Emancipating Memory: Juneteenth, My Family’s Journey to the Plantation Where Our Ancestors Were Enslaved, and the Fight to Teach Truth

We traveled back to the Mississippi plantation where our ancestors were enslaved—and we’re making a documentary to tell that story. Help us finish it.

Gerald and his sons, Jesse and Jamana, found the planation in Morgantown, Mississippi where their family had been enslaved—and performed a ceremony at the gravesite where their ancestors had buried each other.

A few years ago, my father made a discovery that changed everything for our family.

He traced our ancestry to a specific plantation in Mississippi where our ancestors had been enslaved. We went there together. We walked through the fields. We performed a ceremony at the gravesite where our enslaved ancestors buried each other. We sat with descendants of the white family that had once claimed ownership of ours. We asked hard questions. And we filmed it all for a documentary we are making to preserve the truth—about our family, about this country, and about the legacy of slavery that continues to shape our lives.

Now we need your help to finish the film.

🎥 Watch the trailer and donate here:
Help Us Tell the Story of Our Enslaved Ancestors

This Juneteenth, I’ve been thinking about the importance of memory—who gets to remember, what gets remembered, and what’s deliberately forgotten.

Just before Juneteenth this year, historian Dr. Marvin Dunn invited me to Miami to speak on my new book Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education as part of his Under the Learning Tree series at Florida International University. We gathered outdoors because, as Dr. Dunn told the Miami Times, “They won't let us teach it inside the classrooms. We'll teach it outside under this tree.” He explained that during slavery, “after the working day was over, Black men gathered around a tree and talked. That is how our history was passed on — under a tree, informally, through stories.” On that hot Florida day, we continued that tradition—defying censorship, sharing truth, and honoring the legacy of those who gathered before us.

Juneteenth is not just a day of celebration—it’s a call to action. It reminds us that emancipation wasn’t just a moment in 1865. It’s a process we must fight to complete every day: by defending memory, telling our stories, and confronting the systems that still thrive on our silence.

📖 You can read more about my family’s journey to discover our history in my Nation essay “Emancipating History in Mississippi”. In it I recount how my father discovered the plantation in Mississippi where our ancestors were enslaved, and how we returned there together to uncover our roots, honor their lives, and begin filming a documentary to share this story with others.

Our family documentary is part of that fight for memory. We’re telling the truth our ancestors never got to speak—and we’d be honored if you supported the work.

✊🏾 They tried to erase us. We’re telling the story anyway.

#Juneteenth #TeachTruth #EmancipatingMemory #YouCantEraseUs