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

04/08/21 • 58 min

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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Previous Episode

Marcia Lamar: Travel Manager. Yank, white Frank’s black nickname troubles.

Marcia talks about how the Clotilda, the last ship that transported slaves after their trade from Africa was abolished, carried the captives who bought land to create Africatown in Alabama, where her father lived; disheartened learning her ancestors did not come from the Clotilda; her pipe smoking maternal great grandmother, Deland, chopping off a white man's foot after being called a name while enslaved; the death certificate of her white maternal grandfather Moses Wilson's enslaved mulatto mother, Lillian James, listing Lillian’s father as "Yank", his black family’s nickname, instead of his real name Frances or Frank, causing three years of being denied for application to the Daughters of the American Revolution; Yank having children with another mulatto woman who lived with him, willed to him by his father with instructions to allow them to live as free and white as possible, but children not liking the way whites were treating people so marrying black, Yank listed as Frank on their death certificates, meeting their descendants; Moses having two children with her black grandmother, but also a white family with six children; Lillian, descendant of Revolutionary War patriot John James, having ten children with European James (Jimmy) Wilson who had a white wife and children who likely wrote him off as dead; connecting with present-day white families of Moses and Jimmy but Yank’s white family disconnecting once they discovered she was black. She shares oral history about growing up in Mobile, Alabama; several years during her childhood, her mother being away at college in Montgomery, unable to attend locally due to segregation; the National Guard at her high school during desegregation, clearing campus early each day after breaking up fights, her brother standing in the corner of the cafeteria eating gumbo amidst fighting; working for Eastern Airlines in Atlanta, Georgia for 17 years, now an operations manager; interested in genealogy in 1976 when pregnant with first child, born on the last day of "Roots"; Deland enslaved by Robert Moffett, sold to Mississippi, daughter Delphine marrying John Beard, descendant of 2nd great grandfather William Beard who was formerly enslaved having 200+ acres of land, a logging company, 22 kids, four wives including a Moffett, starting a church in a community called Moffettville; visiting present-day town; mother's birth certificate not listing Moses as the father, never married grandmother; white descendants of Jimmy's father, Albert Jackson, who owned over 500 acres and slaves, thinking Jimmy died in 1891 as written in their family Bible and "Your Inheritance" book by a cousin which documented family to Charlemagne and Revolutionary War patriot Joshua Wilson, under which she joined DAR, who became a Methodist minister and built a school; their family taking her to cemeteries and churches; finding a 1900 death record for Jimmy, so alive when grandfather born in 1896; white cousins affirming great aunt had stories she wouldn't share; paternal great grandfather Emp Green, U.S. Colored Troop in AL; patriots Mark Harwell and Joel Rivers of Virginia; becoming close to white state officer from AL in GA DAR also descending from patriot Joshua Wilson; reaching out to chapters in Decatur, GA; "I cannot change the past. Without it, I wouldn't be here, I am embracing the good and focused on bettering the future"; connection with black Daughters important since doing similar research; joining DAR to prevent research from being lost; being uncomfortable with some chapter programs about the Confederacy; “some individual women have more learning to do about people of color but the organization stands for all people”; "I am an American".

Read Marcia's biography at www.daughterdialogues.com/daughters
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Next Episode

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

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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