CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Inside Fred Witherspoon’s house, the phone rings off the hook.
His wife, Renee, starts the car to pick up a relative from the airport as Fred answers call after call from family members. The T-shirts are ordered, the food is prepared and the itinerary is set.
Family is coming over — the whole family.
It’s been this way almost every July since 1962 — minus one year when they were saving up for a big family reunion cruise.
Fred’s grandparents, family patriarch Rev. Willie Witherspoon and matriarch Daisy Strain Witherspoon, started the tradition in their home base of Lancaster, S.C., as a way to connect the two families and stay in touch. The early years saw up to 300 people attend.
The reunion location moves around from year to year. They’ve met everywhere from Pennsylvania to Nevada to Charlotte, closer to the family’s roots.
And the energy has always been like this, Fred said — “almost like getting ready for Christmas.”
Members of the Witherspoon-Strain family make the annual pilgrimage from all over the United States.
There’s Fred’s brothers, Larry and Willie Witherspoon and their families from Atlanta. There’s Ronnie and T-Ball Conner, Fred’s cousin and her husband, from Winston-Salem. When they met this past July for the 60th time, three generations were there — close to 150 people.
“The sense of family gives you a sense of strength and identity and confidence and support,” Fred said. “If you have a good foundation, that’s what shapes you.”
‘More than a picnic’
Often during summertime, generations of Black families gather across the country — sharing memories, food and fellowship over the course of several days, taking part in a tradition that dates back to Emancipation.
Slavery in America and the subsequent Great Migration tore apart Black families. According to an Equal Justice Initiative report, “it’s estimated that more than half of all enslaved people in the Upper South were separated from a parent or child, and a third of their marriages were destroyed by forced migration.”
During and after the Civil War, Black Americans searched for their family members through notices in newspapers across the country.
Reunions emerged as a way for former slaves to reconnect with family members they’d been separated from.
“We always say that family reunions are more than just a picnic for African American communities,” said Suzanne Holloman, co-director of the Family Reunion Institute in Audubon, Pennsylvania. “That’s really what makes family reunions so strong — they’re focused beyond just, ‘Let’s gather and eat and sit and chat.’”
The institute, which was created in 1990, provides resources and support for reunions nationwide and is based at Temple University but operates independently. They take particular interest in reuniting Black families.
Holloman, whose mother founded the institute, described Black family reunions as “mission-centric.”
Older generations instill values in the family, provide role models and bring the family together through history and genealogy. At some family reunions, scholarships and awards are distributed, and there’s some form of education.
“With family reunions, the work that they do is going to benefit their family for generations to come,” Holloman said. “So that reunion hopefully will continue and will strengthen and help that family to advance.”
Rosalyn Newton, who lives in Charlotte, said her annual family reunion played a huge role in her life, and the ancestors she learned about inspired her to dream big.
‘People who beat the odds’
Newton was just a girl when the annual Atlas family reunion took place in Louisiana on Lake Providence in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
The family would rent out a motel near Lake Providence, she remembers. Newton would come back home every evening with mosquito bites on her legs, stinging under a coat of sticky sweat.
The first Atlas reunion was hosted on the lake in 1972, and since then, the reunion has taken place every two years. Every decade, it rolls back to the lake.
“I never felt as if there was something that I could not do — I had so many people in my family doing amazing things,” she said. “No matter what the world tells me, I know that I come from a people who beat the odds, so I think it gave me a very strong sense of self and pride in where I come from.”
Newton’s family members started documenting the Atlas family tree when she was very young. Thanks to their decadeslong work, at their last family reunion in Las Vegas a couple of years ago, everyone got to see how extensive it was in person.
Newton helped spread a sheet of paper out over several long conference tables. The family tree was 41 feet long — and that wasn’t even all of it, she said. Sticky notes dotting the pages listed facts about family members and different branches of the tree.
As she scanned over the tree, her eyes welled with tears. When the rest of the family walked in, the room filled with gasps, she remembers.
Newton, a psychologist, said it’s especially important for minorities to know their family history — to pass on information and for their emotional health.
Reunions for the Atlas family have recently included workshops on mental health. Newton said those sessions are invaluable.
“A lot of people don’t talk about things that people struggle with, like these hidden traumas,” she said. “We’ve started to have these breakout sessions where we talk about mental health and anything going on in the world that’s taxing on people.
“We are getting to a point where family reunions are not just about getting together, but also helping us to be more aware and more supportive of one another on the whole.”
‘Cousins after cousins’
From cruises to fashion shows to cookouts, the Witherspoon-Strain annual family reunion has been celebrated in many different ways.
But some traditions stay the same.
In the late 1960s, Odell Witherspoon, Fred’s brother who lives in Charlotte, was discharged from the military and arrived in New Jersey from Vietnam.
He decided to stop by his aunt’s home in Philadelphia to say ‘hi’ and ended up staying for several weeks. During that time, numerous family members who were based in the Northeast came by to visit him.
“It was just cousins after cousins,” he said. “I didn’t want to leave. We’re all still bonded to this day.”
Decades later, Odell’s daughter Natasha found herself in Philadelphia on a business trip. She called up her cousins — children of that same aunt — and a quick visit turned into an impromptu family reunion with her Northeastern family members.
And she’s seen them at family reunions since.
“Once you start those connections, they keep going,” Natasha said. “It just grows from there.”
A form of healing
For a people whose history has been spliced through displacement and disconnection, Fred Witherspoon said Black family reunions are crucial.
“So many families have been unable to reconnect with their family,” he said. “So being able to live your family history is tremendous.”
Through reunions, Newton said there’s an opportunity to “change the narrative.”
Newton said it’s important to remember how Black families have been torn apart in America’s history through slavery, and how those effects reverberate today. That’s why, she said, it’s hard to find out where you come from — so if you know your history, you should celebrate it.
“When you have your family coming together consistently sharing in our lives being a testament, we collectively feel like this is something that’s important,” she said. “In spite of what has been done to tear apart our family dynamic, we remain a resilient people.
“It takes away the sting of the numerous attempts that were made to break you down as a people.”
This year’s Witherspoon-Strain family reunion is going to be Zoom-based for the third year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and though Fred will miss seeing his family members in person, he’s just happy to keep the tradition alive.
“As always, my hope is for it to continue to grow, sustain itself and be of importance to future generations,” he said.
____
