'10 Million Names' project takes ABC News' Pierre Thomas to the plantation where his ancestors were enslaved
Genealogists and researchers spearhead the "10 Million Names" project, an ambitious initiative to identify every enslaved Black American by name. It led ABC News Senior Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas to discover the West Virginia plantation where his ancestors were born into slavery.
ABC News is the exclusive media partner of the historic "10 Million Names" project, a moonshot endeavor that aims to use ancestry research to put a name to each enslaved person to not only acknowledge their dignity, but to connect their living descendants with their family history.
It has been more than 400 years since the first Africans were kidnapped and transported to North America as part of our nation's barbaric slave trade. Slavery was the backbone of America's economy for centuries, and this ugly legacy often makes it difficult for Black Americans to learn their true family history.
Thomas admits that he was previously reluctant to learn more about the institution of slavery and its impact on his ancestors for fear of the pain it would cause him.
Thomas journeyed to the outskirts of Huntington, West Virginia, to explore the sprawling land known as "Green Bottom," established in 1812 by then-Virginia Governor Wilson Nicholas.
"It feels odd. It feels strange," Thomas said. "Beautiful and scary, all in the same breath."
Dr. Cicero Fain, an author, Marshall University professor and a top expert on Black history in West Virginia, said the plantation had 80 to 100 enslaved people at its height.
"Welcome to the Jenkins Plantation, the ancestral home of your great-great-grandmother Adeline," Fain said to Thomas when the journalist reached the property.
According to the "10 Million Names" genealogists and researchers, Adeline, born in 1858, was likely the biological daughter of her enslaver -- Albert Gallatin Jenkins himself.
Thomas was shocked to learn that this plantation was under the reign of the infamous Jenkins. A Harvard graduate, a two-term congressman and a Confederate general, Jenkins was a staunch supporter of slavery. He kept humans imprisoned, treating them as little more than valuable livestock on his sprawling 4,500-acre estate.
In an 1860 speech on the House floor, Jenkins made it clear that he believed slavery was the natural order of things. He called the institution the alpha and the omega -- critical to the future of a prosperous America, especially in the South.
Five years before the 13th Amendment, Jenkins used his lengthy speech to firmly express his belief that even the idea of abolishing slavery was startling, alarming and evil. He stated that it would signify a huge loss of property to the South and said enslaved people would attempt to escape to freedom en masse upon hearing about the election of a Union president.
Making it clear that he viewed enslaved people purely as property, Jenkins laid down the cold-blooded economics of the slave trade, saying that 4 million enslaved people were estimated to be worth at least $3 billion.
"He had a primarily population of girls, older women and boys," Fain said of the plantation.
Records reveal that Jenkins made a regular habit of selling off the young adult males at their prime stage so that he could make the most money.
"Jenkins was cruel," Fain said. "The overseers that he hired ... even more cruel to the point of beating, using ... some kind of bat with nails in it ... to beat somebody, and then salting the wound afterwards."
Thomas noted that was challenging to hear details of the suffering people endured on the plantation.
"Many people think that most African Americans automatically say 'Oh yes, I want to know everything about where I come from,' but for others, the notion of slavery is a painful process," he said.
Besides working the land, cooking for themselves and their overseers, and being at Jenkins' beck and call, historic preservationist Karen Nance explains that the enslaved people also built the Jenkins home, brick by brick.
"It took about ten years. And the African Americans that were enslaved up here were the ones who built it," Nance said. "And so it took a long time because they had to fire the brick. So it was a whole lot of labor."
At nearby Marshall University in 2020, Jenkins' name was removed from what is now called the Education Building. Jenkins' portrait, which was painted in the 1950s, is still stored in the corner of the school's Special Collections department. It's managed by Lori Thompson, who shed more light on Jenkins' brutal treatment of the enslaved people.
"He would send out raider parties ... to specifically look for the people who have run away," Thompson said.
The existence of Jenkins' portrait reminded Thomas of the controversy over statues of Confederate figures in public spaces.
"It would be as if our Jewish brothers and sisters in Germany would suddenly be walking through town and there would be a statue of Hitler," he said.
After learning more about his heritage, Thomas spoke with Harvard University professor and "10 Million Names" scholar Vincent Brown about his mindset entering this journey versus how he feels now.
"This has been both a professional and a personal journey I've been on in recent weeks," Thomas said. "I guess I've been playing a psychological game with myself over time. I was proud of knowing that my people could overcome something as horrible as horrific as slavery, but I think intellectually I wanted to start my family's history with my grandmother."
Thomas highlighted the fact that he was able to look at the portrait of Jenkins, but he didn't know what Adeline or her mother Charlotte looked like. This was upsetting, and Brown noted that Black Americans don't have control over knowing their full history due to slavery. So they need to cherish the stories they have and pass them along.
"It's a story of triumph in the midst of evil," Thomas said.
He realized that without Charlotte and Adeline's bravery, his great-grandmother Sally Jefferson and grandmother Annie Bell Brown wouldn't have been born. Without them, Thomas' mother Helen Thomas, whom he credits with defining him as a man more than anyone else, wouldn't exist.
"For Adeline. Thank you. Thank you for the will to survive," he said. "Thank you for the will not to give up."
