The late James Fisher, who was born in 1952, was an eighth-generation direct descendant of Capt. George Pointer. The youngest and only son of four children, Fisher’s childhood in Northwest and Southest DC was marred by his father’s abusive behavior toward his mother and siblings. He had little extended family as a safety net, but his mother was able to “keep us on the other side of the street from the projects.”  After graduating from Ballou High School in 1972, where he played sports, he went to UDC for two years then joined the military. His determination to live the life of his choosing brought him through four years in the Army then a 25-year career with the federal government, mostly in supervisory roles. With a cochlear implant to salvage what remains of his hearing after his stint as an Army gunner, he now devotes himself to amplifying his family’s saga as an American story that has been left out of the history books for too long.

The genealogical discovery of his family roots occurred when he and his partner, Tanya Hardy, began working on the Fisher family tree a decade ago. In a serendipitous twist, Fisher and Hardy crossed paths with two researchers who were tracing the lineage of George Pointer, a formerly enslaved man whose remarkable life was encapsulated in an 1829 letter tucked away in the National Archives. With this meeting, Fisher learned for the first time that his family on his mother’s side had a distinguished patron who had worked for George Washington, and that for 80 years his family had been landowners in Chevy Chase DC until racial intolerance in the 1920s forced them out.

Fisher, who was married once, lives alone in Colmar Manor, MD. His long-standing interest in world history has led him to travel extensively. He has three grown children, including a son in the military, another with the U.S. Postal Service, and a daughter who is an orthopedic surgeon. He remains close to his three sisters who have also been the subject of this oral history project. He describes himself as someone whose private life is increasingly burdened by clinical depression but “it doesn’t stop me from doing good.”

James passed away at his home in January 2024.

Below are excerpts from three oral history interviews of James, one from 2016 and two from April 2021:

When asked (in the 2016 interview) if he had any knowledge of being related to George Pointer before this genealogy search began: None whatsoever. First of all, I had no idea that my family had been in this area for so long. In my lifetime, the family has been divided and disconnected. One could not imagine that there was a time when they forged a very strong bond … My only regret is that it didn’t come to light sooner. The knowledge that such people were in your family inspires generations. Being separated from your culture is a real tragedy. As a little child I was fixated on ancient history, because I was looking for something to be proud of. When you say slavery to a young person and see the images, you see nothing to be proud of. Other cultures can find all sorts of heroes. The African-American community needs them. It has to hit strong and early in a child’s life.

On his reaction to finding that the National Park Service was using George Pointer’s life story in an exhibit at Great Falls Visitor’s Center without attribution (a situation that has since been corrected due to his advocacy): I speak my mind no matter where I am or who I’m around… did I receive any pushback when we went up to the National Park Service up in Great Falls once we found out that my ancestral grandfather was being exhibited, but they didn’t add his name? They knew who he was, but they didn’t put his name up there or anything about him. And I’m standing around the board with some National Park Service management, and I was like, “You’ve been pimping my ancestral grandfather …. you make approximately two million dollars a year annually from ticket fees to enter the park. Why haven’t you put his name up?

On why repair for Black land loss must involve restoration of land ownership: That’s what we need – land. That will honor our ancestors … (T)hey can be as nice as they want to. Unless they give us land back, they can’t give us enough. They can say whatever they want to say. They can shower you with all kinds of words. It hurts when they have to give up something that they don’t want to give up, that was taken from someone else … it seems as though, throughout history, we’ve been begging for fair play, for fairness. And we’ve been told to wait, it’s coming.

On why paying African Americans money isn’t sufficient to make up for the degradation of slavery and disenfranchisement, but providing land deeds offers people dignity: Money makes no sense, especially when you’re talking about something as heavy as reparations for slavery. Your ancestors’ blood, sweat, and tears. Killed, hung, burned, slaughtered, raped.”

About the difference having a role model in his own family might have meant to his development: I did not know I had a famous ancestor grandfather, Captain George Pointer … had I known about him growing up, it might have changed my life. If I read that letter and I knew of his life, and the things we have in common and how he dealt, I might have achieved more.

About why it’s imperative to tell the full history of the African Americans experience in the United States: Now there’s a lot undiscovered that we need to find and re-embrace. Our history has never been told the way our history is meant to be true. First, with honesty, we need to do that. You need to reach back. The old saying is, if you don’t know about your past, you don’t know where you’re going.

His reaction on Lafayette-Pointer Park for the first time, standing on the land his family had owned for 80 years: How did I feel? My answer was and is pride, a sense of pride – and anger. But what dominated and continues to dominate is anger … I think there’s just not enough Black people who express their anger because when we do we are accused of being violent. It’s supposed to be a no-no. It’s losing control. But we’re human.

On his upbringing and how his military experience shaped him: I was very quiet, insanely quiet, as a child. My mother was seriously worried about me. I didn’t talk. I was just scoping things out. I might have been traumatized as well. I began to think about that, I guess, when I was around 40 years. I might have been traumatized. I didn’t live in a very healthy household to me and my three sisters …From my military experience I learned that I’m going to fight if I’m treated unfairly. Which I have done all my life, so that’s not easy. It’s a constant battle from an early age.

On his philosophy about making his own way in life, regardless of what cards he was dealt: I started earning my money when I was about five years old. And that continued throughout my life. I first started making money in hustling bottles. Then I would go to a construction site, and I would go to the store for the workers a couple of times a day. Then I started moving bricks to where the bricklayers needed them when they ran out. I bagged groceries. I worked at fast food, restaurants, and whatever, but I continued to work.

On his expectations of whether his family will ever see reparations for his forebears’ direct experience with Black land loss: For my family? Let’s see, how old am I? [Laughs.] I do not see—I don’t see anything that can be called reparation. I don’t see it. I don’t see it in my lifetime. Whatever was put on the table, I’ll consider an embarrassment. Shameful, a shame. I don’t see it. I think land is too valuable to them.

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Sylvia Fisher “Todahtiyah” Gregory was born in 1949 at Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington DC, the oldest of four children, sister of Shirley, James and Susan, therefore a direct eighth-generation descendant of George Pointer through her mother’s line. Todatiya’s mother, Evelyn Conway Fisher, was the daughter of Rose Harris, who was displaced from Broad Branch Road in 1928 so that an all-white school could be built with an adjacent park.  Todahtiyah was married and divorced, with three children: Mark, Pi-jee and Leslie.

Todahtiyah grew up with her siblings in DC’s Shaw neighborhood. With their mom, they escaped their abusive father, first moving in with her mom’s sister, later moving to the nearby Maryland suburbs. An observant child, she quickly perceived everyday racism in her environment and developed a deep interest in understanding that experience. Starting early, she invested enormous energy in absorbing the literature on African American history, a project that expanded to the history and cultures of Africa. After graduating from Ballou High School in Washington DC, she was a student at the University of the District of Columbia.

A central feature of her life journey is Todahtiyah’s sense of autonomy and independence. She discovered and cultivated an entrepreneurial outlook. She views the world as an arena for developing her talents in the pursuit of projects that have meaning for her. Early employment experience convinced her that she did not like working for someone else. Todahtiyah has been self-employed since she was 34 years old, as a seamstress, a boutique owner, and in the export-import trade.

Endowed with a spirit of independence, animated by disappointment over personally felt racial injustice in America, and despairing of finding a way to be both Black and American, she left the United States to spend much of the years between 1987 and 2014 in Ghana, where she established residence and conducted business. Her daughter, Leslie, was schooled in Ghana and went on to earn a degree in biology at Howard University. Todahtiyah’s journey of discovery in Africa also involved defenselessness against exploitative treatment as a clanless foreigner, precipitating her return to the United States.

She is a seeker of those truths implied but unrealized by existing political and religious institutions, preferring  to see them as revealing threads in a transcendent tapestry of existence, elements of a grand puzzle to be revered, celebrated and studied. In the early 1980s, while affiliated with the Hebrew Israelites, Sylvia adopted the name “Todahtiyah,” which comes from the Hebrew for “thanks unto God,” in recognition of her eagerness to help those in need.

Excerpts from oral history interviews of Todahtiyah in April 2021:

How did you come to know the Pointer story: “I have an older aunt [who] told us about my grandfather being a shoemaker and living in Chevy Chase. But I really got the gist when [genealogist] Tanya [Hardy] met my brother [James Fisher]… Before Tanya, it wasn’t very much we knew about it because we were always in survival mode. My family was always in survival mode. We didn’t think about the past.”

Asked to recall moments from childhood:  When I was seven, we were living in [a Black community in] Washington, DC, on Seventh and M streets … We lived with my father and mother at the time.  It wasn’t a very happy time. My father was a wicked person … he was abusive. So from there, we went to live with my aunt. She had seven children. We were all crammed together in a little house. So it was a pretty much dull childhood. You know, we had a lot of family around but it was not very pleasant…There was a lot of poverty…Well, we survived.”

On experiences with racism: “We went to Catholic school, of course. We were [part of the] charity program of the Catholic school. They paid for it because we were Catholics. Sts. Paul and Augustine paid for our schooling…^[1] That wasn’t very pleasant either…they were very racist … I asked a lot of questions. They didn’t like that I asked questions … They had Black nuns and Black priests and white priests…I felt the discrimination of poverty.

“But when I really felt discrimination was when I started working over there at Woodward & Lothrop on F Street. And when I applied for the job, I fought with another white girl, we both finished school together. We were the same age and we finished school together, and we applied for the same job. And we both got the job. One day I was at the cash register, and she came to cash her check at the cash register. Her check was $20 more than my check. And I asked my supervisor—I said, “She came into this job with me, how come her check is $20 more?” And this woman, this white woman, tells me that white people need more money than Black people…I quit that job.”

Survival and questions about identity were central features of Todahtiyah’s childhood and adolescence. When asked about politics, she replied: “I didn’t think about politics in the way we think about politics today…When I was 14, 15, who I was, where I was, why am I here, why the world treats Black people so differently. My mind was into that, as, you know, not into government politics like that. I wanted to know who I was, why am I here, what’s my purpose in life, why are Black people treated so differently from all other people? I read a lot of books about slavery, tons of books on slavery. Then Malcolm X’s book. And I did a lot of reading, I mean, tons and tons and tons of research on the Black experience. And through my readings I found out a lot.”

That quest eventually led Todahtiyah to move to Africa and devote a large part of her life there. “Of course, you know, I’ve always thought about slavery. That’s why I went to Africa. And I went to find out the beginnings. I wanted to go and read about where the Bible started, where our history started from. I built my house, in Ghana, where our great, great, great, great—before slavery—grandmother was buried. I visited her grave.

On the difficulties of an African American to resettle in Africa: “When you go to Africa…they wouldn’t even let me keep African on my immigration card. They would scratch African off and just put American. They know we don’t even belong there. They don’t even like us there. They’re taking us now because they have money coming in. But [in the 1980s, 1990s] they didn’t like us then; they didn’t consider us Africans. We were Americans. So we had to find an identity.” 

Among Todahtiyah’s reactions to the Pointer/Shorter descendants rediscovered family history was a sense of personal connection: “{I} felt good when I heard about it. I understood where my entrepreneurship came from. Because of my great-grandfather, my great-great grandfather, because he was a shoemaker, and he worked for himself. ..And then I understood and appreciated that there was somebody distinguished in this lineage. My lineage. That made me feel good to know that there was somebody that did something, left their mark on his world. I felt good about that.”

Overall assessment of how to think about past racial displacement on Broad Branch Road in Chevy Chase DC: “It’s already been done. It’s done. It’s gone now. But I want to see justice.”

How to put into context this American story of displacement from Broad Branch/Dry Meadows in 1928: “[T]here are millions of people that were robbed of their properties, and it’s still going on today. You know, I just can’t think about just one person. It can’t be about just me. It’s about millions of us, constantly being robbed by the Europeans.”

What would you like to have happen with the Broad Branch story?: “What do I wish? I wish it were published.”

^[1] St. Augustine Church (originally St Martin de Porres Catholic Church) is a Catholic parish in Washington, D.C. It is considered by many to be the ” Mother Church of Black Catholics…” Accessed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Augustine_Catholic_Church_(Washington,_D.C.)

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Tanya Gaskins Hardy was born in 1955 in the District of Columbia, and lived in McLean, VA. She is the eldest of two children. Through Tanya’s expertise in genealogy, and her close friendship with James Fisher, she became an indispensable link to two discoveries that reframed their lives: James’ connection to his ancestor Capt. George Pointer and the revelation that the family, because it was Black, was pushed off the land it had owned on Broad Branch Road in Chevy Chase DC for 80 years.

The connections began when Tanya met James in 2011 and eventually, she offered to research his family’s genealogy. It was then that she “stumbled” into two historians online who were at the same time tracing Pointer’s descendants. Barbara Boyle Torrey and Clara Myrick Green had been researching George Pointer after finding an 1829 letter he’d written about his remarkable life that went from slavery to the Superintendent Engineer for George Washington’s Potomac canal project. Seeing the Ancestry.com family tree that Tanya constructed, they knew they’d hit gold: James Fisher was Pointer’s direct descendant eight generations later.

Since then, Torrey and Green have gone on to publish Pointer’s rich biography with Georgetown University Press and Tanya and James have taken up the mantle to elevate Pointer to his rightful place as a recognized figure in U.S. history. The story turned out to also have another hook – another hard fact that makes it imperative to tell: Pointer’s descendants who eventually settled on Broad Branch Road in Chevy Chase DC in the 1840s were pushed off their land 80 years later when surrounding farmland converted to suburbs, and the new white residents didn’t want them there.

Because U.S. history omits people like George Pointer and buries the stories of local communities that practiced racial displacement, Tanya believes these discoveries present an opportunity for current residents to reconcile that history and inform future choices. She has devoted much of the last 10 years to that goal.

Tanya’s roots do have some things in common with James’: Like James’s forebears, she was born and raised in a close-knit Black community in the Washington suburbs – one of several small Black enclaves that survived and thrived into the 20th Century. The strong values her parents instilled in her, and her younger brother included the importance of education. Tanya attended a segregated elementary school until 4th grade, until the county she lived in had to stop fighting integration and allow Black children to attend white neighborhood schools. Going from a protective and nurturing school environment to a classroom where she was the only Black student took its toll on her. That was especially true when a stern and unwelcoming white teacher insisted on mispronouncing Tanya’s name as “Tonya,” with a condescending explanation of its Russian roots. Tanya never forgot that experience – or the many other times she was treated with disdain because she was Black. Even so, she excelled in school, winning the National Merit Semifinalist at Langley High School.

Tanya then attended Mary Washington College and graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in special education. Her career centered on special education and behavioral counseling, first in Goochland County, VA, where she developed a curriculum covering reading, math science and history for the young men sent to the new rehabilitation farm in the county rather than juvenile detention; to Richmond, VA, continuing to work with students with special needs of all kinds, and then in Fairfax County. During a 40-plus-year career– she retired in 2018 – she purposely focused on getting poor and minority students the attention and individualized education they required to succeed in school.

Meanwhile, along with threading through a marriage and the raising of two kids, Tanya became an accomplished self-taught genealogist, spurred by intriguing stories of her parents’ childhoods. Tanya’s mother’s parents were sharecroppers and worked hard to support their family. Both parents passed away when Tanya’s mom was very young and the children were shuffled among family members, some who were also struggling and therefore unwelcoming. Tanya was deeply affected by hearing her mother’s horrific tales of descendant relatives who suffered at the hands of white male abusers during slavery and then Jim Crow. She spent time at the State Library of Virginia, learning how to access census records on microfiche. As she gained expertise, she expanded her pool of research subjects, often offering to research family histories for friends and family. Now she runs her own genealogy business. Currently, she lives in Florida with her daughter and her grandson.

It was that passion for historical research that got her involved with James’s family roots. Despite his skepticism that she’d uncover anything remotely interesting – he remembers having no one to idolize among his small cadre of chronically troubled aunts and uncles – she delved into the tenuous connections, most of which were difficult to trace further than two generations deep. “This was the million-dollar find,” she recalls of meeting Torrey and Green for the first time. Instead of only hard-luck stories, the past that spun out on Broad Branch Road for eight decades revealed itself to be a proud American story of strong family ties, with neighbors supporting each other and engaging with the surrounding community, generation after generation. It was Pointer’s granddaughter, Mary Ann Plummer Harris, who moved to that already established Black enclave in the 1840s. By the time Harris had great grandchildren and was in her grave, the Black families were being squeezed out.

Tanya’s motive in circulating this story is simple: She believes this is important work for all African American families, helping them reclaim a sense of pride, accomplishment, and resilience in the face of oppression.

The following are excerpts from two oral history interviews in March and April 2021:

On her early childhood: “I grew up in McLean, VA, which is one of the cities of Fairfax County. We lived in a small community of about 10, 15 African American families. This was during segregation, so the neighborhood was—we were blessed, because it was a nice one. Everybody in the community was either a schoolteacher or held a job that allowed them to support their family, so we weren’t struggling like some other people who might have been very poor. That neighborhood was in between many large white neighborhoods. … so, we were a close-knit group. Everybody knew everybody, you know, all the kids played together. My paternal grandparents lived in the black neighborhood that was east of us, about a mile up. And there were about 13, 14 homes there too. Same scenario, the families—most everybody had decent jobs for that time. They had their own homes. In our house was just my brother… I have a younger brother and my parents.”

On her transfer from an all-Black segregated school, to desegregated a nearly all-white school: “I started school during segregation, I went to Louise Archer Elementary School in Vienna, VA and I was there from first grade through third grade. And at the end of third grade, Fairfax County finally realized they had to integrate their schools. They fought it for many years after it started; they didn’t want to integrate, but it finally got to the point where they had no choice. So that’s when I left Louise Archer (Elementary) and went to Churchill Road Elementary School, which was in a very white neighborhood. And that’s when things changed for me educationally because I lost all my friends. I lost all those connections. I lost a family because the school that I was in was really a family. Everybody knew each other. And I’m not just talking about in my classroom, but we just all knew each other. It was also that most of us went to one of two churches. So, we knew each other just from being in the various churches, church activities. Many of the parents of the children that I went to school with went to school with my dad, and all of them were together at Manassas School for Colored Children. So, it was just a very close Group.”

On reatment she received by her new 4th grade white teacher: “And one thing that happened was about my name… Tanya. When I got to fourth grade, my teacher, who I’ll never forget, like I think I’ve told you all before, she was the true schoolmarm. I mean, she looked like she walked out of the 1800s. Long black skirt, that white shirt buttoned up here. Every day, she wore that. She was an older lady. And then she called my name. I was the only Black person in my classroom. She called my name, pronouncing it “Tonya” and I told her my name was “Tanya,” a little scared to even talk to her, a white woman, on the first day of school. She looked at her paper and she said, ‘No, your name is “Tonya”. That’s Russian. That’s not how you pronounce your name. Your name is Tonya, I’m going to call you Tonya.’ So, I just sat there, like, okay. And this is the very beginning of the school day, so I’m assuming that’s just the way it’s supposed to be. That’s not my name, and I didn’t really go home and say anything about it. Because to me, okay – you know, I’m not gonna tell my mom and dad, they’ve been pronouncing my name wrong all this time. I thought, this important person who’s supposed to be a teacher and knows everything just corrected me. We’ll just keep calling me Tanya at home and that’s my nickname. That was my thought about it. It wasn’t until years later that I realized, forget this. This is not my name. This is what you’re going to call me….Tanya.”

On her feelings about race labels over time: “I grew up knowing I’m colored. Then we became Negroes and were called such. Then Black Power became popular, you know, so we said we should call ourselves Black. So, I was a Black person. And then it became African American. So, African Americans are the only ones—and I choose to say that, because we are African and American. But I’ve never heard of another race having to have their name changed four times, not knowing who they are. You go from slaves to colored – you know, slaves to niggas to colored to Black to whatever. You see what I’m saying? You don’t know what to say. And I remember a period of time when I didn’t know which one to say. I was used to saying colored all the time, and then ‘No, no, we’re calling ourselves Negro.’ So, this was confusing and frustrating. No other race on this earth has had to go through the process of trying to figure out who or what they are…not knowing what they are, or who they are, which is typical of slavery and not knowing who our ancestors are and where we came from specifically. We were stripped of our entire culture, treated like animals, and judged as animals. You all can say “my family came from this place or that place”—you know, you shared that with me—I wish I knew from what country in Africa my ancestors came. I wish I didn’t learn that because of constant abuse of my great-great grandmothers….. who were abused by slave masters and then Caucasian men during Jim Crow…. that my ancestry runs through other countries including England, Ireland, Northwestern Europe, and a few other countries that I found through my DNA research…I am not proud at all of those connections because through their behavior they were stealing from us and forcing on us, not giving anything to us WITH OUR PERMISSION.”

On receiving recognition from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation in high school: “That was a big deal back when I was in high school. And the day before the assistant principal announced over the intercom the names of semifinalists and winners, and he didn’t name me. So, I went home…I said ‘Dad, I am a National Merit Scholarship Program Semifinalist, right?’ And he said ‘Yes, you are a semifinalist in the ninth National Achievement Scholarship Program for Outstanding Negro Students, The Negro students aren’t allowed to receive the actual National Merit Scholarships’ he added…..And I said, ‘Well, Mr. Chester did not call my name this morning over the intercom. He called everyone else’s.’ The next day, I went to school. I was going into an English class, and somebody came up and said, ‘Your daddy just came in the front door, and he’s got his briefcase, and he is not happy.’ I said, ‘Oh no,’ knowing how my dad can be. So, we started English class. And about 10 minutes later, there was an ‘Excuse me, we have a special announcement’ coming on the intercom. And they said, [laughs]’We forgot one student who is A National Achievement Scholarship Program for Outstanding Negro Students Semifinalist,’ and he announced my name. A few minutes later, my daddy left. And that was my dad, you know. I later heard from a friend who was in the office while my dad was there that he heard Dad say, ‘You are not going to short my children. You are going to announce that like you did the white students. What did you mean, you didn’t call her name?’” That was my dad when it came to my brother and I…if we were doing our best in school then he expected the school to do its best for us.”

On the daily worry over men and boys that African American women experience: “I just had this conversation with a friend of mine … who’s younger than me. She’s white. And she couldn’t understand this Black Lives Matter situation. And I said, ‘Let me explain how life is for me, right now … Every single day, I wake up stressed. Some days, I wake up stressed and depressed because I know my dad, my brother, my nephew, my sons, have to go out in this world. And if this is a bad day, they could be stopped by a ticked-off police officer, or someone who’s decided they’re going to kill some people, just because they’re Black. You don’t have to worry about that for your dad, your uncle, and your two sons. They can walk this country without fear. Mine, on the other hand, must be careful of who they see, what they say, where they are, and extra polite in some situations, taking abusive treatment without being able to defend themselves so they can get home in one piece. My friend kind of looked at me. And by that time, tears were running down my face, because I was just so tired of hearing someone say, ‘I don’t understand why this is important,’ as well as being tired of worrying every single day. You know, if you look at the news, you know why it’s important. And so, she said, ‘Oh’—she calls me Mom, she’s really my daughter’s friend and I’ve claimed here as mine too—’I’m so sorry, Mom.’ I said, ‘Well, I hope you’re listening to me because I’m serious about this. Every day—I don’t have a day of peace. And I won’t, until these things change.’

On her love of history viewed through the lens of genealogy: “I’ve loved history. I wanted to be a history teacher. But … my grandfather said, ‘That’s not going to work.’ When I graduated from high school, he said, ‘There’s hundreds of history teachers, so you need to choose something else.’ But I never gave up. Even in my classroom, history was the one class I loved to teach, and I made it very engaging and interesting. Because I loved it, you know. “So, I—my oldest son was probably five, and I decided to start going to the State Library of Virginia to use the microfiche machines and start researching census records. My whole summer off, I would be going at least three times a week, and I brought my son’s crayons and his coloring book. He’d sit on the floor beside me for hours. I even brought a lunch bag. I didn’t let them see that, but he was sitting down there eating little snacks [laughs]. But it fascinated me just to find out where people lived. I would go to the census records to look, first of all, over my grandparents’ information and it was fascinating for me. I could look up something and then close my eyes and envision, ‘Okay, I was in this place, and this is what it was like.’ I started keeping all that information, and it just grew. I constantly looked for someone to say, you know, ‘I had a grandmother who lived in such and such place, but I don’t know too much about him.’ My response was always, Oh! What’s the name? Where’d they live? What’s the birthday? I’ve got you [laughs]. So, I spent a lot of time doing that just for people who were interested, you know, somebody saying, ‘I wish I knew…’ “And I first started with my mother’s family, because I knew that they had come from a life of being enslaved. And I had been down to West Virginia for several family reunions, we have them every other year. I learned a lot about that. So, I began researching her family first. I think it just made me feel close to my ancestors. I never met them; I never met her parents because they died so young. But when I was able to research, and learn something about where they lived, and who their families were, and what their occupations might have been, that helped me feel like I was meeting them. I knew a little bit about them. My mom’s family was very big. I spent a lot of time doing that research. And then when I began building the trees, and the lineage charts and such, my dad helped me to organize it all and put it into a booklet that I was so proud of. And I got it copyrighted, so that it was placed in the [Library of Congress].”

On her offer to James Fisher to research his family history: “I would meet people, they’d say, ‘I don’t have this knowledge. I wish I knew this.’ I’d research it and give them that information. And I would teach them how to do it themselves. I said, ‘It’s not really hard to do this if you’re really interested. You can just do this, this, and this, and you can build your own trees.’ And then, the way that I became interested in the Pointer search was kind of the same way. When I met James, we were talking, and he noticed that I was doing a lot with genealogy….and he said, ‘Well, there’s probably nothing worth researching in my family.’ You know, he was very skeptical. I said, ‘You don’t know that. Just give me your mom’s name and your dad’s name, and your grandparents’ information, and I’ll show you.’ So, he gave it to me, and I saw him the next week, and he couldn’t believe how much I had built into the tree. He said, ‘who told you all that? Where’d you get that information from?’ And I said, ‘It’s on the internet, you just go to certain databases, and you’ll find it all.’ And that’s how I got involved with the Pointer family. That’s how it began.”

On meeting up with Barbara Torrey and Clara “Tiggy” Green: “And then just about that time, as I was moving from, you know, contemporary back, Barbara Torrey and Tiggy Green, who are the two researchers who have authored the book, were conducting their research on George Pointer. And they said the reason— you know, our first question was ‘why were you even going in that direction?’ – and I believe they said they were working on a book about the area that they lived in, in Maryland, which I think is [Brookmont] or something like that. And somehow, George Pointer’s name came up. So, they decided, ‘oh, this is interesting, let’s start researching.’ And they began to do so. Because my Ancestry tree for James was public, and they were on Ancestry also, as well as other platforms like I was, and their work popped up. They were able to see some ancestors that they were placing in their tree also, which would have been Mary Harris, I believe, and the Motens, Mary Moten. And so, she sent me a note through Ancestry introducing themselves and saying, ‘We believe we’ve found some information about this ancestor, would you like to come together?’ So, I was very excited to tell James, but first, I decided to contact them. And they mentioned that this person’s name was George Pointer, and that they had found pieces of information about him. “I got as much information as I could, and I told James. And he was shocked. He had no idea that Pointer was their ancestral name. He didn’t know anything much about his descendants—he knew about his grandmother, but not about his great-grandmother, great-great… He’d heard stories. He had heard that when his grandmother and family lived in Lafayette Park, she had long dark hair like a Native American, and she smoked a pipe. So, they remembered that, that she liked her pipe. He remembered. Also, though…he was the youngest of his siblings…the sisters had more information than he did, but that’s all he had to share.

“So, Barbara and Tiggy invited us to come to Tiggy’s house for lunch one day, and that was the start of something wonderful because they had all this research that they had done. They had made packets for us to show where they were getting information from, who George Pointer was, what his significance was. And it was just amazing, you know. James was floored, he couldn’t believe it. He was so excited. And, after lunch, we walked down to the site (on the C&O Canal near Lock 6) where the Pointer cabin was—there’s a road very close to the river. And it’s where all the lock cottages are. So, we were able to walk down there, go into the bushes, where I was looking for snakes, because I don’t play with snakes. And it was springtime, [laughs] so I was really careful. But it was just— it was a wonderful thing. James was thrilled, he couldn’t believe it. He was excited. He just— he was, he was, wow. He was wowed. So that started us— from that point on, Tiggy and Barbara and James and I worked together.”

On seeing the Harris property on Broad Branch Road for the first time: “Tiggy and Barbara told us about Lafayette Park, what is now Lafayette-Pointer Park, and the fact that the homes were in that area. So, I don’t know if it was that day— it was probably the next time, because we had lunch with them twice. But in any case, they took us also to Lafayette Park and talked to James and I about where the house probably stood in that park. There is a beautiful old tree there that is huge, that I’m certain was there when those people lived there. It’s the biggest, most beautiful oak tree I’ve ever seen. So, James kind of just stood there and looked at it and said, ‘Wow, I can—can you imagine what was going on around this tree here, and how the family was?’”

On the Pointer Descendants family reunion in August 2015: “We actually had a two-day—a weekend affair. So, the first day, Saturday, was the picnic at the park. The second day was lunch and dinner at another event site in another place, just to kind of reflect on what we had seen and meet family. That family hadn’t come together in years and years and years. Some of them had not seen each other since they were little ones. So, it was a wonderful time for people to come together. I mean, it was— I had never heard so many people say, ‘Wow, I haven’t seen you for 10 years; I haven’t seen you for 15 years; Wow, these are your kids,’ you know, they were seeing grandchildren and cousins and kids that they had never seen—it was just amazing. It was Amazing. “And the people that came through—so this was a Saturday, it was a beautiful day. And the people in the Chevy Chase community, a community that is predominantly white, use those days to come to the park, to bring their children. So, you can imagine the looks we got when we’re setting tables out and setting grills up. And I had huge banners made that shared the name of the reunion and the year 1773 – 2015, all over the place. A lot of people came up and said, ‘What’s going on? … what’s this?’ And I said, ‘I’m so glad you asked me.’ I wanted to tell them. And every single one that I spoke to said, ‘We never knew that. We were told this land was abandoned. You know, it was just nothing here.’ I said, ‘No, there was very much something here.’ And they were all encouraging. They said, ‘Wow, congratulations, good for you all.’”

On the question of reparations: “I think about reparations, and you know, I would love to see, like James is always saying, I would love to see somehow a nice plot of land somewhere in this country. Put together for all the land that’s been taken from African Americans through eminent domain and have it, a place where we can establish a place that supports us as a people. That puts our culture first, that is ours, that we can manage by ourselves. And I’m not trying to be separated from everybody. But when you think about it, African Americans are the only race in this country that doesn’t have home, we don’t have land. And people are saying, ‘Well, go back to Africa.’ Well, that’s all well and good. And I’m definitely claiming my African heritage. But I would also like to be able to claim my American Heritage too, and have a space that’s mine, just like everybody else can have a space. So, it’s just hard. “Some people say, ‘Well, just give me some money.’ That will never work. You know, it’s more than just the money. More than just money and opportunity were taken. So, we need to consider—I’d love to see a place where we have schools that focus on teaching true American history with all the good, the bad, and the ugly. So that African American students can be proud of who they are. And just like you were saying, these craftsmen, these women and men are doing amazing things, but treated like animals. We need to be able to really talk about that and teach how and why that was happening, and let our young folks know that they do have a purpose….that they are amazingly intelligent, and not to let other people say that you aren’t. You have a lot to contribute. So, there’s so many things I can think of that I’d like to see, I don’t even know where to begin. But I think recognition for who we are and what we’ve done is probably at the top of that list. To recognize George Pointer—it shouldn’t have taken this long for anybody to realize what he was doing, how important he was, and how intelligent he was getting the job of Superintendent Engineer for the Potomac Company.”

On the power of history and genealogy to instill pride in the achievements and resilience of African Americans: “Well, at first, I think that we need to, as African Americans, we need to continuously tell ourselves, we are good, amazing, productive, intelligent people. I think we, a lot of times and in a lot of situations, accept what the public wants to say about us. Some of our young people, it makes me so sad, because they’re just like, ‘Well, they’re going to accuse us, or they’re going to this’ or ‘they don’t believe us anyway, so we’re just going to do this, and we’re going to act this way.’ We need to somehow find a way to help our younger people realize who they really are…strong, intelligent, masterful at what we are able to do successfully if aloud. I don’t know how that’s gonna happen. Maybe—I don’t know, like, the black-on-black crime, and the shooting, and being upset with each other over nonsense. The system wants us to fail in many ways. It’s just, I think, it’s all part of just having—what is the word I want to use? A lot of them don’t have hope. A lot of them just think they’re not worth anything. Worthless lives, you know, what’s the difference, nobody cares about us. So, I guess the problem might be bigger, and that we need to come together in our communities and just start praising the little things and then move forward…. tell them that you are an amazing person, you came from royalty.

“We need to start seeing that more in our media, we need to start seeing it more—TV is just trash sometimes. We need to find a way to get a station that’s really showing African Americans, who we are and where we came from. We didn’t come from here; we came from across that ocean. The beginning is over there. It’s not here. We need to really focus on that. A lot of that history is not known. So, I guess the African history, the history of Africa, and then how we came here. And just start pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, loving yourself, realizing who you are, realizing that you are meant to be great. And stop thinking that you must be what everybody tries to make you look like you are. Stop listening to stuff on the media and thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to be like that, because that’s about all I can get.’ Not believing they’re better than that.

“And I would say, just start asking questions. If they want to know more about their families, start talking to the elders. I would also like to say for the elders, start just telling stories. Write down your stories, or leave some names of elders, and birth dates, and where they lived. Little stories sometimes are amazing to students, I’ve noticed. I was working with a group of teenagers once and I was telling them about my genealogy business, just to be talking, and I shared some story I had, and practically all of them said, “Oh, I’d like to know where my grandfather was. And my grandmother, I wonder if we were slaves.” You know, “I wonder if that—”. So, to be able to just teach, it’s easy to do. And there’s all kinds of information online about how to start genealogy research. So, I think we just need to put that little bug in their ear. You know, “Why don’t you do a little history searching and see what you can find. I can guarantee you’ll find something good.” Something good. If there’s nothing else but the perseverance of somebody who’s been enslaved, and then suddenly, the 1870 census shows them working somewhere, they made it through. They’re still alive, they have families they’re taking care of, and then go from there.”

The post Tanya Gaskins Hardy appeared first on Historic Chevy Chase DC.

Jocelind Edwards Julien was born in 1962 in Washington, DC, the youngest of three children of Rose Gangemi Edwards (1935-2021) and Marshall Edwards, Jr. (1931-2016). Through her father, she is a direct descendant of Caroline Branham, George and Martha Washington’s personal enslaved maid. Caroline Branham’s great-great granddaughter was Rosa Branham Shorter, matriarch to the Shorter-Dorsey family who lived on Broad Branch Road for more than half a century. Rosa Shorter was Jocelind’s great grandmother.

Since Jocelind’s grandmother was born on Broad Branch, she is just two generations separated from the family’s long-time land holdings on Broad Branch Road. The family home at 5801 Broad Branch Road NW that sat on .38 acres was seized by the DC government in 1931 to build Lafayette Elementary School, then for white children only. The Shorter/Dorsey house sat about where the basketball court is today.

The Dorseys and Shorters were African Americans, and Jocelind was born to interracial parents – her mother was Italian American and her father was African American. The family first lived in a single-family house in Silver Spring, MD, but because of their mixed marriage, they experienced considerable racial discrimination there. The story was told of how a rental agent turned down Jocelind’s father for a house, but welcomed the application for the same house when later made by her mother. By the late 1960s, the family yearned to break free of those racist strictures and moved to the newly created town of Columbia, MD, a planned community designed by James Rouse.

Jocelind recalled a happy childhood there, playing in open fields with neighboring children of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, and attending public schools. After high school, she moved to Boston then New York City to pursue a career in dance. It was in New York that she met her husband, Christopher Julien. But soon, the rising crime rates of the 1980s drove them both out, back to the more restful spaces of Columbia where they pursued careers and started a family. Their twins, Christopher and Megan, are now 22.

Jocelind earned a degree in business management and psychology from the University of Maryland, and since the 1990s has served as an alternative dispute resolution practitioner. She is now the director and mediator for the Anne Arundel County Office of the State’s Attorney and still lives in Columbia.

Although nearly 100 years have passed, the family connection to the Broad Branch Road land was relatively recent. Jocelind’s paternal grandmother, Anna Shorter Edwards Chambers (1905-2007), was born there and raised for a time at the house with her siblings. Their parents – Jocelind’s great grandparents – were Rosa Branham Shorter (1882-1971) and Richard Shorter (1879-1965). Jocelind knew her great-grandmother, Rosa, before she passed away in 1971, and was especially close to her grandmother, Anna, who lived to be 102.

Luckily for historians, Anna was an avid photographer of family and friends throughout her long life. In the 1990s, during conversations with Anna, Jocelind was able to carefully document and identify many photographs from Anna’s collection. Jocelind’s older brother, Mark, has preserved and digitized the family’s photo collection. Their family has graciously given permission for some of these photographs to accompany her interviews to vividly illustrate the lives of the Black families who lived and thrived in the Broad Branch Road community.

Intriguing family stories handed down through the generations had much to do with Jocelind’s burgeoning accomplishments as a genealogist. She has succeeded in tracing her family’s history back through the generations – and not just to Broad Branch but to enslaved people associated with George Washington and to Washington’s adopted grandson George Washington Parke Custis, known to the family as “Washy,” and Robert E. Lee.

It was with simple happenstance that Jocelind learned in early 2021 of the Broad Branch history project that involved her family. When she typed “Broad Branch” into her search engine, she found Historic Chevy Chase DC‘s 2016 interview of James Fisher and Tanya Hardy. She came to learn that her family – the Dorsey-Shorter family – had been next door neighbors to Fisher’s ancestors for half a century along Broad Branch Road. But due to that long-ago racial displacement, his family and hers had become complete strangers – proof of the social damage such racist actions inflict on generations of people. With this newfound connection, Jocelind emailed Tanya just in time to be included in this oral history project, and to attend the June 2021 dedication of Lafayette-Pointer Park and Recreation Center.

Jocelind recalls many conversations in which her grandmother, Anna, expressed deep and nostalgic attachment to the Broad Branch property. Flipping through the photos, you can see shots of her girlhood friends and family.  Among them is one of Anna looking smart and proud in her Chevy Chase Country Club uniform where she had worked, often looking after the young Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.  Toward the end of Anna’s life, after living in many interesting places, she would plead to be taken back to her home, and, when asked where that was, she would say, “Chevy Chase.”

Excerpts from Jocelind’s two oral history interviews from March 2021:

On her early childhood and upbringing in an interracial family: Mom and Dad raised us with traditional values, family values. Hard work pays off. Race goes not to the swiftest, but he or she who endures. So I had a lot of good lessons in life. My siblings and I were very close. In fact, we often went on camping trips up north, my father would pack us all in and we’d head up north and spend about a month in Maine and Canada. Just traveling around and being free, which was extra important for my mom and dad.  They had a lot of trials and tribulations because they were an interracial couple. My mom being Italian, my father being African American. And so for them, that was the time to get away from all (the) racism that they’ve had to endure in their life and in their marriage. And, in so doing, keeping us away from the negatives that we as children, as mixed-race children, had to endure.

On her early experiences with race discrimination and the family’s move to Columbia, MD: I should probably include this, which I think is pretty profound. We were renting. We were going to rent in Silver Spring from DC. And my mother and father, let’s see, I think it was my father came in. But they weren’t going to rent when they found out they were mixed-race couples. So somehow, my mother went back on another day a different person was sitting. And they said, “Oh, sure, we’ll rent to you. Absolutely, it’s available.” And I think that was another stick in the craw, if you will, for them as an interracial couple. But shortly after that, several years after that, I think I was seven or so, we opted to move to the new town of Columbia, Maryland. Columbia was built by James Rouse, who envisioned a city, a town, if you will, a community where everybody can reside next to one another. That was its intent. And so I would say that my younger years were filled with freedom in a way that we probably couldn’t have had, at least in Silver Spring at that time, we’re talking about the late ’60s. So it was very liberating, to be able to interact with all kids of all walks of life, and not be targeted, you know, in a racially derogatory way. So we’d run, yeah, we were on the fields, we were on—you know, all the open space was idyllic. Very idyllic. So I went through school here in Columbia, through my formative years . . .

On derogatory name-calling, and identifying as African American: [T]here was a time in my school years, early school years, where when some of the kids caught sight of my mother, I got called a lot of names, a lot of derogatory names. And so that, it never shook my belief in who I was, but it hurt a lot. You know, it hurt a lot to continually be called derogatory names. But ironically, it never shook who I was, and I never had remorse for who my parents are, or who they were. I just never, I never regretted that. I never said, Well, I wish I was this, or I wish I was that. I always knew myself, first and foremost, to be an African American woman, which was, which was my identifier, so to speak, but I was also biracial, half Italian and half African American. Of course, now that I’ve done DNA [laughs], the percentages are choppy. [They laugh.]

On her early interest in genealogy, from conversations with her grandmother, Anna: I started because my grandmother, Anna Shorter Edwards Chambers, on my father’s side, my paternal grandmother, would always tell me—more so me than say, my sister, even my brother, she would always tell us, you know, you’re related to George Washington. And she would give me little tidbits here and there. But I was so young.

And I didn’t—first of all, we didn’t have the means to just tap a button like we do on a computer and look up what she’s talking about. In fact, I don’t think I ever uttered the word genealogy at that point. I just sort of figured she’s given me this information, but I couldn’t understand why, or even how to make the connection. But later in life, I would say it was probably in my, maybe my latter 20s or so, I started getting interested because my grandmother, who was still alive, would share some more tidbits. So, I sat down with her on several occasions and interviewed her. And I wrote notes upon notes. If she skipped around, I would write them–jot them down. Not sure what I was going to actually do. But I knew enough to say that what she has experienced, and what she knows is important. So that sort of was my initiation into the interest of genealogy.

And from there, I would make trips to the archives, which was daunting. [They laugh.] I just remember standing in that building thinking, I don’t know what I’m doing. I was ill prepared. I did not prepare myself adequately for that first visit. But I’ve continued to interview. In fact, I’d interviewed—one of the side effects members, family members, they’re a very large family in Arlington, Virginia. In any event, I don’t want to get off track, but I continued to conduct interviews. And from there, my interest just grew. It peaked and waned. I’ll be honest, there were times—I had twins 19, 20 years ago, 20 years ago. And so I put it down for a good while.

On her move from Boston to New York City: I lived in Cambridge, MA, which was great. But it had a lot of transient people coming in to attend. You know, Boston University, Harvard and whatnot. So it was, it was different. But when I went to work in Boston, it was Boston. Literally, it was Boston. And I didn’t, I didn’t find a lot of diversity where that was concerned. Could I have given Cambridge a little bit more opportunity? Perhaps. But it was, I found the area in which I was in, for obvious reasons, a little bit more collegiate. I was looking for something more expansive, and darn it if New York didn’t answer that call, [they laugh] on all fronts. That for me was the most liberating moment in landing in New York City. It offered the diversity it offered artistic freedom. Independent freedom. Everybody was different. Oh, what a feast for me.

On the inadequacy of African-American curriculum in her children’s education: The concern I had was the brevity of the curriculum, in that they would talk about George Washington, they’d talk about Lincoln, they’d talk about the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, they would talk about those things. But what was lacking— oh, and they also talked about the enslaved, no doubt, and emancipation. But they never focused on details, and the responsibility of those who enslaved African Americans, or people of African descent. They didn’t talk about the Buffalo Soldiers who contributed greatly to the Civil War, to the wars and to the civil war.  And they didn’t talk about a lot of what went on during slavery. They certainly didn’t talk about the enslaved women who bore the masters’ children. They didn’t talk about any of that. They didn’t talk about the rations that they received, each year, that being a pair of very rough fabric clothing. And if they were lucky, you know, leggings that were actually warm. And it’s just things like that. Yeah, they talked about Martin Luther King, but they didn’t talk about all the other contributors. And they never touched Malcolm X. They never touched him, you know. So it’s— yeah, they didn’t talk a lot about that.

On her grandmother, Anna’s, life on Broad Branch Road: It was my grandmother, who actually spent time living there for a short while she lived there with— she lived there with her mother, and siblings. By that point, she was younger. So she lived there for a time. [. . . .] And so when they had children, my grandmother was one of them and spent her youth there at Chevy Chase. I shouldn’t say Chevy Chase, but Broad Branch. I got interested in it. Really interested to find more about it, just recently, within this past year, and didn’t learn of this initiative until a couple of months ago. Which of course, I started scrambling because I thought I didn’t do enough research into our names. [. . . .] So I went back to my notes to read about all that my grandmother shared. So yeah, this is well, but I knew it was something because when my grandmother got older, the only one place that she asked to go was Chevy Chase. The only one place out of all of the places that she ever lived, and all of her experiences traveling and whatnot, Chevy Chase was the one place she asked to go back home to.

On the family’s multiple evictions by eminent domain: As children, we were not made aware of it, again, until I got older and interviewed my grandmother, and only then did she start talking about that aspect. It was common knowledge, though, that my same great grandmother lost her home in what was that? Irving street in Washington DC. So that was taken by eminent domain also to build a school. So that was the second time for her losing the home. Her and her husband had to, you know, pick everything up and leave. And then do it a second time, which was like I can’t even fathom that. [….]

And it all started in Arlington house, where the same great great grandmother, my great great grandmother lost whose house was lost due to eminent domain on Broad Branch also lost the property that her father, Guy Henry, had in Arlington to build Arlington National Cemetery. So yes, it’s— three times losing our home. But because we are very proud people, it was nothing they ever let stop them from moving on, continuing to work, make a home and a family and maintain their pride. You know, keep that intact.

On her feeling when learning the history of the Broad Branch Road Black community: It fills me with great pride in my family, and in who I am. It makes me want to share and to be their voice for all that they experienced. Sometimes it makes me feel sad in a way for some of the negative things they experienced. Sometimes it makes me angry, too. But they would say, don’t let anger eat away at you. It’s senseless. Rather, become someone, do something, make something of yourself make us proud. So it’s my hope that in doing this, I can tell a story or tell their story, you know, and what they experienced and finally be able to do it without any negative consequences that they would have suffered.

On her grandmother’s photo collection, family friend Bessie, and life on Broad Branch Road: [Bessie] was a close family friend. The families that lived on Broad Branch all knew one another, of course. But she was a family friend and grew up with my grandmother. And it’s funny because I’ve got pictures of her at different stages of life. There’s some where she’s a lot younger, this one when she was getting into preteens, one where she graduated from college. [Laughs.] So but the families were all connected—the Harris family that originated from the Pointer family. We know they— in fact, I’ve got, let me see—I don’t know if I printed out. I’m on my phone, let me see— I may not have printed it out. But I have a picture of Lucille Harris, who was playing with my grandmother’s brother, when they were no more than maybe five, six years old. Back on Broad Branch. It’s a captivating picture. Remind me to show it to you on the next—I’ll have it prepared for you to show.

[Q]: It’s amazing you have all these photos— You said in our pre-interview that it was your grandmother who— photographer?

JOCELIND JULIEN: Yeah. Yeah, it’s how she had the forethought to do that is remarkable. But I guess that’s her way of archiving our story, which is immeasurable, you know, it’s absolutely immeasurable and it’s funny because my brother took after her. He’s the family photographer […] and he took after her. But she took pictures of everything. How— to give you an idea, there’s a picture that we have of another neighborhood friend of hers, Pearl Bailey, when she was just, you know, maybe 8, 9, 10— Do y’all know who Pearl Bailey is?

On the question of reparations: So as it pertains to Broad Branch, I think, correcting the narrative of what happened. And certainly, since the school is what replaced our family’s homes, to put it within the curriculum and the history of the school to write that narrative of what happened. And to name the families that were there, and uprooted. I think that for me would be a great start.

On a top-down approach to education, coupled with small groups like this: I think, in talking about the top-down approach, it was geared more toward a response to what needs to happen with the Board of Education. But to raise awareness, it has to start small, and it does need to be working our way from bottom up. So I think having these conversations like this with these groups is perfect. You know, and something that really, quite frankly, I didn’t see myself necessarily involved in, say, 20 years ago. Because I didn’t realize that a lot of these existed, that there was interest amongst a wide variety of group members. Because it can’t, it shouldn’t be just one group looking at this, it really needs to be a wide variety of people. [….] So I think that by networking, and creating these groups, it helps because now we’ve got three people here. And because this is recorded, now this is going to reach a wider audience, and so on, and so on, and so forth.

And I think that it’s very beneficial to have the opportunity to create forums like this, to get this word out, to get people to start to think, you know. And I’m quite sure that this discussion is going to reach somebody who may not know about eminent domain and what happened, you know, and they’re going to maybe figure out, does this happen elsewhere? So it’s going to reach some folks who otherwise maybe wouldn’t know about this. So yeah, this is wonderful. And that’s the very reason why I signed on, to give voice to whatever knowledge I have.

Closing thoughts on sharing her family’s story: I feel the emotion welling up inside of me. Yeah, and it’s unusual to experience this. Usually I’m on my own or, you know, sharing it with family. But this means a lot to me, to be able to share my story and my thoughts and beliefs. So this is an important step, not only for what you all are doing, but for myself as well. So I, gosh, I thank you all for listening to me.

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Karen Pannell Gilliam, an eighth-generation direct descendant of Capt. George Pointer, was a Daddy’s girl all her young life. Love and devotion to family runs deep in her veins, so it was a shock for her to discover an entire family history she knew nothing about.

Born in 1965 to Robert Earl Pannell (1944-2003) and Betty Ann Coombs Pannell, Karen said she and her older brother Robert had an idyllic childhood growing up in Oxon Hill, MD.  Her mother, now retired, worked for the Census Bureau and her father the Government Printing Office.  It was a given that  every evening the children would sit down to dinner with their parents.

When she got home from school at 3:30 p.m. she was required to do homework and chores. But once her mother arrived home at 5:30 p.m. she was free to play outside until supper. Favorite games were jump rope, jacks, and hop-scotch.  “I cannot relate to any kind of hardship,” she explains of her worry-free youth. “I did not see violence. Maybe there were fights but no guns.”

Nor was her young education burdened with heavy historical truths. In fact the only Black history she recalls being taught at school was about Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. She preferred math and English and after graduating from Oxon Hill High School in 1982 she studied business administration at Prince George’s Community College.

Her plans to transfer to the University of Maryland were sidetracked when her father became ill and she was needed at home. Despite this setback, she has had a successful career, starting at the U.S. Cenus Bureau then at the United Mine Workers Union. But her most formative time was the 24 years she spent with the American Postal Workers Union. Afterwards, she worked at another union office in Bethesda, commuting from her Capitol Heights home, until she recently left the workforce.

Her husband of 13 years, William C. Kellibrew, passed away, at age 70. They had bought a home together and also explored this family journey of discovery together. The importance of family connections, she says, cannot be understated. She rarely names a success without giving credit to mentors in her family. In her professional life, she said she credits much of her success to several strong aunts.

Growing up, Karen was close to her father’s side of the family.  Every Sunday, they would go to dinner at her paternal grandparents’ home at 17th and East Capitol streets in Northeast DC. Through her teenage years she spent happy summers with them in their retirement home in Halifax, VA. And throughout her childhood, there were numerous family reunions with her father’s family. 

Karen  also had a strong relationship with her maternal grandmother, Martha Ann Harris Coombs (1922-2015) and her mother’s four brothers.  She is particularly proud of her Uncle Alvin Thomas Coombs (1941-1995) who after enlisting in the U.S.  Army in 1959, played Army football and was reputed to be among the most talented running backs. Promoted to staff sergeant, he was sent to Vietnam in 1965, where he was wounded and honorably discharged with the Purple Cross, the Gallantry Cross with Bronze Star issued by the South Vietnamese Government, and the U. S. Army commendation medal of “V” (Valor).  He also served as a member of the National Guard Unit at Arlington National Cemetery.

But there were other members of her mother’s extended family that Karen knew little about. That all changed when she attended a family meeting at her mother’s house and met her mother’s first cousin, James Fisher, for the first time. James, along with his friend, geneologist Tanya Hardy, revealed to them they were part of a proud lineage dating back to a formerly enslaved man named George Pointer and shared with them Pointer’s astounding accomplishments.

She also learned the sad truth of the family’s racial displacement as legitimate landowners from Chevy Chase DC – currently some of the most expensive real estate in the city. She has since come to realize that her grandmother Martha Ann Harris Coombs was one of last living descendants who had been raised on the family compound in Chevy Chase.

She says that initially, the knowledge of this connection was interesting. But it has grown increasingly important in her life – that she is part of a blood line that survived so many obstacles – from slavery, to displacement, to forgotten and then found. “I was even more excited when we had the family reunion at Lafayette Park, and we had the big sign that said ‘Descendants of George Pointer.’  That was great.  We never have had a family reunion on my mother’s side before … I do not share it with a lot of people, but I am kind of proud now that I know.” 

The reunion of George Pointer descendants occurred in 2015 at the old family homesite, now Lafayette-Pointer Park, attracting dozens of newly discovered relatives, many of whom were meeting each other for the first time. Unbeknowns to her,  some of her cousins lived “right around the corner” from her.  Since then, they have been gathering for casual family events.  She only wishes that her maternal grandmother – then too ill to go anywhere –  and deceased uncles and cousins, could have attended the reunion.

When asked how she thinks the legacy should be treated, she said she would like to see the full story taught in DC schools and that people in the community should know the history.  “Everybody knows about Lafayette Park … but do they know that it has been renamed and why, and who (George Pointer) was and why we renamed it for him?  What’s the story? Do they know the story? “

Excerpts from Karen’s oral history interviews in Spring 2021:

On who Goerge Pointer was: He was born a slave and was one for 19 years. …He was a captain.  He wrote a letter to the president or directors of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal back in 1829.  And he had the good fortune to get in the good graces of his masters, the engineers in the company.  And so what happened was they would pay him $300 in a given time for his hard work, but what happened was that he was an experienced and reliable worker for the Potomac Company. He worked first as a laborer at the Great Falls and Little Falls.  And then later, when he was 23, he was put in charge of the boats that transported large construction items down the river.  Later, he bought his own riverboats, and was running them in Potomac Park, so he established wealth then.  And this may have been when people began referring to him as Captain Pointer.  He later becomes a supervisor engineer.

How she characterizes the repercussions to the family – the Harrises in 1920s as well as today’s descendants – of being forced off the Broad Branch Road property: “My grandmother (who was divorced) was raising five children alone and she struggled throughout her life. (Luckily) my mother fell in love with my dad, married, and together they made a very good life for me and my brother. But, when I think about it now, I realize that my grandmother or somebody else in the family could have lived there without being in a run-down high-rise building, or instead of going to the nursing home. She could have been on family land and being taken care of.  You know, you think about stuff like that because,  you have a lot of people that have land or property and they leave it — and it becomes a historical family house or whatever. So yeah, when you think about it now and realize what has happened, that could have been something that my grandmother could have had. ..You wouldn’t have to worry about it, the house would have been paid for and the land and the history behind it. And the fact that it was still our land, family land, it would be worth so much more money today.

About creating greater public awareness of how Blacks were too ofen denied the opportunity to build generational weath when they deserved it after having owned the land for 80 years before being pushed off:  “It (the wealth in the land) could have been trickled down. . .We could have had so much more (today).  My mother, when she got older, she was determined to make a better life for herself.  But my grandmother didn’t have a lot. I got married, and I’m a homeowner, and when you’re a homeowner you have more of a sense of a – you know, a sense of (pride of possession in the land).  Because it’s something – it’s yours, it’s your property.  You know, and nobody can take it from you.”

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Shirley Turner was born Shirley Fisher in 1950 in Washington, DC.  With her three siblings, she is an eighth-generation descendant of George Pointer.  She has three children, five grandchildren and one great-grandchild. She currently resides in Baltimore, MD.

Her grandmother, Rosa Harris Conway was among those displaced from the Broad Branch Road in 1928, when she was HOW OLD.  Her childhood was marked by her escape – with her mother Evelyn Conway Fisher and three siblings – from an abusive father. Her mother’s determined effort to raise four children as a single parent meant working multiple jobs.

“When we left, we moved to Northwest DC. It was a good life because we no longer had to endure an abusive environment. After about four years, we moved to Southeast DC to a better environment, ” she recalled.

But while obstacles in her home life improved, the education offerings for smart kids like her were tepid. “We attended schools where there were low expectations for black students. Upon entering high school, I had the opportunity to attend school outside the area. I graduated later with a bachelor’s degree from UMUC in College Park Md.”

A lesson she learned early and well was a stalwart work ethic. “After college I worked for 18 years for the Department of Defense, starting as a clerk typist and ending that career as a program analyst.  Eventually I was hired as a case manager with the U.S Department of Human Services in Prince George’s County and later in Montgomery County for 25 years before retiring.” 

Excerpts from Shirley’s oral history interviews in early 2021:

On learning about George Pointer: “At the beginning, I wasn’t excited about learning about the history of George Pointer, but once I started reading about him my first thought was about his attributes. I thought, this man must be a Christian because of his character, integrity, and a forgiving spirit he displayed.  He was a young, hard-working man, born into slavery and was able to buy his freedom, became an entrepreneur, help his people, and moved forward.”  

“I believe when my ancestors were forced to move, due to eminent domain, we lost a community of hard-working men and women filled with integrity, wisdom, education, and entrepreneurship.  This resulted in a lack of direction, mentors, and quality education.  I’m not mainly talking about myself and my siblings, but my aunts, uncles, and cousins.  We all lived in chaos and disconnection.  The one thing that helped me during this journey was the direction and wisdom I gleaned from the Bible.”

On what she thinks should happen now: “My view is that the story needs to be told. The (common) narrative about the African American community has been very damaging. I don’t believe that racism toward the African American community will  change until society realizes that we are all human,  all one blood, and we all come from dirt which encompasses  a color spectrum (white, black, shades of brown, red, and yellow).“

On what’s most important here – paying restitution to a few or correcting the record: “Let the people hear the story. Not any one of us desires to move to Chevy Chase. Let the residents enjoy the park. It is great that there is signage about George Pointer.  I care about changing the mindset of people who were ruined in the African American community.  As a community, we need to join forces to correct the wrongs done with support such as mentorship, quality education, tutoring services, guidance and support for single parents  –  programs that will give children experiences outside their own community.  Eventually we ought to have a display in the African American Museum on the Mall to encourage and empower children.”

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Susan Fisher Willoughby, born in 1954, is the youngest of four children – late enough in the birth order to escape the harshest of the paternal abuse in the household but still young enough to be accepting of her mother’s next partner as a father figure. She grew up to emulate the strong, resilient helper characteristics of her mother.

Today, she is a registered nurse with a strong moral compass and a simple yardstick for happiness. She has a deep faith in God; cherishes her two children and six grandchildren; and has a job that allows her to make a daily difference in people’s lives. Plus – icing on the cake for her – she lives in a waterfront community in a rural area in the middle peninsula of Virginia where she enjoys the solace of country living, gardening, fishing, boating, and basking in the sunshine.

It wasn’t easy to achieve contentment. She describes her young self as both a dreamer and someone who was frequently bullied throughout her primary school years. She had difficulty maintaining friendships. But, she says she discovered that she could stand up for herself and often helped others similarly misunderstood.

When she was around nine years old, her “step” father surprised the family and moved them out of what she calls “the ghetto” — their rowhouse was to be condemned – to the Maryland suburbs. They moved into a newly built apartment with a spacious balcony, new furniture, and a freezer full of food. Her mother’s “tears of joy” expressed what, in hindsight, Susan can now see was relief, as it saved them from falling into lives of despair that the urban streets with their drugs, alcohol, and crime might have wrought. So many of the adults around them, including aunts and uncles, had already become trapped in that kind of life.

Through her mother’s line, Susan is an eighth-generation direct descendant of Capt. George Pointer. He was born into slavery but achieved nearly unheard-of success for a Black man of his time. Pointer’s granddaughter bought land on Dry Meadows in what is now Chevy Chase DC and began raising a family. The two-acre “compound” gave succor to four generations from the 1840s to the 1920s – a period that stretched from pre-Civil War through Reconstruction to Jim Crow.

The last generation to enjoy Dry Meadows included Susan’s grandmother, Rose Harris Conway, who was a child when the family was evicted so their land could be used to build a school and park for suburban white children. The family scattered in several directions, some with secure jobs and safe housing, others without.

Susan’s mother, Evelyn Conway Fisher, was one of 11 children born to Rose and her husband Thomas Conway Jr. It was this generation – the first to have never experienced the safety net that Dry Meadows had long provided for previous generations  – who fell into “unhealthy behaviors and lifestyles.” The behaviors trickled down to thwart the lives of many of the 11 children from that union.

Along with the unhealthy lifestyles, many in that generation held onto racists beliefs that were designed to make Black people feel inferior. Susan recalls that when she declared she would go to college after graduation from Ballou High School in 1973, she was shut down by family members. “They said, ‘College? You’re not that smart!’ So that’s what was ingrained, you had to be really, really smart to go to college,” she said, meaning that they didn’t think Black people were smart enough. “There is truth in the saying ‘you learn what you live and live what you learn.’ ”

Susan said the stability achieved by moving out of the inner city helped her immediate family. Her siblings all went on to lead productive – if not unblemished – lives. She herself started on the path to college when, at age 22, another obstacle presented itself. She was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis (MG), a “devastating” chronic autoimmune disorder that causes debilitating muscle weakness.

It started with double vision that coincided with the conception of her first child, a son. She had married in her second year of college and became pregnant soon after. It took a year to be diagnosed due to her pregnant state, and then she endured a decade of cycling between acute crises and periods of stability. During that time she was frequently hospitalized and experienced severe weight loss due to a limited ability to chew. Meanwhile, she had a second child, a daughter, and her marriage unravelled due to her husband’s alcohol and drug addictions.

Finally, in fits and starts, she emerged to restart her life. Susan gives credit to the illness that prepared her for the life she now lives – what she sees as good coming from bad. For instance, negative experiences with hospital nurses who were insensitive and lacked medical knowledge was an impetus for her to become the kind of nurse she had needed. She recalls one night being so frustrated with the hospital care and lack of sleep that she vowed to God that if “He would deliver me from this predicament I would study to become a nurse. Of course, I realize now that was His plan all along,” she said.

Once periods of stability became more frequent she enrolled in nursing school. “It was a rough start,” she recalled. Relapses forced her to occasionally withdraw from classes, but she always went back. She said her faith in God smoothed the way – something she is certain she couldn’t have achieved by her mortal self.

The complexities were magnified because she was also raising children as a single parent. Plus, she encountered people who were not sympathetic. She recalls an instructor who, after the first week of the semester, called her up after class to discourage her from continuing because she had earned a “D” on the first quiz.

The instructor – who was white and she was the only Black student in the class – told her she would likely not do well in nursing and to think about another major. “I was naive, and she was the instructor,” Susan recalled. So she withdrew, falsely believing she wasn’t good or smart enough to succeed in nursing. But it did not end there. Prodded by what she believed was a clear message from God, she-enrolled, completed the rigorous program, and became a Registered Nurse. That was 37 years ago. Since then she has mastered nearly every type of hospital care specialty as a nurse.

By the time her children were in their early teens, she had an established career and the wherewithal to build a life for them. As a single mother, she found she had to be creative if she was to provide a well-rounded life for them – something she and her siblings did not always have. So one of her early decisions was to invest in a boat big enough for the three of them and a few of their friends to take trips on. What ensued were ideal vacations cruising the Potomac and surrounding harbors in Metropolitan areas. With that kind of fun, no one missed expensive hotels and fancy clothes, she said.

After her kids were no longer children, she married a second time but divorced after 14 years, in 2010. She learned life lessons from that, too. Meanwhile, her first husband has since worked through his addictions and re-established relationships with their kids. He is now a business owner – another victory she feels that comes from heaven.

In 2001, Susan switched to travel nursing, giving her the opportunity to take short-term assignments in a variety of places. She has worked up and down the East Coast, but always returns to her Piankatank River home, which she named “Goshen Shore.” She has no plans to retire anytime soon. “Retirement will only happen when the Lord Jesus calls me home,” she declared.

Excerpts from Susan’s April 2021 oral history interviews:

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