LeVar Burton’s parents divorced when he was 11 years old, and a single mother raised him. He came into his episode of Finding Your Roots with a lot of questions about his family, but the Reading Rainbow host and producer was not prepared for the answers he was given.
Finding Your Roots host Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. started with the maternal side of Burton’s family tree and discovered that his great-great-grandfather was a white man named James Henry Dixon.
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It gets even more confounding. James Henry Dixon was born in 1847 and served in the North Carolina Confederate Junior Reserves. The Finding Your Roots research team doesn’t believe the-then-14-year-old saw combat, but he did fight to uphold slavery. He then went on to father a child with a Black woman born into slavery, and the conditions around the birth of Burton’s great-grandmother are unknown.
“I often wonder about white men of the period and how do they justify to themselves their relations with Black women, especially those in an unbalanced power dynamic,” Buton contemplated during the episode. “There has to be a powerful disconnect created emotionally and mentally. So it’s possible in my mind that he could have contemplated it and was conflicted at worst, maybe repentant at best. Then there’s the possibility that he didn’t think about it at all.”
The information was a lot for Burton to unpack, but the beloved host quickly began to ponder how this new information could help him better connect with the people around him. James Henry Dixon had nine children and over 40 grandchildren, according to the Finding Your Roots research, giving Burton “an extensive network of white cousins.”
“This is insanely surprising…There is some conflict roiling inside of me right now, but it also — Oddly enough, I feel a pathway opening up,” Burton explained. “…I believe we need to have this conversation about who we are and how we got here. I see that we [as a society] are so polarized politically, emotionally, and racially. We are not talking to each other. So I’ve been looking for an entry point to talk to white America. Here it is.”
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Pearl opened a school for children of color in Arkansas in the late 19th century. It was during a time when over 20 percent of the Black population in the state was illiterate.
“It fills me with great pride that I have inherited this mantle of educator very honestly,” Burton said, tearing up at the revelation. “I had no idea…I am ecstatic. I can’t even explain how it feels to get this information. It’s like there are pieces of me that have been missing. They’ve always been out there somewhere.”
Burton’s family history got even more surreal as the episode progressed. He also learned that Pearl’s father Hal, who was in the public record as being a ladies’ man, became an Arkansas State Assembly Member in 1886. “He was one of those negro politicians during Reconstruction,” Burton recounted in awe when he was shown Hal’s election documents. “In spite of his philandering, he was popular enough to get elected to public office.”
“Black people, we don’t share family stories. We are really hesitant. I couldn’t pry information out of my mother. She was always so insistent that we not know about the trials and tribulations that she went through,” Burton continued, reflecting on what he had learned during the program. “She was trying to protect us, but it leaves us in the dark about who we are. This information is stuff that we need in order to feel whole…This is going to reverberate for a while. It is so powerful.”
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“Never in a million years did I imagine that you would find information like this about my family. It is overwhelming,” Burton confessed. “I didn’t know anything about myself critically before today. This information has changed me. It has changed me. It changes the way I see myself. It changes my relationship to my family. I am forever changed.”
Finding Your Roots Season 10 continues Tuesdays at 8/7c on PBS.
* Original Article:
https://themessenger.com/entertainment/levar-burton-confederate-great-great-grandfather-finding-your-roots