1 side owned slaves. The other side started Black History Month. How a family heals

"Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history." — Carter G. Woodson

There are many things from childhood that Brett Woodson Bailey doesn't remember. Maybe it has to do with his cancer diagnosis at 4-years-old, living in the hospital for almost two years, undergoing intense courses of radiation and chemotherapy. He thinks that plays a part in why so much of his childhood is "hazy."

Forgetting after all, is a side effect of trauma.

But one moment he remembers clearly is his mother, Adele, sitting him down when he was in middle school, telling him that he was the descendent of a famous, important man.

You are the great great grandnephew of Carter G. Woodson, she told him. Woodson is the man behind Negro history week, which ultimately became Black History Month. She said Brett should be proud of this fact, he should even brag about it.

Brett is not the braggy type. Now 20-years-old, he's a soft spoken and thoughtful sophomore at the University of California, Santa Cruz, majoring in environmental science, with dreams of becoming a wildlife biologist.

As Brett got older he began to better understand what it means to be related to the man who insisted that we tell, and learn, the true story of Black people in America.

In 1926, Woodson created Negro history week, anchoring it between the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. In the 1970s the week officially expanded to a month.

Woodson helped pioneer the field of African American history, especially when it comes to education, and he fiercely believed that Black history should not be a separate, segregated thing, that our histories are intertwined.

Brett recognizes his ancestor's historical importance, but he doesn't know if he feels any personal connection to a man who lived so long ago. "I'm not exactly like carrying down his legacy too much," he says.

But then he stops and turns the idea over mid-sentence. "I guess I kind of am by still being here," he says. "Because you know he was a fighter, fighting for civil rights."

Brett knows that surviving is no simple feat, especially when you are Black in America. "I am my ancestors wildest dreams," the aphorism goes. Then there is Brett's own experience with cancer — when he was diagnosed he was given a 30% chance of making it. But his people survived and he survived, and that means something. He carries history in his skin and in his bones.

"If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the—