Analysis: Finding Your Roots

Your Past Can Shape Your Future When watching the movie “Finding Your Roots” you get a deeper understanding of what life was like during slavery years and how people lived their lives. But not only do you get a deeper feel for what it was like for the people, you also think about how your own family lives were at the time on slavery. We think we have an idea of what the slavery days was like for our ancestors and have a general thought process about timeline of events. Many of our ancestors have made the way for us to live our lives with freedom and to be treated as human. We know our families were once sold and used as property and not people. But do we actually know about the era that profound our lives today and the roots we come from?

Nas, Angela Bassett, and Valerie Jarrett are well known African Americans and records show that their family past have deep meaning and evidence that they were a huge contribution to the success of their lives. With all the separation from being sold and always having to move away from your family during slavery is very interesting to me and leads me wonder how did they keep ties to their family. For example, Angela Basset great grandfather William Henry had been moved from his family as a three-year-old on the Ingram plantation. He was later found through records living 20 miles away from where his parents lived. This same case also solved the problem of their different last names. This examples why Angela has the last name Bassett instead of Ingram. She has the last name Bassett because her great grandfather was removed from the Ingram plantation and was renamed once he moved on the Bassett plantation. But what was most interesting to me about the journey on Angela Bassett ancestors was once her great grandfather was granted his freedom he kept his last name. I believe this was because they might have treated him well and protected him for a long time. During slavery they could’ve easily sold him away or even mistreated him but as the records show he must have been in good hands with the Bassett

Also that the place where we grew up is not actually where our families started from. According to Hochschild “The Traders Are Kidnapping People” signs of people being traded all over the United States result in language changes “The Kikongo language have been traced linguists have found in the Gullah dialect spoken by Black Americans in South Carolina and Georgia” which means Black Americans came from all over the country. They got the opportunity to get a feeling of what is was like to look upon these owners as their leader and master. Nas family came from all over the United States and mostly deeper in the southern part of the United States. Nas grew up in New York but his mother came from North Carolina and most of his ancestor in fact came from the same place dating back 5 generations. Most of them believe to grew up on the same plantation and have been very tight together. But most of them share the last name Little. I believe this was because they owner had named them all Little. The owners have owned all 5 generations of Nas’s family, the owner in fact did and they all was kept close together and traced back to being related to White people not just all Black