Wiz Khalifa comes from some extraordinary people.
The 38-year-old rapper, born Cameron Jibril Thomaz, appeared on the most recent episode of PBS’ “Discovering Your Roots,” hosted by historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., to be taught extra about his household historical past.
Throughout his episode, which additionally options actress Sanaa Lathan, the “Black and Yellow” artist learns that members of his household relocated to Pittsburgh from the South through the Nice Migration, an exodus of Black Individuals from the South to the North through the early to mid-1900s, when many fled Jim Crow oppression in quest of higher alternatives throughout the nation. He additionally discovers that a minimum of one among his kin, his fifth great-grandfather Howard Williamson, might have been enslaved in Alabama in 1870.
In accordance with census data Gates offered, Williamson lived subsequent door to a white household with the identical surname, together with a white man named Thomas J. Williamson, who would have owned the property.
“I feel I’m programmed to really feel a little bit bit pissed,” the “Khaotic” artist mentioned as he processed the knowledge. “However simply him proudly owning my household simply sounds loopy. It sounds wild. Yeah… I really feel some kind of manner about that.”
Along with the census itemizing, Gates defined additionally they uncovered a slave schedule related to Thomas that documented enslaved folks by colour, age, and gender, relatively than by identify, together with an entry for a 14-year-old boy Gates believed might have been Howard.
“It’s loopy to see him as a anonymous particular person on a grid,” Wiz mentioned, including, “And to know the way helpful that property is as a result of it’s a life and it’s not truly property. It’s an individual.”
After emancipation, Williamson went on to construct a life working as a tenant farmer, although Gates famous that true monetary independence remained out of attain for him. Information additionally present that Williamson registered to vote, a brave act at a time when Black Individuals confronted severe threats and retaliation for making an attempt to take part in democracy within the years following the Civil Battle. Over time, he would turn into the patriarch of a giant household, with a minimum of seven kids and twenty grandchildren.
Reflecting on what he thinks his ancestors would make of him right this moment, the “Younger, Wild, and Free,” rapper mentioned he believes they’d be “proud.”
“They’d be proud that I personal some stuff for myself,” he mentioned. “They’d be pleased with the angle that I carry, the arrogance that I’ve, the love that I’ve for my household, the appreciation that I’ve for what they’ve carried out, and even I really feel all of them round me, I simply don’t know who they’re, so now I’m capable of say their identify.”
