Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts

Parker Pool

"I was born near Garner, Wake County, North Carolina. I belonged to Aufy Pool. I am 91 years old. I was born August 10, that's what my grandmammy told me, and I ain't never forget it. My mother was named Violet Pool. She died in child-birth two years after I was born.My father was named Peter Turner. He belonged to John Turner in Johnston County, right near Clayton. My grandfather, I had two grandfathers, one on my mother's side and one on my father's side. On my mother's side Tom Pool, on my father's side Jerry Beddingfield. My great-grandfather was named Buck. He was right out of Africa. His wife was named Hagar. I never have seen them, but my grandmother was their daughter. They had three children here in America. My grandmammy and grandfather told me this. My brothers were named, oldest one, Haywood, then Lem, and Peter, and me, Parker Pool. The oldest girl was Minerva Rilla.” – Parker Pool

Sewn patch with the name Parker PoolYan Zhang ’26

What’s in a name? Enslaved people were given the last names of their owners and often mothers and fathers wouldn’t share the same surname. Until the modern refinement of DNA analysis, researching your family tree (a common elementary school assignment) for black Americans was nearly impossible. Since 2005, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.  has been uncovering the family roots of celebrities on his popular TV shows "African American Lives" and "Finding Your Roots." Head of Harvard’s African-American Studies, Gates said: “Fifty-thousand years ago, we all descended from Africans who left the continent. Those ancestors, we will never know their name. We can go back 200 or 300 years and actually populate your family tree with real people who had names and documents. They had customs, characteristics that, unbeknownst to you, you have inherited.” 

Sources

Photo of Parker Pool