A Stranger Invited Me to Our Family's Reunion
Meeting my relatives for the first time made me feel connected to my past in a way I didn’t anticipate.
It was the middle of June in Jackson, Mississippi, where temperatures were in the mid 90s. Sweat dripped down from the top of my forehead as I looked around the cedar-walled cabin for an inviting face. Even though I was surrounded by more than 100 of my blood relatives—all wearing matching purple shirts with yellow lettering—no one here was familiar.
Eight years earlier, a woman named Angela Weathers had sent me an email wanting to know if I had posted a certain family tree on Ancestry.com. “If so please contact me as I think we are related,” she wrote.
After shooting notes back and forth about names, dates, and locations, she confirmed that I was related to her family through my great-grandfather—the very person her side of the family lost touch with generations ago. She asked me what I knew of him, so I shared that he came from Mississippi in the early years of the Great Migration, started a family in St. Louis that he later took to Chicago, and eventually died when he was only middle aged. I had the internet research down, but was woefully disconnected from the family in real life.
That would soon change a couple of years later, when she invited me to meet in person.
As it turns out, reconnecting families is one of the traditions that's been common among African American families since the Reconstruction era; one of the first things formerly enslaved people did after the 13th Amendment was ratified was search for the family that had been taken from them. “Black men and women searched for family members, placed advertisements in newspapers, went to the last locations where they saw their loved ones, used word of mouth, and letters in hopes of a positive outcome,” Angela Siner, the director of the African Studies program at the University of Toledo, told me.
Prior to the mid-1970s, Black family reunions tended to be small, low-key affairs. But Alex Haley’s book Roots, which later became a mega successful ABC miniseries, led droves of Black Americans to research their genealogy and family histories for the first time. They consulted their family Bibles and used the family members’ names and birthdays that elders had written inside to track down archival records and begin to sketch out their lineages. And as a result of this renewed interest, families began organizing more formal gatherings where they could share what they’d learned.
These get-togethers were typically held in the summer months, a tradition that most likely formed for practical reasons; children were out of school, and adults were able to take time off work. Over the ensuing decades, June became the unofficial month to hold Black family reunions, which meant they could coincide with another important celebration: Juneteenth.
“The modern Black family reunion has the elements of the early Juneteenth celebrations: prayer service, music, dance, games, food,” Siner said. “But it also has new elements of T-shirts, family slideshows, lectures on family genealogy, awards-for the youngest and oldest members, and for other milestones.”
In 2022, I emailed Weathers, excited because I’d stumbled across my first photo of my great-grandfather. She said it was good to hear from me—and that she’d just attended the 45th annual Weathers reunion in Dallas, Texas. “The reunion next year will be in Mississippi,” she added. “Please plan to attend.”
Attending this particular reunion would give me the opportunity to visit my great-grandfather’s hometown, but I was nervous about showing up alone. Both my parents and brother thought it would be a weird move. Even my dad, whose middle name is Weathers, couldn’t be convinced; plus, he already attended get-togethers of the relatives he grew up with. My husband—who was slightly more ambivalent about any potential awkwardness—couldn’t take time off work to make the trip. Eventually, I signed up to attend alongside my six-year-old son. The idea was that a cute kid could boost my confidence when approaching a slew of people who’d known each other forever.
On the day of the family reunion cookout, my son and I walked up a few steps onto the wraparound porch, which led to the front door of the log cabin. Several people sat outside on rocking chairs, deep in conversation. After all, they hadn’t seen each other since the last reunion. Inside the cabin, most people were sitting at one of several long tables, laughing, chatting, and hugging people I presumed they’d known their whole life. Teens and tweens cut through the room in groups of three to four, going out the back door, and onto the lawn where the youngest kids were playing football and ring toss on the lawn. I focused on finding a table with empty seats, feeling like it was the first day of school and I’d just moved to a new state.
Eventually, I sat down at a table with two empty chairs. My son plopped his tablet on the table and started playing video games, leaving me alone to navigate this new scenario. Thankfully, after I smiled at the two middle-aged women who were talking to each other across from me, they introduced themselves as Chinester and Juantester. It turned out that they were twins who’d driven to the reunion from the Atlanta area, where I also live. The sisters followed with a series of questions for me about who I was related to and if I'd ever come to the reunion before. My answers didn’t faze them; within minutes they were introducing me to cousins and great aunties and uncles.
A couple hours later, Weathers, the woman who’d initially emailed me, popped over to the chair next to mine. We looked through the family photo albums she brought, pausing at portraits of my great-grandfather’s father and siblings. Then she shared a piece of history I’d never be able to find out on a site like Ancestry.
According to family lore, my great-grandfather only moved north after his dad told him he was too smart to stay home and work on the family farm. His sisters were strong and would pick up the slack while he went and made something of himself.
I’d never known anything about him other than the details I’d pulled from census records. All the nerves about crashing the family reunion left my body, and I focused on getting to know more. As I studied the faces of the people in the family photo album and heard the stories passed down from generation to generation, I realized there’s nothing that compares to meeting in person.
The man in the photo suddenly became alive to me.
Last month, I met with a dozen family members at a park in Atlanta, Georgia, to discuss this year’s family reunion. We talked about the family members—more than 150 of them—who would come from all over the country to attend, the menu for this year’s cookout, and decorations for the following day’s banquet. At the end of the meeting, everyone put on their teal and yellow shirts for the 2024 event, and took a group photo to display at the host hotel.
In the course of a single year, I’d gone from nervous newcomer to planning committee member. And a couple of days after this year’s Juneteenth holiday, I’ll welcome my extended family to my hometown. I’ll tell them about my favorite park in Atlanta and the best museums to visit. I’ll send them to Busy Bee and Paschal’s, the best local restaurants for soul food.
But more importantly, I’ll fellowship with the newest-found branch of my family and learn more about our shared history.
A year ago, I thought I’d go to one cookout, satisfy my curiosity, and stay in touch from a distance. But now I understand that reunions can create lasting connections. The Weathers family and I are linked in more than name—we share values, and now customs, that will continue to bring us together year after year. I plan on taking my son to events we skipped the year before, such as the family banquet and Sunday church service, knowing that these rituals strengthen family bonds.
“Kinship is very important,” Siner told me. “Connection is very important, the customs and the beliefs and the value system that your parents have and your great-grandparents had, now you can pass it on to the next generation.”