How Did I Get to This Point?

President/Founder

Jewel Felder-James

I was always a curious little girl and always ask my family members lots of questions about our past. I would always want to talk to the oldest members in our family to learn “what happened before that?” I was 9 years old when I started my love for knowledge. My mother always kept a book collection and in that collection was black history books and encyclopedias. However; there was a special box of cards of Black historic figures that was on the bookshelf. I felt like I had discovered a treasure and I would read them over and over trying to memorize the names and faces and what they had done to make “Us” special and important to history (Our story). I grew up in adolescent homes from age 11-18 my mother passed when I was 19 and I never knew my father. I tried to find him but just missed him when I went to his local hangout. It left me feeling lost and alone and my extended family I only met once seemed nonexistent. Indeed I am certain now that my Ancestors did this because there was a plan for me.

As an adolescent I loved watching Indiana Jones Movies and as an adult I loved watching archeology and anthropology TV series. I started undergrad late in life I was 29 years old. My major was art /arts management I thought I wanted to work in a museum. When I was to graduate 4 years later I was offered a management position at the Milwaukee Art Museum…I didn’t accept it….I moved me and my four sons to Texas. Attending undergrad was very beneficial in my abilities to collect resources to research. Now there wasn’t a day that I didn’t have my face in a book and there was no weekend I didn’t visit a bookstore. Although it provided me with the foundations of identifying my resources it was purely a Eurocentric biased education which treated the African American historical contribution to the art world as if it was tribal and infantile to the likes of their “European Masters.” I remember I questioned my advisor and I asked him why we don’t learn more about African history. and he said”… because this is the course work required for you to obtain your degree.” I took an anthropology course and the professor showed us a video of her visit to Africa to conduct her studies of a people. I always thought to myself “Why do Africans continue to let them in their lands?” Even when they already know how they have destroyed us all by colonizing and converting and raping and enslaving. I always challenged the formal institutions responsible for my education.

My family is majority Christians and the women in our family are the pastors, evangelist and bishops at their churches. They are also singer’s artist seamstress and mostly the head of the household while our men are musician’s fishermen artist and military men. We are all deeply rooted in serving and educating our family and communities. With the internet becoming a major source of information and becoming a major line of communication with the rest of the world I signed up to Facebook. I found so many family members who knew my mother and me and my sisters it felt great to see and talk to family I never knew. My family and I began a group initiative to find out who we were to each other so everyone posted pictures on their pages. I saw black and white pictures of my grandmother and her siblings her mother and her father. This was so exciting; during these times I was in constant contact with my first cousin Joe (RIP) who always created connections for the family to keep in touch with one another. One day I asked him “who should I talk to, to get the history of our family?” He gave me the numbers of my great Uncle Frank and my Great Uncle Calvin. I spoke with Uncle Frank before he passed on but I hadn’t spoken to Uncle Calvin. I got some great information about where we were from …Alabama. My cousin then put me in contact with my second cousin Howard Eugene Mills. Howard became my major resource he produced my Great Grand Mother’s obituary where it listed her mothers and fathers name and all her information. He gave to me my first breadcrumb and I hit the ground running ever sense. From that moment on as I posted information on Facebook to the family they have regarded me as the Family Anthropologist….I am now the go to person for our family history and lineage.

At the Mastery level in college I learned how to collect, preserve, analyze and document data and use it to further my research. I used these research methods to conduct my studies of the Djola. Everything was surrounded around my real identity and how far back could I go with my family lineage and of course my main focus was on my mother’s line. African Ancestry DNA gave me hope of solving this riddle…or so I thought. When I received my results I thought it would be an easy fix to tell my family’s story, but it wasn’t it only deepened the search and broaden my studies. I have learned that when studying a people who have not been a focus on West African studies you have to entertain other aspects that will help identify them…like language old maps textual narratives and science (taught myself genetics). I have never in my life read so much material to only receive a drop of a mention of Djola or the L2b haplogroup or their language. However I will say I am much satisfied to say I have found their story……OURSTORY