VICTOR BLACKWELL: Very few moments in my career
have ever brought me to this.
This is-- oh man.
It happened at the International African-American Museum
in Charleston, South Carolina, which opens this month.
Six centuries of history packed into 150,000 square feet
at the historic Gadsden's Wharf.
TONYA MATTHEWS: Above 40% of all enslaved
Africans would have come in through Gadsden's Wharf.
We've been referred to as the ground
zero of importation of enslaved people into the United States.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: Dr. Tonya Matthews is
the museum's President and CEO.
Space of solemnity or celebration?
TONYA MATTHEWS: Yes.
I refuse to choose.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: Tribal art and contemporary fashion,
relics of protest and reports of resistance.
TONYA MATTHEWS: It's this infusion of trauma and joy
constantly that we like to talk about here.
You get the full story, but you're going
to get all the context in it.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: What arguably is the best
illustration of full context is the museum's
center for family history.
It's a team of researchers with access to millions of records
that can trace African-American lineage
sometimes back to a slave ship that came into this very port.
The expert genealogist here spent months
tracing my lineage, and this was the day
of the long-awaited reveal.
SHELLEY MURPHY: Make sure you got to box of Kleenex by you,
and sit there and enjoy.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: That's the museum's top genealogist Dr.
Shelley Murphy on the laptop.
She's joining us from the University of Virginia.
SHELLEY MURPHY: This is a tree, just a snapshot of your tree,
and I'm following your maternal line.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: Wow.
That's a lot just seeing the tree.
You see that box?
Well, that represents David Veney, my great grandfather's
great grandfather.
He lived in coastal Richmond County, Virginia,
on a farm with his wife, Judy, and their 18 children.
And in 1871, he filed this claim to be reimbursed for livestock
and supplies requisitioned by Union troops
during the Civil War.
SHELLEY MURPHY: Another thing that is significant
is that he owned the land that he's on, and it was 23 acres.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: Where did a man in the 1870s
so soon after the end of slavery get the money to buy 23 acres?
SHELLEY MURPHY: Absolutely.
And the thing of it is, I would even question,
he said he was Freeborn.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: Well, for some answers,
we have to go back more than 300 years
to my great, great, great, great,
great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother, Mary.
She arrived on a ship in Northumberland
County, Virginia, in 1712, before America was America.
Her granddaughter, my eight times great grandmother, Bess,
was with her, that's according to
this centuries old deposition that Dr.
Murphy's team uncovered.
Why a deposition?
We'll learn that a little later.
SHELLEY MURPHY: And Bess at the time was about 13-years-old.
Witnesses apparently said they look like they were Indians.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: Researchers believe that Mary and Bess were
actually Mattaponi, like these people
of that region of Virginia called the Northern Neck.
SHELLEY MURPHY: We're not sure where they came from,
but Thomas Smith of Richmond County
did enslave one of Bess's children, and that was Sarah.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: And it's Sarah, my seven times
great grandmother, who changes the trajectory of her children
and all her descendants who followed.
SHELLEY MURPHY: There was a law back in 1705
that declared that all children that
are enslaved or free, their condition
would be based on whatever their mother was.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: Remember, Sarah
and Bess arrived free people.
SHELLEY MURPHY: So Sarah has a lawsuit that's filed saying,
we're free.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: This is the actual lawsuit filed
by Sarah suing for her freedom and for the freedom
of her descendants.
And that deposition, it was from a witness who saw Mary and Bess
arrive decades earlier.
SHELLEY MURPHY: So in 1791, the court agreed with Sarah,
and her children, and grandchildren,
and all of those relatives who were descendants of Mary
and Bess are going to be free.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: That my ancestors
filed and sued for their freedom, it is remarkable.
SHELLEY MURPHY: We're not done.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: We're not done.
OK.
We're not done.
Let me get a-- let me get a Kleenex, Doctor.
SHELLEY MURPHY: I told you to have a box there.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: All right.
But not all of Sarah's family was free.
Before the court's decision, Sarah's enslavers
illegally sold her daughter, Rachel,
and then Rachel was sold again.
And for the next 20 years, unaware of the court's ruling,
Rachel and her children remained in bondage.
When she learned of the decision in 1807,
more than a quarter century after her mother's
groundbreaking lawsuit for freedom,
Rachel filed this lawsuit against her enslaver,
claiming that she was the daughter of a free woman
and therefore she and her children should also be free.
SHELLEY MURPHY: And guess what.
The witnesses and things all came through,
and they were awarded their freedom.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: [SIGHS]
SHELLEY MURPHY: So what do you think?
VICTOR BLACKWELL: [CRYING]
Man.
This is-- oh man.
To be an enslaved woman suing a slave master, to do it twice
in one bloodline is remarkable.
SHELLEY MURPHY: Your line started out
enslaved and became free to up until where
you're at right now.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: It became free because those women
fought for it.
SHELLEY MURPHY: I'm going to tell you what, Victor.
The women in your family, it's unbelievable.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: It fills in a lot
of gray, a lot of blank space.
There was nothing there.
There was an assumption.
Now there are names, relatives, and places, and stories.
It certainly fills in more of the story of my family's
place in this country.