Press Release
African American Lives - "African American Lives 2"
Q&A with Kathleen Henderson
AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES 2
Kathleen Henderson, director of First-Year Student Engagement for the University of Dayton, was selected from more than 2,000 applicants to participate in AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES 2, having her family history researched and DNA tested alongside host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and the series' well known guests. Below, she discusses her involvement.
Q: Are you excited for the AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES 2 broadcast?
A: You have no idea! I remember when Oprah's Roots was on, a couple of older relatives said, 'They keep doing the famous people, they ought to do some regular people.' When the producers called and said, 'We've selected your family,' I jumped up for at least ten minutes saying nothing but 'Oh my God!' This is the greatest gift I can give to my family.
Q: When you applied to participate, did you think you had a chance?
A: No, I didn't think I did. But the day that I came across the application, my mother's mother was really heavy in my spirit. There was this little tune she used to hum that I hadn't thought about for years, but that day it just came into my head, and I really think she was directing me to do this. Also, the day the producers called me was June 13th, and here again I think spirit comes into play. My father died of lung cancer in 1995, and he and I were at the hospital on June 13th of 1993 waiting on the doctors to come in and tell us his prognosis. So in some ways I think maybe it was a gift from my father, that he didn't want me to continue to dwell on June 13th as a day of bad news - here's some good news to replace it.
Q: What was the process of participating like?
A: The story line that they told absolutely surprised me, because it was my father's mother's people and we had little knowledge of that line. There's a part when Gates was talking about that side of the family that I began to cry because I thought, my father was a lover of history, and my grandmother was as well, and now that they're both deceased, I didn't get a chance to share this with them. How excited they would be to know this! But then there was a quiet acceptance that they already know it.
Q: In the documentary, a relative says you are a family of storytellers.
A: As far back as I can remember it's always been the case. When we found out the Mandinga portion of our ancestry, I went online to try to read about who these people are, and they are people with great oral traditions. And I thought, well, that's where it comes from.
Q: Your ancestors Dennis Jackson and Julia Mason were married twice, once as slaves and once as free people. Can you talk about them?
A: This was my father's mother's people and there was a tremendous amount of pride that I felt in learning their story. The marriage after slavery ends shows that they had the intelligence to recognize that they already took care of their spiritual union, but, to be recognized in a legal sense, they needed to re-marry. And what that says to me was that there was such great hope about starting a new life together.
Q: Did it surprise you to learn your DNA is 18 percent European?
A: No. I have a skin condition called rosacea. I went to see top-rated dermatologists in Dayton but still wasn't satisfied. So someone referred me to a black dermatologist in Cincinnati. And she took a look at me and listened to what I described. She walked out, came back with this pamphlet on rosacea, handed it to me and told me to read it. She left and came back in and said, 'Well, what do you think?' And I said, 'Well, yeah, this is it, but it says it affects fair-skinned people.' I'm not fair skinned, so that didn't seem right. And then the pamphlet said it's primarily found in people with Celtic heritage. And I thought, 'Look at me, there is nothing Celtic here at all.' And she kind of leaned over and patted my arm, and said, 'slavery baby.' Then I started doing a little more checking and digging. And I recently learned that my mother's great grandfather was Irish.
Q: Does it change your sense of identity to have this knowledge?
A: No. I think what it does for me is reaffirm that I'm really the hyphen in "African-hyphen-American." If I were to go to Africa, I am sure that I would stand out as more American than African. And having known some students and people here who are from Africa, I don't have that cultural context of Africa, at least not yet. And so I am that hyphen.
Q: What advice would you give people who are interested in researching their family trees?
A: Talk. Ask questions. Don't take those family opportunities for granted. Recognize that some things you find may be painful. There may be some surprises. But also recognize that things occurred the way they did during a period in time that's not the time we live in today. Something else that I would recommend to people is the history that's found in cemeteries. We have a tradition in the family of going to clean and decorate graves on Memorial Day.
AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES 2
Kathleen Henderson, director of First-Year Student Engagement for the University of Dayton, was selected from more than 2,000 applicants to participate in AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES 2, having her family history researched and DNA tested alongside host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and the series' well known guests. Below, she discusses her involvement.
Q: Are you excited for the AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES 2 broadcast?
A: You have no idea! I remember when Oprah's Roots was on, a couple of older relatives said, 'They keep doing the famous people, they ought to do some regular people.' When the producers called and said, 'We've selected your family,' I jumped up for at least ten minutes saying nothing but 'Oh my God!' This is the greatest gift I can give to my family.
Q: When you applied to participate, did you think you had a chance?
A: No, I didn't think I did. But the day that I came across the application, my mother's mother was really heavy in my spirit. There was this little tune she used to hum that I hadn't thought about for years, but that day it just came into my head, and I really think she was directing me to do this. Also, the day the producers called me was June 13th, and here again I think spirit comes into play. My father died of lung cancer in 1995, and he and I were at the hospital on June 13th of 1993 waiting on the doctors to come in and tell us his prognosis. So in some ways I think maybe it was a gift from my father, that he didn't want me to continue to dwell on June 13th as a day of bad news - here's some good news to replace it.
Q: What was the process of participating like?
A: The story line that they told absolutely surprised me, because it was my father's mother's people and we had little knowledge of that line. There's a part when Gates was talking about that side of the family that I began to cry because I thought, my father was a lover of history, and my grandmother was as well, and now that they're both deceased, I didn't get a chance to share this with them. How excited they would be to know this! But then there was a quiet acceptance that they already know it.
Q: In the documentary, a relative says you are a family of storytellers.
A: As far back as I can remember it's always been the case. When we found out the Mandinga portion of our ancestry, I went online to try to read about who these people are, and they are people with great oral traditions. And I thought, well, that's where it comes from.
Q: Your ancestors Dennis Jackson and Julia Mason were married twice, once as slaves and once as free people. Can you talk about them?
A: This was my father's mother's people and there was a tremendous amount of pride that I felt in learning their story. The marriage after slavery ends shows that they had the intelligence to recognize that they already took care of their spiritual union, but, to be recognized in a legal sense, they needed to re-marry. And what that says to me was that there was such great hope about starting a new life together.
Q: Did it surprise you to learn your DNA is 18 percent European?
A: No. I have a skin condition called rosacea. I went to see top-rated dermatologists in Dayton but still wasn't satisfied. So someone referred me to a black dermatologist in Cincinnati. And she took a look at me and listened to what I described. She walked out, came back with this pamphlet on rosacea, handed it to me and told me to read it. She left and came back in and said, 'Well, what do you think?' And I said, 'Well, yeah, this is it, but it says it affects fair-skinned people.' I'm not fair skinned, so that didn't seem right. And then the pamphlet said it's primarily found in people with Celtic heritage. And I thought, 'Look at me, there is nothing Celtic here at all.' And she kind of leaned over and patted my arm, and said, 'slavery baby.' Then I started doing a little more checking and digging. And I recently learned that my mother's great grandfather was Irish.
Q: Does it change your sense of identity to have this knowledge?
A: No. I think what it does for me is reaffirm that I'm really the hyphen in "African-hyphen-American." If I were to go to Africa, I am sure that I would stand out as more American than African. And having known some students and people here who are from Africa, I don't have that cultural context of Africa, at least not yet. And so I am that hyphen.
Q: What advice would you give people who are interested in researching their family trees?
A: Talk. Ask questions. Don't take those family opportunities for granted. Recognize that some things you find may be painful. There may be some surprises. But also recognize that things occurred the way they did during a period in time that's not the time we live in today. Something else that I would recommend to people is the history that's found in cemeteries. We have a tradition in the family of going to clean and decorate graves on Memorial Day.