I also discovered something crucial that contrasts sharply with what many African Americans are taught about our history. As students, black people are repeatedly told that we all descend from slavery, and that we all were (and only were) slaves. Most people assume that every black American who lived in the US before 1870 was a slave.
That is simply not true.
In 1860, three years before the Emancipation Proclamation, The United States Federal Census Schedule reported 488,070 free black Americans. True, many might say quasi-free, since these African Americans could not vote. But free they still were — almost half a million of them — roughly 12.5% of the entire African-American population at that time.
Huldah Peck, my great-great-great-great-grandmother — on my father’s side — was born free in Greenwich, Conn., in 1836. Her parents, George Peck, a stonemason and Nancy Felmetta, were also free; as were Nancy’s parents, York and Tamar, the latter born in 1773, three years before the US Revolution. It’s striking to think that my father’s ancestors were free for nearly a century before the Civil War.
While most of my mother’s family were enslaved on South Carolina plantations at this time, learning about this other side — this free side — made me realize that slavery does not fully define my past.
But a lot of liars want him to think it does.
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