This is the Katherine Dunham Dynamic Museum in East St. Louis. I am on the Board of Directors for the Center and stopped by the other day while there. Our Director was conducting a youth tour and asked me to introduce myself which I did. No problem so far. Then one of the students asked me "if my family ever owned her family?" It appears we both have the same family name and presumably her enslaved ancestors had adopted it years ago during the Emancipation. To say the least I was very unprepared for that question and after a moment or two I recovered and was able to respond. Fortunately my brother had done considerable genelogocal research on our Wicks lineage and we know that our direct decendants did not come to America until after the Civil War, and thus our family could never have owned hers. But what if we had?
1 comment:
Amazing how innocent children can side-swipe us nearly off our feet with simple words - that are so straight forward to them.
God Bless you for your quick recovery - and for your brothers genealogy work!
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