You can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley and I wanted to be able to… do my family tree back to the slave ship and then reverse the Middle Passage as I like to put it and find the tribe or ethnic group that I was from in Africa.
My family and our neighbors and friends thought of Africa and its Africans as extensions of the stereotyped characters that we saw in movies and on television in films such as 'Tarzan' and in programs such as 'Ramar of the Jungle' and 'Sheena Queen of the Jungle.'
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It seems to me that unless you or someone very close to you has had a bad head injury you really can't fathom it. You have no concept of what it is all about. It was so difficult for my whole family not just me.
