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.)