{"id":56280,"date":"2018-04-24T01:44:03","date_gmt":"2018-04-24T01:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56280"},"modified":"2018-04-24T01:44:03","modified_gmt":"2018-04-24T01:44:03","slug":"dear-grandpa-massa-an-open-letter-to-my-white-ancestor-for-confederate-memorial-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56280","title":{"rendered":"Dear Grandpa Massa: An Open Letter to my White Ancestor for Confederate Memorial Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Grandpa Massa: An Open Letter to my White Ancestor for Confederate Memorial Day<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Afroculinaria: Exploring Culinary Traditions of Africa, African America and the African Diaspora<\/a>
\n2018-04-23<\/p>\n

Michael W. Twitty<\/strong><\/a>, African American-Jewish Culinary Historian and Author<\/p>\n

To: Captain Richard Henry Bellamy\u2014
\nFrom: Your Descendant, Mr. Michael W. Twitty, a published author
\nDate: 4\/23\/2018, Confederate Memorial Day<\/a>
\nSubject: Times Have Changed<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

You are my third great grandfather. You are white. Because of you and several others I am Viking<\/a>, I am Celt<\/a>, I am a melting pot of western, northern<\/a>, southern<\/a> and eastern Europe<\/a>. But I am still Black, your society made those rules, not mine, but its okay because I\u2019m proud to be Black no matter how you intended it to work against my favor. And despite you, I am Asante<\/a>, Serer<\/a>, Fula<\/a>, Mandinka<\/a>, Yoruba<\/a>, Igbo<\/a>, Kongo<\/a> and Malagasy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You and your father William held in bondage my great great great grandmother Arrye and her sons\u2014one of her sons married your daughter a girl child born to a teenage girl you took advantage of from the nearby Chadwick plantation.<\/p>\n

You were a deadbeat dad; what\u2019s worse is that there were thousands like you that led to millions like me. Thanks to the miracle of DNA research<\/a>, oral history has been confirmed sans Maury\u2013you are the father…<\/p>\n

Read the entire letter here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You are my third great grandfather. You are white. Because of you and several others I am Viking, I am Celt, I am a melting pot of western, northern, southern and eastern Europe. But I am still Black…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,6940,20],"tags":[28534,28533,19644,19643,28535],"class_list":["post-56280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-afroculinaria","tag-confederate-memorial-day","tag-michael-twitty","tag-michael-w-twitty","tag-richard-henry-bellamy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56281,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56280\/revisions\/56281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}