Pharrell Reacts to Family History in Finding Your Roots

I'm buzzing, like my arms, my body is buzzing, like, whoa. We took musician Pharrell Williams on an extraordinary journey, all thanks to one single document. The story begins with his great-great-grandfather, a man named Fenner Williams. Fenner died in 1927, but his sister, Jane Errington, lived into the late 1930s. And near the end of Jane's life, she was interviewed about her experiences under slavery, allowing Pharrell the opportunity to read the actual words of one of his own relatives who had endured bondage, something very few African Americans are ever able to do. I was born on the 18th of December, 1852. I was born on the plantation near Tar River. My mother was named Louisa May, and my father was named Louis May. My mother had six children, four boys and two girls. The boys were Richard, Pharaoh, Caesar, and Fenner. The girls, Rose and Jane. Jane, that's me. Wow. That is your great-great-grandfather's sister, and she is your great-great-great-aunt. Crazy. Jane Errington was interviewed as part of what's known as the Slave Narrative Project, a collective oral history comprised of roughly 2,300 interviews with formerly enslaved people. The project was sponsored by the federal government in the 1930s. Jane's words gave Pharrell an intimate glimpse of his ancestors' experience under slavery. Those words also forced him to confront the cruel reality of what those ancestors actually experienced, and the realizations concerning his great-great-grandfather Fenner would strike Pharrell particularly hard. So we estimate that Fenner was born between 1855 and 1857. Okay? We're pretty sure about that. So you know what that means. That means that he was most likely born into slavery and not freed until the end of the Civil War. Wow. At 10 years old. The first 10 years of his life would have been spent in slavery. Wow. You know, we tend to think of it as adults, but think about a little boy. I don't want to cry, and I'm trying not to be angry. You're not a machine. This is horrendous. What else can you feel? It's horrible. It's intense, sir. It's intense. Pharrell's ancestors likely suffered more than he can even imagine. In her interview, Jane recalled minute details about their daily lives on a cotton plantation, revealing the degradation they endured every day. We lived in log houses with stick and dirt, chimneys. They called them the slave houses. I worked on the farm, cutting corn stalks and tending to cattle in slavery times. Sometimes I swept the yards after working all day. There was a task of cotton to be picked and spun by them. What kind of people? What kind of people? It puts a very vivid, intense context behind what it means to be African American. And I thank God that I got to hear it. Well, I'm so sorry they went through this. Nobody should have gone through this. It's a lot, man. I have to say I am forever changed. Retrieving lost stories can be an act of restoration not only of our ancestors' resilience, but of the resilience of the entire human community. To see more incredible stories, click here. And watch the next video.