How I Was Almost Jesse Williams
A Tale of Two Names
What’s in a name?
This Shakespearean rhetorical question is often used as a way to explain the nuances of perception. If we’re talking about last names, there’s a lot in a name. Surnames connect us to our heritage, our relatives that existed before our time. For Black people in the Western world, a surname is often a reminder of a plantation owner or slave master that was responsible for erasing our collective and individual identities.
In my case, I inherited my mother’s last name, Childs, at birth. She was born in Silver City, New Mexico and claims European-American stock, mainly Scots-Irish and Dutch. In high school, I learned about heraldry and looked up the family crest. I was able to trace my name back to William Le Childe, born in 1060. He lived in 11th century England by way of France and his descendants would cross the Atlantic and come to America.
The last name is also associated with 19th-century abolitionists David Lee and Lydia Marie Child from Massachusetts. Lydia wrote the poem that would become the holiday classic, “Over the River and Through the Wood”. Another namesake was the famous French chef Julia Child. Childe, Childs, and Child are all variations of the same name due to American immigration.
Like them, our ancestors came through Massachusetts and then Ohio over the generations, before my mother was born in the American Southwest. Her father was a teacher and WWII veteran for Willoughby, Ohio. He studied to become a priest but fell in love and opted to educate as a profession. I came along a couple generations later, missing the chance at meeting my maternal grandfather. He passed in 1974 and I arrived almost a decade later.
Jesse Williams Matters
Around the same time, another Jesse hit the scene. In 1981, Jesse Wesley Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois. His father is African American and his mother is of Swedish and other European ancestry. His parents were teachers and gave him both a solid academic and political education in addition to his looks. He would go on to teach as well and eventually became a model, actor, and entrepreneur.
He achieved heartthrob status as Jackson Avery on TV’s Grey’s Anatomy. His blue-green-hazel (what color are they, really?) eyes and activism have made him a well-known media figure, especially among the Black community. He has become a champion for the Black Lives Matter movement and a vocal critic of systemic racism.
His 2016 BET Awards speech encouraged millions of Black people while simultaneously making the majority of white people that saw it or heard about it very uncomfortable. He has since earned the affectionate names “Eyes Who Melt My Soul” and “Woke Bae”. He even got a shout out from Dave Chappelle on the Def Comedy Jam 25 special on Netflix. And I quote, “Jesse, get up here and say something that will make white people feel terrible for 20 minutes.”
Distant Relatives
My father was Robert Bernard Williams from Moorestown, New Jersey and he was a professional truck driver. He and my mother had a fling in the early ’80s and he was not a regular presence in my childhood or adult life. Had I been given my father’s name at birth, I too would have been Jesse Williams.
Like most other Black folks with the name Williams, my father could only trace it back so far. In researching that side of my family tree, I discovered I could go as far back as Joseph K Williams from Burke, Georgia- born in 1821. His father Milo, likely an enslaved person, had no birth or death records. Two generations after Milo, Joseph’s son Joseph Jr. would leave Georgia for the North and have a son, Francis. He was born in Cape May, New Jersey and his son Robert was my grandfather. I didn’t get to meet my grandpa on my dad’s side either.
As I pieced together the tattered leaves of my family tree I came across other last names. Amos, Callaway, Polk, Johnson, Bennet, and Harris, to name a few. All these names were replacements given to my ancestors on plantations in Delaware, Virginia, Georgia and elsewhere. All of those names go no further back than the mid-1700s. Before that, they were known by traditional names from Sierra Leone and other places in West Africa or the Native people of the Americas.
What a coincidence that William Le Childe would have both the names that would later become part of my destiny. The one I was given and the one that was denied me. By being born a bastard, I inherited the name of abolitionists and not slave owners. The universe has a strange sense of humor.
In addition to the last name, I didn’t get the blue eyes, height, or fame of Jesse Williams. All I can say is that way back, there was an Englishman with the last name Williams whose children would one day come to America and own plantations where their name was forced upon our African ancestors.
In a side-by-side comparison, I turned out somewhat like Jesse Williams. He is from Chicago, and I went to college in Chicago. We both got degrees in African-American Studies and had early careers in education.
One last coincidence, I was in a room with Jesse Williams once. It was 2011, and he was moderating a panel at the Oakland Museum of California. It was called Question Bridge, “an innovative transmedia project that facilitates a dialogue between Black men from diverse and contending backgrounds and creates a platform for them to represent and redefine Black male identity in America.”
I was invited to the event and exhibit by the founder of Story for All because the following year we piloted a similar project called Griots of Oakland: The African American Oral History Project. He was busy mingling in the crowd so I didn’t get more than 20 feet near him but I did admire his moderation and crisp Jordan XIII’s.
A Jesse by Another Name
Perhaps it was a good thing I didn’t end up as Jesse Williams. The main competition for my name is the son of former New York Knick Chris Childs who is also named Jesse.
Making a name for one’s self is not easy but at least this way I am not trying to do it in the shadow of someone with the same name. I might have gotten brown eyes instead of blue, brown skin with no freckles and the last name Childs, but those factors don’t entirely define me. The blood in my veins does not change because I got one name over another.
Regardless of my last name, I inherited the struggle to be seen and heard as a Black man in America, and the world, and I accept it proudly. My position as a so-called mixed race person allows me the perspective that can help bridge the chasm between groups of people created by slavery, segregation, and inequality. I embrace my roots and am determined to improve the situation for myself and others that have experienced oppression, racial or otherwise.
The Next Generation
When my son was born, my wife and I had a conversation about what we should put for his last name. My wife’s mother got upset when she learned that I did not inherit my father’s name. She is Ethiopian, where a man’s name is ceremonially important.
I shared her anger but had to remind myself, and her, that a name is as good as the person it’s attached to. For that, I appreciate both Robert Williams and Arthur Childs, the grandfathers I never got the chance to meet. I am grateful for the stories I’ve learned while tracing their names back through time. To Jesse Williams, if you read this, keep fighting the good fight. Nice name, it was almost mine.
