I grew up in a leafy suburban town the
kind of place were dad’s dressed in
pinstripe suits wing tip shoes and
carried leather briefcases to their
high-powered New York City jobs that
describes my dad to a tee he left our
home every morning at exactly 6:00 a.m.
to catch the commuter Express train into
his Wall Street office and he didn’t
return until well after 7 o’clock every
night by the time Saturday finally
rolled around my mom felt he seriously
owed her one for the long hours of
childcare and housework she put in
during the week what was the traditional
father to do well on many a weekend
morning mine roused my sister and me
from bed bundled us into the family
station wagon and drove us back into New
York City where he’d get a little extra
work done I still remember the nearly
deserted streets as we emerged from the
gloom of the Holland Tunnel my dad’s
office was deserted as well by the time
we stepped off that elevator and through
that frosted glass door with its company
logo etched in 19th century type we
entered a hushed and mysterious world
filled with row upon row of empty desks
as far as the eye could see it was cool
and dim and quiet a Cathedral of money I
don’t know what my dad thought we were
actually doing as he pored over stock
reports and client portfolios in his
corner office at the far edge of that
huge room there was no form of
entertainment for two little girls and
he should have realized something was up
because we never ever complained
and here’s the reason why
slowly methodically and ever so quietly
we were opening each and every desk
drawer
our mission candy lots and lots of candy
forget everything you’ve ever heard
about those three martini lunches
stockbrokers and their secretaries fuel
themselves on huge quantities of sugar
for us every weekend was like Halloween
sometimes when my sister and I were
still high on Milky Way’s and tootsie
rolls and butterfingers my dad would
come and fetch us and we would walk
around the corner and passed historic
Trinity Church where politicians and
leaders like Alexander Hamilton are
buried the most eye-catching monument in
that cemetery
is a statue of a man dressed in judicial
robes and a wig his face fixed in a
permanent frown dad jokingly called him
old pigeon head because there was always
at least one bird perched atop him when
we walked by it wasn’t until several
years later that I realized old pigeon
head was my relative the politician
jurist and member of the third United
States Congress the Honorable John Watts
old pigeon head it turns out was part of
New York City’s early colonial elite his
grandfather emigrated from Scotland in
1698 established a thriving mercantile
business married into an influential
Dutch English family fathered ten
children and built a mansion and farm
that encompassed a hundred and
thirty-one acres of lower Manhattan as a
teenager I heard about all the many
impressive things that pigeon head and
my other male ancestors had done
founding New York’s first library and
the lottery which eventually became the
stock exchange and Columbia University
then known as King’s College an Anglican
Trinity Church
and many many other important civic and
cultural organizations that still exist
today but for reasons I couldn’t fully
articulate at the time I found the
weight of all this history a burden I
simply did not want to bear so after
college on the East Coast I moved as far
away as I could get to Southern
California where no one cared or even
asked where I was from or what my family
had or had not done in the distant past
I started a job as a curator married and
had two kids twenty-year I would go
visit my folks every now and again but
20 years on I consider myself a proud
Californian and that was that then by
chance one evening in 2008 I happened to
watch a documentary on public television
called traces of the trade a story of
the deep north in it a member of an
old-line Rhode Island family one that
bore an uncanny resemblance to my own
discovers that her ancestor ran the
country’s largest slave trading
operation bringing 10,000 Africans to
the Americas bound and Chains more than
half a million of their ancestors could
be alive today she said I was confused
I thought slavery was a southern thing
now to many of you this may sound
hopelessly naive but at that moment I
was like a child who’d been handed a
piece of information she simply could
not understand I was like wait a minute
I thought northerners were the good guys
in this whole slavery in civil war
chapters right I mean they may not all
have been fire-breathing abolitionists
but wasn’t that what the American Civil
War was all about the north fighting the
slave owning South I kept watching
and a more deeply troubling and personal
question began to emerge this family
this Bristol Rhode Island family helped
fuel a colonial economy built on sugar
and rum the Watts family had traded
along the Atlantic seaboard and down
into what was then the West Indies in
textiles sugar and rum was that the
whole story the next morning I sought
out a book of letters by my seventh
great-grandfather another john watts the
correspondence the originals of which
are the New York Historical Society
primarily recounting his business
dealings between 1762 and 1765 it didn’t
take long before one letter in
particular caught my eye John Watson’s
contemporaries praised his pragmatism
and good economic sense and here he
offered it in a letter to get any Clarke
a major slave trader in Barbados who had
asked for his advice for this market he
wrote the slaves must be young the
younger the better if not quite children
those advanced in age will never do
I should think a cargo of them none
exceeding 30 should fetch 50 pounds a
head gross sales nails are best I read
that letter I close the book and it
back on the shelf for seven years I
tried to push the terrible fact of that
letter away I didn’t talk about it with
anyone I tried not to think about it and
when I did I was consumed by guilt and
shame and fear an inexplicable fear of
being found out by whom I’m not even
sure then in 2015 a man named Bryan
Stevenson spoke at my church a lawyer
civil rights activist and founder of the
equal justice initiative
Stephenson’s has spent his adult career
passionately and courageously defending
the rights of those who Jesus called the
least of these the marginalized the
outcasts the mentally ill the
incarcerated and those on death row the
majority of whom are african-american
men to do justice in this country
Stevenson said we need to change the
narrative of race I don’t believe we are
truly free I don’t believe we have been
liberated from our idea from our history
of racial inequality and then he said
something that pierced my soul I don’t
believe the great evil of American
slavery was involuntary servitude he
continued I believe it was the ideology
of white supremacy that white people
made up to legitimate enslavement that
that right there was my family he was
talking about generations of silence
about our success success we never ever
openly spoke of merely alluded to as a
birthright came at a profound and still
very present racial cost I knew at that
very moment I needed to face my family’s
history no matter where my
lead I called a second cousin an avid
genealogist hoping she delay my fears
oh Jenny she said it’s so much worse
than you think
thanks so little by little the research
began it was like throwing a pebble into
a lake and watching an ever-widening arc
of concentric circles first circle the
family history of slave trading and
owning in New York a city that for much
of the 18th century was second only to
Charleston in slave population by 1737
one in five New Yorkers were black the
majority enslaved second circle watson
holdings included huge swaths of land
into new jersey in upstate New York
thousands of acres that needed tending
his daughter Anne lamenting the loss of
property to come to the colonists sees
after the Revolution spoke of the black
herd at a New Jersey property I wish you
would dispose of the black herd she
wrote her brother they are like a moth
reading a very fine garment there was
neither attachment nor gratitude in them
if you could sell them at auction for
what they would fetch it would be better
than keeping them another circle the
tentacles of upper-class intermarriage
that melded and solidified fortunes and
slave ownership family surnames included
delancey’s Livingston’s de pie stirs
Nichols is ERDs Dee’s slave owners all
as I began tentatively at first to talk
about this quest with white friends and
acquaintances some of whom are important
American history scholars
almost to a person they said the very
same thing to me Jenny it’s not your
fault that response really took me aback
it seemed like a largely convenient way
to shut down a more difficult
conversation about race in America it’s
accurate to say that my family’s history
is not my fault
but making this about present-day guilt
or innocence misses the mark this is a
quest that’s rooted in finding truth
seeking justice and atoning for
generational wrongs my journey along
this path has taken me to an
organization called coming to the table
in which each month descendants of the
enslaved and descendants of the
enslavers listen to one or another
wrestle with those bitter truths we come
together in a circle of confidence and
agree to follow some basic rules which
we call touch stones that include the
following listen deeply try to hear the
feelings behind another person’s words
no fixing it’s not anybody’s job to
correct another person’s perception of
reality or set another person straight
identify your assumptions and suspend
judgments this has been the hardest
realization of for me of all is that I
am awash about assumptions about other
people that are generally false and
finally when someone else’s truth
challenges your own try turning to
wonder I wonder what brought her to this
place and I wonder what my reaction
teaches me over the past couple of years
my truth has been under siege and my
emotions have run the gamut from
frustration to anger to exhilaration to
weariness to hope
and what have I learned mostly that this
is hard and deeply humbling work I don’t
leave those conversations behind when I
leave that circle each month I can’t
those stories and emotions spoken in
confidence continue to alter the way in
which I see the world this work has made
an impact on every area of my life it’s
changed what I read and what I think
about how I spend my time how I approach
my job as a curator and the projects
that I choose how and where I spend my
money and my friendships both the old
and the many that are new this journey
has been deeply painful yes but it’s
also brought me immense joy so I look
back at old pigeon head standing in that
Cemetery and I no longer wonder why he
is so sad my ancestors helped build a
country on a social and economic
foundation that was cracked and
fractured and profoundly unstable from
the start a foundation that enslaved
many to benefit a few especially me and
my kin this is the narrative I want my
teenage daughter Helen and my
twelve-year-old son
the latest in a long line of John Watson
to absorb and truly understand and so I
turn to wonder I wonder what would
happen if people have privilege like me
committed to finding the truth of our
nation’s racial past together we would
need to listen deeply set aside our
assumptions judgments and fierce honor
other people’s realities and work to
rectify past wrongs
I wonder what a country like that would
look like I’m not sure let’s find out
thank you
[Applause]
kind of place were dad’s dressed in
pinstripe suits wing tip shoes and
carried leather briefcases to their
high-powered New York City jobs that
describes my dad to a tee he left our
home every morning at exactly 6:00 a.m.
to catch the commuter Express train into
his Wall Street office and he didn’t
return until well after 7 o’clock every
night by the time Saturday finally
rolled around my mom felt he seriously
owed her one for the long hours of
childcare and housework she put in
during the week what was the traditional
father to do well on many a weekend
morning mine roused my sister and me
from bed bundled us into the family
station wagon and drove us back into New
York City where he’d get a little extra
work done I still remember the nearly
deserted streets as we emerged from the
gloom of the Holland Tunnel my dad’s
office was deserted as well by the time
we stepped off that elevator and through
that frosted glass door with its company
logo etched in 19th century type we
entered a hushed and mysterious world
filled with row upon row of empty desks
as far as the eye could see it was cool
and dim and quiet a Cathedral of money I
don’t know what my dad thought we were
actually doing as he pored over stock
reports and client portfolios in his
corner office at the far edge of that
huge room there was no form of
entertainment for two little girls and
he should have realized something was up
because we never ever complained
and here’s the reason why
slowly methodically and ever so quietly
we were opening each and every desk
drawer
our mission candy lots and lots of candy
forget everything you’ve ever heard
about those three martini lunches
stockbrokers and their secretaries fuel
themselves on huge quantities of sugar
for us every weekend was like Halloween
sometimes when my sister and I were
still high on Milky Way’s and tootsie
rolls and butterfingers my dad would
come and fetch us and we would walk
around the corner and passed historic
Trinity Church where politicians and
leaders like Alexander Hamilton are
buried the most eye-catching monument in
that cemetery
is a statue of a man dressed in judicial
robes and a wig his face fixed in a
permanent frown dad jokingly called him
old pigeon head because there was always
at least one bird perched atop him when
we walked by it wasn’t until several
years later that I realized old pigeon
head was my relative the politician
jurist and member of the third United
States Congress the Honorable John Watts
old pigeon head it turns out was part of
New York City’s early colonial elite his
grandfather emigrated from Scotland in
1698 established a thriving mercantile
business married into an influential
Dutch English family fathered ten
children and built a mansion and farm
that encompassed a hundred and
thirty-one acres of lower Manhattan as a
teenager I heard about all the many
impressive things that pigeon head and
my other male ancestors had done
founding New York’s first library and
the lottery which eventually became the
stock exchange and Columbia University
then known as King’s College an Anglican
Trinity Church
and many many other important civic and
cultural organizations that still exist
today but for reasons I couldn’t fully
articulate at the time I found the
weight of all this history a burden I
simply did not want to bear so after
college on the East Coast I moved as far
away as I could get to Southern
California where no one cared or even
asked where I was from or what my family
had or had not done in the distant past
I started a job as a curator married and
had two kids twenty-year I would go
visit my folks every now and again but
20 years on I consider myself a proud
Californian and that was that then by
chance one evening in 2008 I happened to
watch a documentary on public television
called traces of the trade a story of
the deep north in it a member of an
old-line Rhode Island family one that
bore an uncanny resemblance to my own
discovers that her ancestor ran the
country’s largest slave trading
operation bringing 10,000 Africans to
the Americas bound and Chains more than
half a million of their ancestors could
be alive today she said I was confused
I thought slavery was a southern thing
now to many of you this may sound
hopelessly naive but at that moment I
was like a child who’d been handed a
piece of information she simply could
not understand I was like wait a minute
I thought northerners were the good guys
in this whole slavery in civil war
chapters right I mean they may not all
have been fire-breathing abolitionists
but wasn’t that what the American Civil
War was all about the north fighting the
slave owning South I kept watching
and a more deeply troubling and personal
question began to emerge this family
this Bristol Rhode Island family helped
fuel a colonial economy built on sugar
and rum the Watts family had traded
along the Atlantic seaboard and down
into what was then the West Indies in
textiles sugar and rum was that the
whole story the next morning I sought
out a book of letters by my seventh
great-grandfather another john watts the
correspondence the originals of which
are the New York Historical Society
primarily recounting his business
dealings between 1762 and 1765 it didn’t
take long before one letter in
particular caught my eye John Watson’s
contemporaries praised his pragmatism
and good economic sense and here he
offered it in a letter to get any Clarke
a major slave trader in Barbados who had
asked for his advice for this market he
wrote the slaves must be young the
younger the better if not quite children
those advanced in age will never do
I should think a cargo of them none
exceeding 30 should fetch 50 pounds a
head gross sales nails are best I read
that letter I close the book and it
back on the shelf for seven years I
tried to push the terrible fact of that
letter away I didn’t talk about it with
anyone I tried not to think about it and
when I did I was consumed by guilt and
shame and fear an inexplicable fear of
being found out by whom I’m not even
sure then in 2015 a man named Bryan
Stevenson spoke at my church a lawyer
civil rights activist and founder of the
equal justice initiative
Stephenson’s has spent his adult career
passionately and courageously defending
the rights of those who Jesus called the
least of these the marginalized the
outcasts the mentally ill the
incarcerated and those on death row the
majority of whom are african-american
men to do justice in this country
Stevenson said we need to change the
narrative of race I don’t believe we are
truly free I don’t believe we have been
liberated from our idea from our history
of racial inequality and then he said
something that pierced my soul I don’t
believe the great evil of American
slavery was involuntary servitude he
continued I believe it was the ideology
of white supremacy that white people
made up to legitimate enslavement that
that right there was my family he was
talking about generations of silence
about our success success we never ever
openly spoke of merely alluded to as a
birthright came at a profound and still
very present racial cost I knew at that
very moment I needed to face my family’s
history no matter where my
lead I called a second cousin an avid
genealogist hoping she delay my fears
oh Jenny she said it’s so much worse
than you think
thanks so little by little the research
began it was like throwing a pebble into
a lake and watching an ever-widening arc
of concentric circles first circle the
family history of slave trading and
owning in New York a city that for much
of the 18th century was second only to
Charleston in slave population by 1737
one in five New Yorkers were black the
majority enslaved second circle watson
holdings included huge swaths of land
into new jersey in upstate New York
thousands of acres that needed tending
his daughter Anne lamenting the loss of
property to come to the colonists sees
after the Revolution spoke of the black
herd at a New Jersey property I wish you
would dispose of the black herd she
wrote her brother they are like a moth
reading a very fine garment there was
neither attachment nor gratitude in them
if you could sell them at auction for
what they would fetch it would be better
than keeping them another circle the
tentacles of upper-class intermarriage
that melded and solidified fortunes and
slave ownership family surnames included
delancey’s Livingston’s de pie stirs
Nichols is ERDs Dee’s slave owners all
as I began tentatively at first to talk
about this quest with white friends and
acquaintances some of whom are important
American history scholars
almost to a person they said the very
same thing to me Jenny it’s not your
fault that response really took me aback
it seemed like a largely convenient way
to shut down a more difficult
conversation about race in America it’s
accurate to say that my family’s history
is not my fault
but making this about present-day guilt
or innocence misses the mark this is a
quest that’s rooted in finding truth
seeking justice and atoning for
generational wrongs my journey along
this path has taken me to an
organization called coming to the table
in which each month descendants of the
enslaved and descendants of the
enslavers listen to one or another
wrestle with those bitter truths we come
together in a circle of confidence and
agree to follow some basic rules which
we call touch stones that include the
following listen deeply try to hear the
feelings behind another person’s words
no fixing it’s not anybody’s job to
correct another person’s perception of
reality or set another person straight
identify your assumptions and suspend
judgments this has been the hardest
realization of for me of all is that I
am awash about assumptions about other
people that are generally false and
finally when someone else’s truth
challenges your own try turning to
wonder I wonder what brought her to this
place and I wonder what my reaction
teaches me over the past couple of years
my truth has been under siege and my
emotions have run the gamut from
frustration to anger to exhilaration to
weariness to hope
and what have I learned mostly that this
is hard and deeply humbling work I don’t
leave those conversations behind when I
leave that circle each month I can’t
those stories and emotions spoken in
confidence continue to alter the way in
which I see the world this work has made
an impact on every area of my life it’s
changed what I read and what I think
about how I spend my time how I approach
my job as a curator and the projects
that I choose how and where I spend my
money and my friendships both the old
and the many that are new this journey
has been deeply painful yes but it’s
also brought me immense joy so I look
back at old pigeon head standing in that
Cemetery and I no longer wonder why he
is so sad my ancestors helped build a
country on a social and economic
foundation that was cracked and
fractured and profoundly unstable from
the start a foundation that enslaved
many to benefit a few especially me and
my kin this is the narrative I want my
teenage daughter Helen and my
twelve-year-old son
the latest in a long line of John Watson
to absorb and truly understand and so I
turn to wonder I wonder what would
happen if people have privilege like me
committed to finding the truth of our
nation’s racial past together we would
need to listen deeply set aside our
assumptions judgments and fierce honor
other people’s realities and work to
rectify past wrongs
I wonder what a country like that would
look like I’m not sure let’s find out
thank you
[Applause]
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