Black people have always lived in communal ways, genealogist and researcher Ja’el Gordon told Verite News.
She specializes in antebellum, Deep South, enslaved people’s and plantation histories.
Gordon, who lives in Baton Rouge, said that the nuclear family structure did not really exist for enslaved people. In addition to biological parents, aunts, cousins, uncles and others would help raise each other’s children and help one another survive. And that communal family structure has, in some ways, been carried on in the African American community today, she said.
“Sometimes in the Black community, our mother’s best friend is our ‘aunt,’” Gordon said. “Their children are our ‘cousins,’ and we’re not even related, technically, but we have that sense of family and sense of community that we’re going to always take care of each other.”
That structure was built out of necessity as slavery tore apart nuclear families through selling people as property.
Gordon said that genealogy records are often difficult to access because records may be located in different states and one has to be able to take time off from work and afford to travel to view and browse through records.
But doing so, in addition to visiting plantations, is incredibly important, she said.
“So much of our history has been erased and forgotten, whether that is through purposeful damage or from the lack of extensive documentation or through something like a fire that may have happened in a building or in someone’s home,” she said.
On Saturday (April 5), Gordon will discuss how she does this challenging work at GenFest, an annual celebration of genealogy, culture, history and preservation, hosted by the New Orleans Public Library’s City Archives and Special Collections division. This year’s lineup features several Black genealogists, researchers, anthropologists and historians.
Christina Bryant, director of the City Archives and Special Collections for the library, said the theme for this year’s GenFest, “creating community,” is especially pertinent to New Orleans, where “communities are very influential to who we are.”
The library started GenFest last year to bring people from various backgrounds in southeast Louisiana together to focus on preserving family and community history.
This year’s event will take place on Dillard University’s campus in a larger space than the inaugural GenFest, which was held at the library’s main branch last year, archivist and program coordinator Amanda Fallis said.
The City Archives and Special Collections will also debut a new digitized photo collection, taken from its Housing Authority of New Orleans collection. The exhibit has over 300 pictures of public housing developments in the city from the 1940s through the 1970s.
Lafayette-based documentarian Leonard Smith III will give the keynote speech at the event, relating how he used some of those photos to make his award-winning 2020 documentary, “A Place Called Desire.” The documentary tells the story of the community that residents built in the former Desire public housing development in New Orleans, where Smith grew up.
The 1949 Housing Act led to the construction of the Desire Projects in the early 1950s. Over time, the Desire projects gained a poor reputation for crime, drugs and dangerous housing conditions. The housing community was demolished in the late 1990s as part of a national push to dismantle aging public housing complexes.
Despite its reputation, Smith said he didn’t want to portray his childhood home in a purely negative way, because that’s not how he remembers it. He said there were negative and even ugly things, but plenty of beautiful moments that occurred as well.
“‘A Place Called Desire’ is more of a positive story, and more of a story about love of community and love of people within the community,” Smith said.
Smith said that for many people who lived there, including those he interviewed for the film, the Desire was the best place they could live.
“One guy said, ‘I didn’t know I lived in a ghetto until I saw it on the news,’” Smith said. “But that just goes to show you that what other people label your community as, you may not see it that way.”
Gaynell Brady, owner of the local history and genealogy company Our Mammy’s, will talk about her genealogical research related to her great-grandmother, Josephine Buchanan Landry. She said Landry’s life, in early- to mid-20th century Uptown New Orleans, was emblematic of the lives of many ordinary Black women in New Orleans at the time. Just as Landry did, many Black women performed domestic labor to support their families. Our Mammy’s teaches people about Louisiana’s African American history, including the history of Brady’s own ancestors.
Brady said people should share and study their ancestors’ stories to protect family history.
“If you’re called to be the one, the chosen one, to tell your ancestors’ story, it’s your job to protect and learn all you can, and then more importantly, share it with others so that it’s not lost or distorted,” Brady said.
GenFest will take place at Dillard University’s Professional School and Sciences Building on Saturday (April 5) from 10 a.m. to 3:45 p.m.
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