Dawn Dance: Brain trauma survivor. I’m not “nothing” anymore.

04/15/21 • 81 min

Dawn discusses surviving multiple traumatic brain conditions; being called both a honkey and the “N-word” as a Creole mixed race child growing up in California; being a Georgetown University 272 slave descendant; and descending from Marie Therese Coin Coin, a slave owner of African descent who was herself formerly enslaved, seeming like cannibalism, the love match of her Frenchman Revolutionary War patriot Claude Thomas Pierre Metoyer from Natchitoches, Louisiana. She shares accounts of suffering from non-cataplectic narcolepsy, a non-obvious brain condition causing excessive daytime sleepiness, undiagnosed for 17 years, hypnagogic hallucinations (vivid and terrifying sensations while falling asleep) and sleep paralysis (a frightening inability to move or speak while falling asleep or upon waking) which started at age 13; mother worrying it was demonic possession as a child; her condition feeling like a deep dark secret which shook her Catholic faith, feeling she had experienced the devil thus, knowing there was a God, but after being diagnosed knowing it wasn't the devil then questioning whether there is a God; attending school for medical assisting; managing her condition as an adult, fulfilling self-actualization by using her brain to work for the state, instead of only holding physical jobs at a deli and grocery store to avoid falling asleep, when she got hit by a car, thrown eighteen feet, landing head first, resulting in mild traumatic brain injury, causing memory loss; losing her job, ending up on welfare six months later; taking six years to get back to work; achieving happiness; growing up in Los Angeles and then northern CA having Creole parents with Louisiana roots; her mother wanting her to pass for white and be anything but black; not having ethnic pride because of being "nothing"; not having a problem being black but "woman of color” a great descriptor; mother's family Dawes file, denied Choctaw membership, having 13% Native American DNA; her father discovering a book written about Metoyer family while visiting Louisiana; hard to swallow learning was a descendant of an African American who owned slaves; Coin Coin using slave labor to purchase her children; Metoyer marrying white to have an acceptable family to which he could leave property; defining Creole as being a mixture of African American, Spanish, French and Indian, the food, the traditions; her dark skinned father; great-great grandmother from Lafourche, Louisiana marrying the grandson of the Georgetown 272 Harriet enslaved by Jesuits selling slaves to build college; questioning why join DAR since she felt "it is all those white women who wouldn't let Marian Anderson sing"; joining after listening to a podcast episode about DAR by black host Bernice Bennett; DAR members being welcoming, having more in common than differences with members; mother never having a birth certificate, never able to travel out of country or vote; discovering her mother's birth certificate, grossly misspelled and identifying her father, previously unconfirmed; joining the Sacramento DAR chapter before the Cane River DAR chapter of Metoyer descendants was formed; never having met other DAR Metoyer descendants, estimated 10,000 descendants of Metoyer and Coin Coin; "I don't feel like 'nothing'" belonging to a society in which multiple descendants are members; serving as a chapter officer; father always asking "have you gone to any of those racist DAR meetings lately?", DAR sisters showing up for father's funeral without telling them, feeling very cared for that they came, having a big impact on her life; reconciling DAR's past history of racism by “judging others by their character and not color of their skin and that goes for DAR”.
Read Dawn's biography at www.daughterdialogues.com/daughters
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Previous Episode

True Lewis: Veteran. Women shouldn’t be in the military.

True talks about her family legacy of four generations of firstborns, with her being the first woman, serving in the U.S. Armed Forces; joining the U.S. Army despite her “mom” (grandmother) and birth father feeling that women should not be in the military but with the support of her "dad" (grandfather), the ultimate decision maker; becoming a food service specialist like her birth father; serving for seven years in Korea and Egypt until her military career was cut short because of a rare autoimmune disorder; being in the National Organization of Rare Disorders and near death in Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for three months; wanting to learn more about her ancestry due to her illness; attempting to join the Daughters of the American Revolution in Kentucky but chapter members using a brown box with white and black balls for a secret vote to accept or deny her, being “accepted” but members non-responsive thereafter; not feeling connected to her white Revolutionary War patriot "Yohan" Nicholas Barrick but instead, the documentation of her black ancestors speaking to her; eventually feeling connected through her patriot's service, reinforcing her service as a soldier in the Army, and their both being willing to make the ultimate sacrifice; and feeling overwhelmed that her white patriot is receiving recognition through her research as a woman of color. She shares oral history about growing up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, born the day before Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, to a young white mother of German descent from four generations who lived in PA back to her Revolutionary War patriot, and to a black father from Florida, an Army Vietnam veteran who retired from the U.S. Marine Corps, when interracial relationships were not accepted; being legally adopted by her black paternal grandparents from Alabama, unsure if her maternal grandfather was aware she had a black father; her adoptive grandparents’ four children feeling like siblings instead of aunts and uncles, her father feeling like a big brother; having a child as a teenager with a mixed race high school sweetheart; attending community college to study pre-med; divorcing in her early twenties with two children and losing her job with the Pennsylvania State Lottery; her grandfather serving in WWII Normandy, her son serving in Iraq and Afghanistan; settling in Fort Knox, KY; co-hosting an online genealogy show; watching Roots with her grandparents who talked about their enslaved grandparents including enslaved paternal great-great-grandfather Ike who had three wives and 23 children; her mother not knowing her family history, taking a full mitochondrial DNA test which led to her Revolutionary War Patriot who served as a private in the militia in PA; discovering her patriot's service from his pension record; always being told that she came from nothing because she was black but then discovering her patriot ancestry, feeling disbelief that she qualified for DAR; being on a genealogy show which turned into a program with two white DAR members helping prepare her application; feeling confirmation, disbelief, anger, and pride when learning of her patriot; exercising her birthright to join DAR, standing in proxy for future grandchildren; joining a PA chapter with her mom since she was not embraced by two KY chapters; during the DAR national convention in Washington D.C., randomly ending up in a taxi full of KY Daughters who convinced her to join their chapter then feeling right at home; serving on the Volunteer Information Specialist committee; "I am the definition of America"; DAR means having a sisterhood; "DAR is doing what they say they are going to do to not discriminate against race, creed or color".
Read True's biography at www.daughterdialogues.com/daughters
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Next Episode

Carol Hector-Harris: Journalist. Never enslaved Africa born patriot, Ghana.

Carol talks about descending from Quock Martrick, born in 1756 Ghana, Africa, who served with George Washington in the American Revolution and was with Benedict Arnold when he left his post; spending three years searching for Quock’s slave master, assuming he had one as always taught in school about blacks in America, but never finding one; going before a council of Ga-Adangbe tribal elders for permission to meet her ancestral relatives in Big Ada then, the family giving her the name of Akutu Martey, meaning part warrior because she beat the odds by returning to them and the proper surname which was butchered to “Martrick” by the English; Quock serving in the Massachusetts militia as a free man alongside enslaved soldiers and slaves serving masters who were fighting, but choosing not to join the British; Quock marrying the daughter of a free black patriot; and three white men trying to get Quock declared insane to take his property, representing himself in court and the judge ruling in his favor. Carol shares oral history about growing up in Massachusetts with her siblings who are 10 to 16 years older and her parents fostering 74 siblings so she would not grow up like an only child, having to cut up and fry six whole chickens for dinner; family visiting Martha's Vineyard and having clambakes in the sand at the beach; being shaped by 6th grade "Africa the Dark Continent" school lesson; attending dance school; starting college at U-Mass, Amherst; wanting a dance career but father deciding she needed to study nursing, later switching to acting and directing at Emerson College; her foster brother in Vietnam showing his sisters' photos to soldiers who wrote letters to them, one becoming her husband; earning a bachelor's in Journalism and master's in International Politics- Sub Saharan Africa; working in public relations, communications and journalism; landing a job with a cable tv station in Antigua while vacationing there; her husband supporting her move to work in Antigua for almost 2 years while he and their two sons stayed in Ohio; working for FEMA being deployed to disaster areas; working in Louisiana on a housing restoration project after hurricane Katrina; working on her PhD in Journalism at 70; paternal grandmother's grandfather being a Civil War veteran, having a farm on a street named after him; sister helping with family research, stuck at 3rd paternal great-grandmother Chloe Jacobs; finding a document by a Boston Historic Genealogy Society researcher with 1790 census listing Quock Martrick, learning Chloe was born in Londonderry Canada; never knowing that blacks were in American Revolution; later learning when working on PhD that some Africans came to America free as mariners or for adventure; joining a Ohio Univ. study abroad program to Ghana; familiar faces and mannerisms of people where her ancestor left 250 years ago; Quock knowing his exact birth date, indicating he is royalty; Ga-Adangbe naming boys born on a Wednesday Quock, her confirming the day; grandmother being upset every time she told the story about DAR not allowing Marian Anderson to sing; joining DAR feeling she owed it to Quock, his wife, and her grandmother since "they kept Marian out but I was going to go in", and as an opportunity to learn; discovering a dozen other patriots; DAR members being genuinely nice; serving as a chapter officer, Librarian, being an example to granddaughters; having been made to feel she doesn’t belong in this country, also in career, and education by some who claimed this country having no relation to the war; having First Americans in her family; people not being able to say go back to Africa; as a member of the DAR, bringing recognition to people who have been ignored.

Read Carol's biography at www.daughterdialogues.com/daughters
Subscribe to the newsletter at www.daughterdialogues.com