Lacretia Johnson Flash, Senior Vice President for Community, Campus Culture, and Climate at Berklee College of Music, has recently found that her ancestors were enslaved by a family whose descendants include a current U.S. congressman.
Flash’s story is impressively documented in a four-part series produced by Reuters and takes a long, hard look at the ancestry of enslaved Black people and their enslavers with a political lens.
“The story gives the world a vivid example of the intergenerational consequences of systemic racism carried out through routine policies and practices,” says Flash, who is also a writer.
The documentary found that a fifth of U.S. congressmen, living presidents, Supreme Court justices and governors have direct ancestors who enslaved Black people.
Part four of the series opens with a focus on Flash’s experience reconnecting 20 years ago with her heritage in Perry County, Tennessee, and how she recently learned that the descendants of her enslaved ancestors’ owners include U.S. congressman Representative Brett Guthrie of Kentucky.
“It has been illuminating to learn about how my family’s story intersects with one of this nation’s leaders,” Flash said.
NBC’s Nightly News with Lester Holt also reported on the Reuters story and included a feature interview segment between Flash and NBC correspondent Blayne Alexander.
The coverage follows generations of inequity, going beyond the stats to give names and faces to the untold stories of formerly enslaved Black people struggling to establish themselves with land, commerce, an education, and a sense of safety in an area where lynchings, unjust land seizures, and other such practices were common.
Flash’s journey to reconnect with her lineage began in 2001 when her mother, Alma Craig Johnson, who had been diagnosed with cancer, wrote this note before her death, saying: “Keep in touch with family.”
Flash’s experience from that moment has been a sobering, moving reminder of how keeping in touch is as much about family as it is about survival in the face of great adversity.
