The Pilgrimage: Playing the Blues, Finding the Truth

From the plantations of Mississippi, to the music halls of New Orleans: Filming the history of our family’s bondage, freedom struggle, and enduring rhythm.

The Family on a Pilgrimage

In the last week of July 2025, my dad, brother, son, and cousins, traveled to New Orleans and Mississippi on a journey that was part history lesson, part homecoming, and part reckoning. We were there filming our family documentary, Where I Got My Name, with the help of our friends John and Meno. But the trip was about more than making a film—it was about tracing the threads of our past, facing hard truths, and carrying forward the stories that shaped us.

Gaining our Freedom by Returning to the Plantation

We revisited the plantation where my great grandfather Thomas Lenoir was enslaved and I played a tribute song to my ancestors on my harmonica. The air was heavy, thick with memory. The trees stood like witnesses, their roots running deep into soil worked by our ancestors’ hands. My son and I walked the land slowly, in silence at first, then speaking softly to one another—acknowledging that we were not just visitors, but descendants returning to a place that had defined generations of our family. Teaching my son about this history—a past they are banning so many from learning about—felt like liberation.

One of the most moving moments of our journey was returning to New Home Church, the congregation my great-great-grandmother Laura helped to found. We gathered there to share a rough cut of our documentary with the community, knowing that Laura’s vision and faith had helped build that very space generations ago. Afterward, we visited the headstone we installed last year for Laura and her husband Thomas—standing together in the quiet, honoring their lives, and feeling the weight and grace of being able to come back and pay our respects.

Perhaps the most surprising and complex part of the journey came when we met with descendants of those who had enslaved our family. We showed them the rough cut of the documentary we are making and they gave us a basket that was passed down in their family from the days of slavery that quite possibly was woven by our ancestors. We shared a meal together with an unspoken understanding that history was sitting at the table with us.