We came here from North Carolina and South Carolina for our family reunion. This is our first time to come together and it is a historical event for us. It was time. We started planning it two years ago when we connected on Facebook and that is how some of us have gotten to know each other. Thank God for Facebook. It kept the mail down too. There will be about 200 of us there and a lot of them we have never met. We have a picnic today and all of us will be wearing these shirts.”
“I ironed our shirts. We haven’t put them on yet, but we are ready.”
“How do you walk up and introduce yourself to family that you have never met?”
“I walk up and say, ‘I am Jamella, Hattie’s granddaughter.’ We start with the shirt and how we are related. I haven’t seen some of my first cousins in 30 years, since I was six-years-old.”
“We want to keep this going. The old ones will be going out of the way one day and the new ones need to know about their family and who they come from.”
“Our roots are in Birmingham, then people branched out to Georgia, New York and Chicago. I am staying for a week and will try to go back to find places important to our family here.”
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