Wiz Khalifa explored the painful history of one of his ancestors on the latest episode of PBS' Finding Your Roots.
On the January 13 episode of the series, host Henry Louis Gates Jr. detailed the discovery of Wiz's fifth great-grandfather, Howard Williamson, who lived in Alabama in 1870 next door to a white family that shared the same surname. The Khaotic rapper, real name Cameron Jibril Thomaz, was surprised by Gates' finding his ancestor possibly being enslaved by his neighbors.
"I think I'm programmed to feel a little bit pissed," the rapper said about Thomas J. Williamson, the patriarch of the Williamsons. "But just him owning my family just sounds crazy. That sounds wild. ...I feel some type of way about that."
Gates also explained that Thomas J. Williamson kept a "slave schedule" which listed his human property by color, gender and age instead of their names. With one entry being about a 14-year-old Black male, Gates believed that this was Wiz's fifth great-grandfather.
"It's crazy to see him as a nameless person on a grid," Wiz said, adding, "And to know how valuable that property is because it's a life and it's not actually property. It's a person."
The Pittsburgh native called it a "reality check," but added that his fifth great-grandfather didn't resist building his own family and legacy. In adulthood, Wiz's ancestor worked as a tenant farmer, and although he was freed, Williamson wouldn't achieve economic independence. Elsewhere, it was found that Williamson registered to vote despite the dangers that Black voters faced after the Civil War. Wiz's ancestor would ultimately have at least seven children and twenty grandchildren before his lineage reached the multi-platinum and diamond RIAA-certified rapper.
"I think they would be freaking proud," Wiz said about his fifth great-grandfather's hypothetical reaction to his success. "They'd be proud that I own some stuff for myself. They'd be proud of the attitude that I carry, the confidence that I have, the love that I have for my family, the appreciation that I have for what they've done."
He continued, "And even I feel all of them around me. I just don't know who
they are. So now I'm able to say their name. So that just makes it even even
better."
Elsewhere in the episode, as The Grio reports, Wiz discovered that his grandfather, Willie Wimbush Jr., made the Great Migration from the south to Pittsburgh around 1955.