there. She bore a child for her owner that would start my father’s branch. I have no idea if my ancestors walked those dirt roads or worked in nearby fields. All that I know is that if the town had a reparations committee and they offered me land on that stretch of road, I’d want to decline at first, but I might take it on principle. Or not. I can’t imagine hearing Nina Simone’s classic song about Mississippi and feeling good about accepting that as reparations. I would likely ask for the cash equivalent.
It would be hard for me to continue living in a place where I was in bondage. How did my ancestors do it? I thought a lot about why my ancestor continued to live there and why he kept the Stallings name. Perhaps it was the desire to find or be found by family members separated through human trafficking. Maybe it was a claim to his birthright. After looking up whether my ancestor’s slave-holding father was married, it was clear that he was the offspring of an illicit affair – if a likely sexual assault could be characterized as such. I can only speculate.
In the days since my brother’s death, I needed to hear stories about families and their names. I lulled myself to sleep watching biographical documentaries on many late nights. Eventually, I needed a human connection on this topic.
I thought of a friend of mine named Jason who reintroduced himself to me after altering his last name. For him, the process sounded like a ceremony or an initiation into his new identity.
“After tracing my maternal ancestry to the Bamileke in 2014, I was given the name from the Cameroon Royal Council,” he told me.
I was proud of him and happy for him. For as long as I have known him, he seemed in pursuit of something, but he now seemed content. It was as though he had been assembling all these disparate attributes that would eventually become integral parts of his singular identity.
He continued.
“I felt that legally adding my Cameroonian name to my surname was the proper thing to do. After all, I had lived most of my life with a Dutch surname and given the history of the Dutch and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, I felt it necessary to have my African identity represented and presented to the world.”
And with that decision, Jason Vasser became Jason Vasser-Elong. I followed up by asking why he chose to keep Vasser and the hyphenated bridge that connected him to the peculiar institution.
“Because I had been known by that name for most of my life and, in truth, I thought about my father, grandfather, uncle and the legacy they built for themselves as ‘Vasser’ men,” he replied.
What he said, made me pause. In my own thoughts about erasing Stallings from my identity, would I be dishonoring the men and women in my family who carried that surname? Is this erasure?
Aleshia Moyamba, another friend of mine, offered a different path than Jason’s, detailing her journey to a new family name.
“My husband and I have always felt connected to our African roots—even with colonized last names,” she wrote via email.
She went on to explain how they both used DNA tests to trace their roots as they considered embracing a new surname.
“Once we confirmed the direct connection to the Mende tribe, my husband knew he wanted a last name to reflect his heritage. We went through a few names but ultimately landed on the name Moyamba. Moyamba is the capital and largest city in the Moyamba District in the Southern Province of Sierra Leone. As his wife, it was important for me to carry his new last name, mainly because we knew we would start our family, and, additionally as an homage to our ancestry. We’re the first on both sides of our family to reclaim our African name,” Aleshia wrote.
I appreciated her story as well.
While I was never clear about why some African Americans chose to identify with their enslaver, I did not feel as strong an urge to define myself apart from that enslaved identity as I do now. To make a legal change as Jason and Aleshia did, would cost me. While my ancestor was freed from slavery, I would have to pay for self-determination – a purchase I find incredibly ironic.
#SouthernStreet #Stallings #CommunityHistory
