*Things got emotional on the most recent episode of “Finding Your Roots” when guest Tamera Mowry was shown detailed information about an enslaved ancestor on her mom’s side.
The 44-year-old alum of “Sister, Sister” and “The Real,” with a father of European descent and a mother from the Bahamas, was told by host Henry Louis Gates Jr. that her third great-grandmother on her mother’s side, Margaret Rolle, was born in the Bahamas in 1825 and listed on an official document as an enslaved field laborer at the age of nine.
Tamera said of 9-year-olds: “You want to protect them, you want them to keep that innocence. But for Margaret, that did not exist.”
Documents showed that Rolle was not fully free until she was 13 years old. When Gates asked Tamera what she thought Margaret would’ve made of her today, tears welled.
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“She’d be proud,” Tamera replied after a long reflective pause. “But you just feel sad that she had to go through that as a child. I wonder what she went through to escape her current situation. …Then, to finally be free … and what that felt like that first breath.”
Documents showed that some of Tamera’s ancestors were likely owned by British baron John Rolle in 1830, and participated in Pompey’s Revolt when 43 slaves – led by an enslaved man named Pompey – rebelled against Rolle on his estate. Though they did not gain freedom, the uprising helped to keep 77 enslaved people from being transferred to another owner, which would have separated men, women and children from their families.
Gates wondered if the newfound knowledge changes the way Tamera sees herself.
“You know when you always say, ‘I got it from my mama?’ Well, I definitely see that line of strength picking up and carrying on. That’s what I get out of all of this,” she said.
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