the free man's line

Chapter I

the chiefs

i'm sitting in salvador, bahia --- bahia means "the bay." people don't know that. they hear brazil and think rio or são paulo. but this city has its own thing. its own rhythm. its own history that runs separate from the rest of the country the way the bay area runs separate from the rest of california.

i didn't come here looking for culture or spirituality or ancestors or answers. i just came. but something about sitting above these waters --- the same waters that carried people here against their will for three hundred years --- has given me a stillness i didn't have before. a vantage point. a place to process what i found when i finally sat down and looked at where i come from.

so i looked. and what i found goes back five hundred years.

this is part one of three. this is the chiefs.

tsenacomoco --- the densely inhabited land

five hundred years ago, in a place called tsenacomoco --- it means "densely inhabited land" --- a woman named amopotuske my 12th great-grandmother was born near where the dan and staunton rivers meet. her name meant "scent flower." she married a man called chief ensenore, "running stream," my 12th great-grandfather an algonkian leader.

they lived in the virginia tidewater. more than thirty tribes and about fourteen thousand people were bound together under one of the most sophisticated political systems on the continent. the english would later call it the powhatan confederacy.

if you've ever driven through virginia and seen the wide rivers emptying into the chesapeake bay, you've seen their country. that was my family's country.

amopotuske's son was opechancanough. my 11th great-grandfather

the war chief and the princess

opechancanough my 11th great-grandfather was born around 1554. his brother --- or possibly uncle, the kinship records are debated --- was wahunsenacawh. collateral line, brother of opechancanough, not direct the man the english colonists called "powhatan." between the two of them, they governed an empire.

wahunsenacawh is the one most people have heard of. and the reason most people have heard of him is his daughter.

pocahontas. my 11th great-grandaunt (not direct line --- sister of opechancanough) she's in the family tree. collateral line through opechancanough, not direct. and the story you think you know about her is mostly wrong.

her real name was amonute. her private name was matoaka. my 11th great-grandaunt "pocahontas" was a childhood nickname --- something like "playful one" or "ill-behaved child." she was not a disney princess. she was a child of about ten when the english arrived at jamestown in 1607. john smith was twenty-seven. there was no romance.

according to powhatan oral history passed down through the mattaponi tribe, she was already married to a warrior named kocoum and had a child when she was kidnapped by english captain samuel argall in 1613. she was held captive for over a year. during that captivity she was converted to christianity --- not by choice --- given the name "rebecca" and married to tobacco planter john rolfe. she was taken to england as a political prop. paraded before the court as proof that indigenous people could be "civilized." she died in 1617. probably not yet twenty-one. her father died of grief within the year.

that is the real story of pocahontas. she was family. she deserves the truth told correctly.

the man who fought until they carried him

but it's opechancanough my 11th great-grandfather who carries the direct thread forward. and his story is not about being a prop for anyone.

in 1622, he organized a coordinated assault on the english settlements along the james river that killed nearly a third of the colonial population in a single morning.

twenty-two years later --- at an age when most men of his era were long dead --- he launched a second uprising. by then he was so old he had to be carried on a litter into battle. the english captured him. a soldier shot him in the back while he was a prisoner at jamestown. he died in 1646.

that is where my line starts. not with a princess who was kidnapped and paraded. with a war chief who fought the english until they had to carry him into battle and then shot him in the back when he couldn't fight anymore.

the carpenter bridge --- from england into cherokee country

before all of that ended, opechancanough had married a woman named ann elizabeth strutt. my 11th great-grandmother their daughter was pride, called "shawnee woman," my 10th great-grandmother born around 1615 in virginia.

the english side of this family enters through a man named thomas pasmere carpenter. my 10th great-grandfather born 1607 in plymouth, devon, england. an englishman from devon married the granddaughter of the man who organized the deadliest attack on the english colonies in virginia history. think about that for a moment. thomas died in 1675 in cherokee territory. he had gone fully into indigenous life.

their descendants married into the moytoy dynasty my 9th & 8th great-grandparents --- the most important cherokee political family of the eighteenth century. amatoya, also called "trader carpenter" moytoy, my 9th great-grandfather married que di si of the wolf clan of tellico. my 9th great-grandmother their children would shape cherokee politics for generations.

attakullakulla --- the man who went to london

attakullakulla. my 7th great-grandfather the name means "leaning wood" in cherokee. the english called him the little carpenter --- a man who could shape a negotiation the way a carpenter joints timber.

born around 1708, he was about twenty-two years old when he did something extraordinary. in 1730, seven cherokee men boarded the english man-of-war "fox" and sailed from charles town, south carolina, to dover, london.

they crossed an ocean most of them had never seen. on a ship built by people whose language most of them did not speak. to meet a king whose power they did not recognize. and to negotiate as equals.

they spent four months in london. met king george II at court wearing their own regalia. london newspapers followed them everywhere. they went to the opera. and on september 9, 1730, at whitehall, they signed the articles of trade and friendship. when the cherokee delegate ketagustah finished his speech, he laid feathers on the table and said: "this is our way of talking, which is the same thing to us as your letters in the book are to you."

then they sailed home.

for the next fifty years, attakullakulla navigated the colliding interests of the british, the french, and his own people with a skill that historians still study. he played empires against each other. he kept cherokee sovereignty intact through two colonial wars and the first tremors of the american revolution.

the diplomat's son chose war

attakullakulla's son, dragging canoe, collateral line (son of attakullakulla, brother of elcie --- my great-uncle line) born 1734, chose the opposite path. he became the fiercest cherokee resistance leader of the revolutionary era. refused absolutely to cede any land to the settlers.

father and son. one a diplomat. one a warrior. standing on opposite sides of the same impossible question --- accommodation or defiance. this family tree holds them both.

their line continued through attakullakulla's daughter elcie, my 7th great-grandmother who married chief inoli eustanali "enola" black fox my 7th great-grandfather --- a direct ancestor. he served as principal chief through the revolutionary era.

the colbert shadow

to understand what happened to this family next, you need to understand who the colberts were.

the colbert dynasty began with james logan colbert, extended kin through the colbert-chickasaw marriage network a trader from the carolinas who settled among the chickasaw around 1740 and married three chickasaw wives. his sons became the most powerful family in the chickasaw nation for nearly a century. interpreters. diplomats. george colbert extended kin (colbert dynasty) ran the only ferry across the natchez trace and became one of the first native american millionaires in history.

they also owned people.

the colberts were among the largest slaveholders in the chickasaw nation. when the chickasaw were removed to indian territory in the 1830s, they brought their enslaved people with them.

this is the part of the family tree where power and bondage exist in the same generation. where my ancestors were both the chiefs and the enslaved. where a woman's name was never written down because she was considered property.

george colbert extended kin (colbert dynasty) charged andrew jackson $75,000 to move his army across the tennessee river in 1815. that was an astronomical sum. jackson had to pay it. he had no choice. that same strategic intelligence shows up later when the colbert family negotiated the terms of their own removal --- refusing to walk the trail of tears until the government paid them for their land. they arrived in indian territory as the most financially secure nation.

they made the empire pay them for their own displacement.

but they also enslaved people who share my blood. i have to hold both of those truths at the same time.

the chiefs built nations and negotiated with kings. they also enslaved people. this is not a clean story. it's a real one. part 2 is where the people who were never given names start to get them back.

Chapter II

the freedmen

if part 1 was about the people who governed nations and negotiated with kings, part 2 is about the people who survived what those nations did to them — and then built something anyway.

this is the part of the family tree where the names disappear. where a woman exists in the records only as “enslaved concubine of edmund perry.” no first name. no birth date. no surname because she wasn’t permitted one.

and this is the part where the names come back. chosen this time. not given.

the unnamed woman

joseph perry, my 5th great-grandfather born 1750 in sussex, new jersey, married a woman listed in the records as “shemartay colbert” my 5th great-grandmother — described as full or half-blood chickasaw. that brought the colbert name into the genealogy. and with it, the layered reality of a family where kinship and bondage existed in the same generation.

joseph and shemartay’s son was edmund “ned” perry, my 4th great-grandfather born about 1772 in the mississippi territory. edmund fathered a child with an enslaved woman whose name was never written down.

she exists in the records only as “[unnamed] enslaved concubine of edmund perry.” my 4th great-grandmother (name never recorded)

she had no surname because she was not permitted one. she had no birth date because no one thought to record it. but she is in my bloodline. she gave me life without ever being given the dignity of a recorded name.

i wonder how she navigated. i wonder what she told her children. i wonder if she would recognize me sitting here in bahia, reading about her on a phone, trying to honor something that was never meant to survive.

buck franklin — the man who chose his name

her son was buck franklin. also known as buck birney. my 3rd great-grandfather (confirmed DNA ancestor) born around 1790 in the mississippi indian territory. confirmed common DNA ancestor. the core anchor of this entire lineage.

he was enslaved by a man named david birney. he married pollie, my 3rd great-grandmother who was owned by moses perry and david birney. they had ten to fourteen children together.

according to oral history, buck purchased his family’s freedom through what was called “sunday money” — earnings from work done on his days off. he left mississippi. traveled the same roads as the chickasaw removal. the trail of tears.

he died around 1875 in indian territory, oklahoma.

his son david burney franklin my 2nd great-grandfather (chose the name 'franklin' --- free man) was born in 1820. when david ran away from his enslaver and joined the union army during the civil war, he needed a new name. he chose franklin.

frank-lin. free man.

the word “franklin” comes from the old french “franc” — free — and the suffix “-lin.” in medieval england, a franklin was a free landowner. beholden to no one. david burney franklin claimed every bit of that meaning.

every person who carried the name afterward carried that declaration with it. philip franklin. my 2nd great-grandfather — maternal dora franklin. my great-grandmother every franklin aunt and uncle in tatums, oklahoma. the name was not inherited. it was invented. it was a sovereignty claim made by a man who had been denied the right to claim anything.

king blue — chief of the negro indians

among the most remarkable figures connected to this lineage is king blue. extended kin (father-in-law of a 3rd cousin 2x removed --- his fight was the family's fight) identified in the ancestry records as “chief of the negro indians.”

born around 1819 in mississippi. enslaved by governor winchester dougherty colbert himself historical associate (enslaver of family members, not kin) — the same colbert family that shadowed the perry and franklin lines. that proximity to the center of chickasaw political power shaped everything king blue became.

after emancipation, king blue extended kin became a chickasaw nation delegate. but the chickasaw refused to grant citizenship to their freedmen. unlike the cherokee, creek, and seminole nations, the chickasaw denied it for forty years. the treaty of 1866 required it. they defied the requirement.

king blue extended kin spent years writing legal petitions to congress. in 1882, he and isaac alexander co-authored the memorial of the chickasaw freedmen. an elegant, legally astute petition sent directly to the united states congress. they used the phrase “persons of african descent” twenty-two times in one document. they knew exactly who they were.

but diplomacy hit a wall. the dawes commission arrived in the 1890s. designed to break up communal tribal lands and allot them to individual citizens. because the freedmen had been denied citizenship, they were about to lose everything.

and white men were rushing into the territory, marrying native women specifically to steal land.

king blue extended kin was nearly seventy years old. diplomacy had failed. the letters stopped working. the legal system was complicit.

so he got on a horse and organized an armed rebellion.

the newspapers from 1894 describe king blue extended kin leading what they called “a band of negro indians in open rebellion.” they rode down on the farms of the white land grabbers, tied them up, and physically drove them off the land to protect the freedmen’s homes.

the press called him a tyrant. a formerly enslaved seventy-year-old man protecting his family’s homes — a tyrant.

king blue extended kin died in 1896. he had seven children with his wife mary chism. extended kin (wife of king blue) their dawes freedmen roll numbers are still on file. the numbers meant forty acres each. not the three hundred and twenty that “citizens by blood” received. he is buried in jack fork cemetery, ada, oklahoma.

the dawes lie

the dawes commission is where this story gets bureaucratic and brutal at the same time. every person in indian territory had to enroll on a roll. if you looked Black, you went on the freedmen roll — forty acres. if you looked indigenous, you went on the “by blood” roll — three hundred and twenty acres.

same family. same language. same land. different line on a government form. different future.

that bureaucratic checkbox from 1893 still determines who gets recognized today. my ancestors are on the rolls. the card numbers are in a government filing cabinet. but they’re on the wrong side of the line.

this is not history. this is current. this fight is still happening right now.

buck colbert franklin — the tent in the ashes

buck franklin’s grandson — through his son bartlett collateral line (brother or close relative of buck franklin) — was born in 1879 in indian territory. his name was buck colbert franklin. known as B.C. franklin. my cousin (grandson of buck franklin through bartlett) enrolled on dawes card 41 as a choctaw freedman.

he went to morehouse college. became a lawyer. moved to tulsa in early 1921 and set up practice in the greenwood district — black wall street.

months later, white mobs burned greenwood to the ground. the tulsa race massacre. more than a thousand homes and businesses destroyed. an estimated three hundred people killed. ten thousand left homeless.

within days, the city tried to rezone the land to prevent Black residents from rebuilding. trying to steal through zoning law what the mobs didn’t finish.

B.C. franklin my cousin filed the legal challenge. he argued the case from a tent because his own office had been burned. he won. the survivors kept their land. greenwood was rebuilt because of him.

his son was john hope franklin. my cousin (son of B.C. franklin --- documented)

john hope franklin — the cousin who changed how america understands itself

john hope franklin my cousin (documented) was born in 1915 in rentiesville, oklahoma — one of the all-Black towns. he grew up to become one of the most important american historians of the twentieth century.

his book “from slavery to freedom,” first published in 1947, sold more than three million copies and changed how american history was taught. he helped craft the legal brief for brown v. board of education — the 1954 supreme court decision that ended legal school segregation. he marched with martin luther king jr. from selma to montgomery. he became the first Black department chair at a major white university. he was awarded the presidential medal of freedom. he received more than 130 honorary doctorates.

john hope franklin. my cousin (documented) born in an all-Black oklahoma town. grandson of a man who was born enslaved, who chose the name that meant free man.

he is my cousin. documented.

the freedmen were given forty acres and a number on a card. they turned it into lawyers, historians, athletes, and a woman sitting in bahia holding all of it. part 3 is the bridge between their world and mine.

Chapter III

the line holds

this is the part where the line comes home.

everything before this was chiefs and wars and treaties and tents in the ashes. but this part is the part i can almost touch. the people my mother remembers. the land i walked on. the shed i sat in. the juke joint i heard stories about my whole life.

tatums --- the sanctuary

tatums, oklahoma. one of more than fifty all-Black towns established in oklahoma. sovereign communities where african americans and freedmen built their own governments, schools, churches, and economies beyond the reach of jim crow.

these were not retreats. they were assertions. if you cannot be a citizen where you are, you build a place where citizenship is yours by definition.

the direct line continued through levy franklin, my 2nd great-grandfather born 1837 in the chickasaw nation. he died in 1868 --- just thirty-one years old. his wife was harriett "hat" jones, my 3rd great-grandmother who lived until 1904 and is buried in tatums. their son was philip franklin. my 2nd great-grandfather (chickasaw freedmen roll 1874, card 461)

philip married eliza buyck, my 2nd great-grandmother born 1868 in elmore county, alabama. their daughter was dora. my great-grandmother

dora --- the woman who ran everything

dora franklin my great-grandmother was born in 1904 in tatums. over the course of her life she carried three surnames --- dora franklin, then dora farris after marrying beeler farris, then dora bell.

beeler farris, my great-grandfather (chickasaw freedmen roll 2520, card 73) born 1897, is listed on chickasaw freedmen roll 2520, card 73. he was my great-grandfather.

but it's dora i want to talk about.

she owned the property. she ran boarding homes. she brewed choc beer during prohibition --- traditional chickasaw fermented corn beer, illegal under federal law. she brewed it anyway. and she sold it to the judges, the lawyers, and the men who controlled the system that was designed to crush her. she used their vices as leverage and protection.

she divorced beeler because --- and this is family record --- "he wasn't a money man."

my great-grandmother. a Black woman in the jim crow south. who owned land, ran businesses, made the courts need her, and left the man who wasn't pulling his weight. in 1930s oklahoma.

bubba --- the bridge

in 1927, in weatherford, oklahoma, manley ray "bubba" bell my grandfather was born.

he is the anchor of this entire genealogy. my grandfather.

bubba and his wife nadine my grandmother raised their children in a small rural oklahoma town. the neighborhood operated by the same principles as tatums --- families raised each other's children. enforced standards collectively. built something that mattered inside the boundaries they were given.

bubba dug the cellar by hand. built a tool shed --- what we call the design center, because it was way more than just a shed. he added a greenhouse onto the house because he knew how much nadine loved plants.

a man who built a greenhouse for the woman he loved. that is what inheritance actually looks like. not the dawes card number. the greenhouse.

three brothers

from one household in that town came three of the most accomplished athletes in oklahoma history. i'm referring to them by their records, not their names, because they are still living and their privacy is theirs.

the eldest was a center-forward my uncle who led his high school to consecutive state basketball championships. he was named to the parade all-america team alongside pete maravich. at the university of houston, he was part of the team that reached the school's first ncaa final four. he was drafted in the 1970 NBA draft.

the second stood six-five, my uncle two hundred thirty-eight pounds. won state titles in basketball alongside his brother, then led the football team to its first state championship. drafted by the new orleans saints.

the youngest may have been the most gifted runner. my uncle over six thousand rushing yards in high school. led his team to an undefeated state championship. at the university of oklahoma, he ran in the wishbone backfield. despite being drafted by the dallas cowboys, he chose the canadian football league. he rushed for over four thousand career yards with the edmonton eskimos, led the league in rushing, and won the grey cup in 1975.

three brothers. one household. one small town. one lineage that stretches back through freedmen rolls and the trail of tears and cherokee diplomats and powhatan war chiefs all the way to a woman called scent flower who lived by the banks of the dan river five hundred years ago.

my father's side

this is my mother's line. the bell and franklin families. documented. verified. cross-referenced against census records, dawes rolls, tribal treaties, and ship manifests.

my father's side is a different story.

i tried. i started the research. and i stopped when i found that his siblings were listed as property of the landowners in arkansas. not people. property. with a dollar value next to their names.

i closed the laptop. i haven't gone back.

that frustration and that anger is something millions of Black americans experience. you go looking for your history and what you find is a receipt. a bill of sale. an inventory list. and then someone charges you for the privilege of reading it.

this is why it matters that we tell our own stories. because if we don't, the only record that exists is the one that lists us as merchandise.

the waters from the balcony

i'm back on the balcony now. bahia. the bay. overlooking the waters that brought people here for three hundred years.

the research traces my yoruba ancestors my ancestors (parents of ned gaines) to the region where people were captured and trafficked --- some to mississippi, some to bahia. the same ethnic group. different ships. different shores.

i didn't come to salvador looking for that connection. i didn't come looking for anything. i came because i saw a picture of a city and couldn't get it out of my head. i got on a plane with my first passport and no international experience and figured it out the way my family has always figured things out --- with no map and no permission and no apology.

bubba dug a cellar by hand. dora brewed illegal beer and made the courts need her. buck chose the name that meant free man. B.C. set up a law office in a tent after a massacre. king blue got on a horse at seventy and drove land grabbers off the freedmen's homes.

and i moved to the yoruba capital of the western hemisphere with my first passport and built a digital empire from a balcony overlooking the bay.

the line holds.

i am not running from anything. i am exercising the right to move that my ancestors bought and paid for. some of them paid with their freedom. some with their names. some with their lives.

the free man's line continues. and i'm writing the next chapter from bahia.