Waveney Ann Moore: Black families, a testimony to resilience 

As we bear witness to the anguish of Ukrainians, their families torn apart by evil incarnate, I wonder whether in decades to come some will deny this atrocity ever happened. Just as some of our contemporaries have denied the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide. 

And also insist that the history of those of the African diaspora, ripped from their homelands and families, shackled, enslaved and brutalized and used to build the very foundation of this great nation – from its fields to the house of its presidents – must be silenced. 

But like others who have endured injustice, African-American families persist in their striving, many drawing strength from annual gatherings of elders and younger generations. Today’s tradition of the African-American family reunion dates back to emancipation, when families torn apart by slavery desperately tried to reconnect with loved ones they’d lost. 

As documented by Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery, a project of Villanova University and Mother Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia, African Americans placed thousands of ads in newspapers in their quest to reunite with beloved children, parents, siblings and spouses. 

Black family reunions are now a cherished tradition. On hiatus during the pandemic, they’re making a cautious return this year.  

The Keith-Jones family last gathered in person in 2019, traveling from across the country to St. Petersburg. Host Natelia Keith-Cochran booked hotels, hired caterers, ordered T-shirts and organized events at the Enoch Davis Center and Dell Holmes Park.  

The stress was worth it, “to see all the family coming together and just laughing and enjoying each other,” said Keith-Cochran, an engagement consultant for Cigna in Tampa. 

This year, which marks their 55th reunion, the Keith-Jones family will meet in Marianna. Tyrone Hobbs, a naval flight officer who retired from the U.S. Navy at the rank of commander, will travel from Virginia Beach. He is looking forward to seeing everyone again. 

 “We have so many interesting people in our family, so many very accomplished people, smart people, people who own businesses,” he said. 

“Our ancestors a few generations above us struggled so much to put this thing together and to keep the family together. It’s nice to be able to get together … We actually like to be around each other and look forward to these meetings every year.” 

Keith-Jones Family Reunion, July 2019 at Dell Holmes Park. Courtesy Natelia Keith-Cochran.

His is not unlike the perspective of Donnie Williams, whose family has been holding its annual gatherings since 1963. “It’s an opportunity to get with my family, and also for my kids to know about my family,” said Williams, a retired St. Petersburg Police Officer. 

His brother Aaron, who owns a beauty products distributorship, said their Keys Family Reunion always connects him with relatives he never knew. 

“It’s very important for our kids to meet some of the elders,” he said. “It is also important that they meet family members of their age.” 

The family’s roots are in Jackson County, where their reunion was first held. It’s since been organized in places such as Tallahassee, Quincy and Pontiac, Michigan. For the 50th reunion, more than 500 family members met in Panama City. This year, the family hopes to gather in Marianna.  

The large St. Petersburg branch of the family also began holding a second reunion in 1976. They called it the Keys Family Affair and centered it on the Williams brothers’ grandfather and grandmother, Herbert and Irene Keys.  

Both reunions are popular, Donnie Williams said. “The original Keys reunion always was on July 4. The Keys Family Affair is the second week of July and both of them are well attended,” he said. 

While some families meet at different locations across the country, others, like Pearl Sly’s family, prefer predictability. 

 Miss Pearl, as she is known, is from the small Alabama town of Brundidge, about 100 miles from Montgomery. 

“The first reunion was in Alabama, out in the country, in my mom and daddy’s yard,” she recalled. “My grandparents were alive also, and at that time, my mom. The first couple of years, we went to Alabama.” 

The Wilson Family Reunion has since alternated between Alabama and St. Petersburg. Miss Pearl, who retired from the city of St. Petersburg’s Billing and Collections Department, had moved to Florida in 1957. 

“My dad was a sharecropper. I worked on the farm,” she said. “When I graduated from high school, there was really no place to get a job. I had a cousin who lived in St. Pete.” 

That first reunion in 1978 followed the sudden death of her brother, James Earl Wilson. “My mother and father had 12 children, seven girls and five boys. That was the first time we had come together,” apart from Christmas and Thanksgiving, she said. 

The family decided they wouldn’t wait for a funeral to bring them together again.  

A widow with five children, 14 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, Miss Pearl has advice for other families. 

“Your children need to know all of their relatives and it makes common sense for all people to have a family reunion,” she said. “It draws people together and it makes sense to laugh and talk when there’s no bigger problem.” 

It just so happens that her daughter-in-law’s side of the family also has a family reunion. Fortunately, daughter-in-law Rosa Sly can attend both. Her family’s Dykes Family Reunion, which is held in Georgia, is scheduled for July, ahead of Miss Pearl’s, which is on Labor Day weekend. 

Mattie Thornton, Rosa Sly’s aunt, is the keeper of the history of the Dykes Family Reunion. It first took place in 1977, in the years after she and other family members had left the small town of Pineview, Georgia, in search of better opportunities in St. Petersburg. 

The children of brothers Clayton, Jim and Bill Dykes were focused on keeping the family connected. “They thought the family was breaking up and started the gathering to keep the unity and to keep our kin together, so they would know who our family was,” Thornton said. 

If the reunion takes place this year, it will begin with the expected fish fry, homemade hush puppies and hot grits. 

Rosa Sly, medical records administrator at Bay Pines and mother of two adult sons, reminisced about taking them to the reunion as babies. Now, she said, they take their own children. 

“We would go by the house that my grandmother lived in, the home that I visited when I was a teenager,” she recalled. “They really appreciate the country … When we go up there, what we do, we all get together on Saturday afternoon and we go to the farmers’ market.” 

The reunion also is a time to share stories with younger family members, telling them about picking cotton and peas, pulling corn and making blackberry jam. Elders like Thornton also tell of the racism they experienced.  It’s an important story to be told, she said. 

Stories are an important element of Black family reunions. This year, Hobbs, treasurer and resident genealogist of the Keith-Jones Reunion, will share a previously unheard story with family members.  

“Our earliest known ancestry is Reese Keeffe, born in Florence, South Carolina, in 1836,” he offered as background in an email. “Reese had 13 children with his two wives. Incidentally, he married his second wife when he was 73.” 

Spencer Keith, one of his children, married Ada Jones, hence the Keith-Jones Family Reunion.  

One of the couple’s children, Leco, was Keith-Cochran’s grandfather. John Keith was Hobbs’ grandfather. Another child, Viola Keith Forest, born in 1917, started the Keith-Jones family reunion. 

But what will probably be new to most of the family when Hobbs shares his story is their relationship to slave owner William Keeffe Sr. Hobbs said he has “strong evidence” that Keeffe was Reese’s father. 

There’s more to the story, but Hobbs believes his family changed their name from Keeffe sometime after emancipation to distance themselves from their former slave master. 

The result of Hobbs’ research won’t surprise most Black Americans. Nevertheless, these and other stories need to be told. African-American families must keep sharing them with their children and their children’s children at reunions, around the dining table, and even as they walk the dog. It’s not about encouraging resentment toward any group, but building character, knowledge and resilience.