An incredible new story about a slave descendant and a plantation owner, sitting down to eat dinner together is now going viral.
Nkrumah Steward‘s post, which has already been shared over 1,000 times on Facebook, has been picked up by ABC News, Good Morning America, USA Today, and dozens of other news outlets;
In his post, he writes; “Tonight my family and I were dinner guests at Wavering Place, an old plantation founded in 1768 near Hopkins, South Carolina where four generations of my grandmothers lived and worked as slaves when they were emancipated in 1865. The reason I was there tonight was because 181 years ago, in 1835, Joel Robert Adams and my 4th great grandmother, one of his slaves, Sarah Jones Adams had a daughter, Louisa. Louisa had Octavia. Octavia had James. James had my grandfather JD. JD had my mother Linda.
And now 181 years later, after almost two centuries, my mother and father, my two sons, my wife and myself sat down in that very house and broke bread with the descendant of those who owned members of my family. We are cousins by blood. And tonight we took the first steps together towards also becoming friends.”
Although about 99% of the reactions to his story have been positive, there have been a number of negative replies.
One person commented, “It’s very convenient to say we all should get along now, but not long ago it was white people who wanted the nation to be segregated, who terrorized people in this country, who acted like black people were less than 2nd class citizen.
I mean it’s very convenient to say let’s move on from the past now when you’ve had so much time to create and perfect a system that allows the white race to stay in such a strong hold position of power as the dominant group in our society.”
In spite of the handful of naysayers, the two families are now focused on moving forward together as friends.
Adams still owns the property, now called the Wavering Place Plantation. It’s been passed down through the family since it’s initial construction in 1766, and is now offers educational tours, a bed and breakfast, and for weddings. They couldn’t have been more thrilled to hear from Steward and invite his whole family for dinner for the opportunity to learn about each other’s past.
“We thoroughly enjoyed it, our history is a shared one, and we celebrate our family connection. There’s a dark part of that history that was an unfortunate part of our nation’s past, but we don’t let that keep us from moving forward and getting to know family members,” said Adams.
Please share;
awesome story!