Join Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Finding Your Roots, the groundbreaking show revealing the untold stories of today’s biggest celebrities.
Part 1 in our look at one family’s ancestral journey.
See more:
Surname Surprise Unveils Hidden Family History
Call this hyperbolic or a pun, but that is not my intention. Avid viewer witness researchers excavate the roots of some notable guest’s ancestry Episode after episode. More than revealing a person’s family tree, Gates and his team place these family stories into a historical context, which is the master stroke of this show.
History has some deeply traumatic moments that makes for dramatic storytelling. Stories about surviving slavery, the holocaust, genocides, wars, and the Great Depression are but a few of the contexts that affect the life paths of program guests. To chart that path, Gates and crew use various methods including tracing a person’s history using their surname – which we could call slave receipts.
When El-Hajj Malik Shabazz referred to his last name as a slave name, he identified a dubious inheritance that is passed down generationally. In contrast, first names, like Toby in place of Kunta in Roots, are only attached to the bearer of that name and is buried with them. Contrarily, last names are as close to eternal as temporary things can be. For that reason, each season of Gate’s program could be used as evidence for how slavery continues to impact people in the 21st century. Aside from economic exploitation and dehumanization, another case for reparations is how many African Americans live their lives carrying the brand of someone who owned their ancestors.
When Shabazz was first known as Malcolm Little, he joined the Nation of Islam and dropped his surname in favor of “X.” The decision he made was as though he left the Little plantation almost one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Others would be inspired to confront their slave roots and move on from their last names or at least find it difficult to sit with knowing that. To remix a popular phrase, let’s refer to that moment of wanting to cancel the branded surname as Malik-energy or “Malikenergy.” One notable guest on Finding Your Roots that had that Malikenergy was beatmaker and recording artist Pharrell Williams.
Airing in early 2021, Episode 5 of season 7 begins like any other with a welcome from Gates and introductions of his guests, this time filmmaker Kasi Lemmons and Pharrell. He frames the episode by saying they will learn how “slavery shaped their lineage and how their families emerged from that ordeal unbroken and intact.”
At the time when I saw it, I did not recognize “unbroken” as foreboding.
Write My Name in the Book of Life
Season 7 Episode 5 Watch
Gates typically celebrates his guests, listing their accomplishments and highlighting singular moments. For Pharrell, it was “Happy,” one of the most ubiquitous songs of its time. After talking about childhood fascination with music and the impact of his music, Gates revealed the marriage certificate of his grandparents. Records such as marriage and death certificates include names which allow researchers to find more members of the family. This led Gates to a discussion about Pharrell’s great-great grandfather and his enslavement.
As viewers, we learn that Pharrell’s ancestor was likely born a slave and lived in bondage for 10 years. Gates, at this point, attempted to personalize that reality. Pharrell’s face revealed the weight of the revelation for him as he quickly referenced his young son.
Gates: For most of us, slavery is just an abstract concept — something where we know it was wrong, we were victims by it but this puts a voice and a face to the slave experience in your own bloodlines, in your own family.
Camera cuts to Pharrell’s eyes closed in deep contemplation with his hand covering his mouth and chin as though holding his head up. He shifts in his seat before re-engaging with Gates.
Pharrell: This is crazy because I went from like buzzing of excitement and now it’s like, just angry.
Gates: We all should be angry. Everybody who was alive then should have been angry. And they made up all of these excuses. All of our ancestors were not human, more like apes, more like monkeys, inherently stupid, childlike…and it was all so that they could exploit our labor. And free labor to build this country.
As Gates offered this affirming response, validating Pharrell’s anger, the camera cuts to Pharrell with that Malikenergy building.
Pharrell: Man, this will do something to you…this will do something to you. This will make you feel some feelings.
Pharrell rubs his chin and slowly shakes his head with a slight chuckle. Anyone who has seen anger build up in someone before a fight breaks out would recognize Pharrell’s gestures. Then we hear Gates’s narration over an image of a Black family in a front of a rural cabin saying, “Pharrell’s feelings were about to darken, and darken significantly.”
Gates explained earlier in the episode that a great-great aunt of his was interviewed in the 1930s as a part of a project capturing stories of African Americans born in slavery. From that interview, the audience and Pharrell learned about his ancestor’s experience.
The camera cuts to Pharrell reading a highlighted passage that recorded his great-great aunt, “…sometimes I swept the yards after working all day. There was a task of cotton to be picked and spun by them.”
Pharrell looked up, head cocked to the right, asked, “What kind of people?” The rhetorical question intended as a criticism of the captors of his ancestor.
The camera cuts to Gates shaking his head. Pharrell asked that question again before Gates says, “Do you want to see what kind of people? Turn the page.”
Gates said “turn the page” as though pointing out a person in crowd about to catch some hands.
Viewers then see a photo of the person who enslaved his ancestors, and a seething Pharrell.
Moments later we learn from his ancestor’s interview that her original enslaver was “abusive” and carried Pharrell’s surname.
Pharrell: Old Misses Penny Williams, before Jackson May bought mother, treated some of the slaves mighty bad. They told me about slaves that had been killed by their masters coming back and worrying them [as ghosts]….
Pharrell finishes his reading and leans back from the table.
Pharrell: I don’t want to cry and I’m trying not to be angry.
Gates: You’re not a machine. This is horrendous. What else can you feel? This is horrible.
Pharrell: It’s intense, sir. It’s intense. It’s breaking me down.
Shortly thereafter, Gates reveals that the researchers believe that Pharrell’s surname is derived from the husband of “old Misses Penny Williams.
Then Gates broke Pharrell.
Gates: Ever wonder where your name came from?
Pharrell: I knew. It’s not an African name. I knew we got it from somewhere but its just when you start to fill in the blanks, it just intensifies. Puts a very vivid and intense context behind what it means to be African American. I thank God I got to hear it but I’m so sorry they had to go through this…I’m forever changed. I didn’t know you can have humanitarian vibes and be angry. This is new for me.
We learn later in the interview that Gates stopped recording to give Pharrell time to recover. The next time we see the hitmaker, he has a mustache, which in some ways signified the change that came over him.
I will not spoil the rest. How Pharrell responds after some time away is worth seeing as well as viewing the fascinating story from Kasi Lemmons.
I should note that I intentionally referenced Henry Louis Gates by his last name and Pharrell by his first. The surname is a cultural convention that that is not universal. When I think about my ancestors and even those depicted in Roots, I only think about their first names and not the brands they carried. In that spirit, I presume Gates is fine with the origins of his surname. After seeing that episode, I prefer to refer to Pharrell by his first name.
Still, I do not know if the show producers intended to juxtapose Pharrell’s “Happy” with the revelations that would later break him, but it was incredible to watch.
Check out that episode and all past shows with a PBS Documentary subscription.
About the writer:
MK Stallings is a sociologist by training and a poet by experience. He currently is an arts researcher and analyst in St. Louis.
IG: mk_stallings
Threads: mk_stallings
FB: MK Stallings
Blue sky: mkstallings.bsky.social
#FindingYourRoots #HenryLouisGatesJr #AncestralJourney
