Screenshot Courtesy of Henry Louis Gates Jr. / YouTube
Finding Your Roots season nine, episode nine, was quite emotional for one prominent journalist. Van Jones cried tears of joy after learning his ancestors were free before the emancipation proclamation.
Jones began explaining to the Finding Your Roots host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. that his maternal grandfather, Chester Arthur Kirkendoll II, was adored for his work as a pastor. But his family didn’t know much about his grandfather’s history. Gates and the show’s researchers managed to find information three generations back. Mark Kirkendall, Jones’ third-great grandfather, was listed by name in the 1850s census for Douglas township, Arkansas.
However, African Americans weren’t listed in the census by name then. Slaves were only listed by color, gender and age.
When asked if he knew what it meant, Jones asked if it meant his ancestors were white.
“Your Kirkendoll family was free 13 years before the Emancipation Proclamation,” Gates informed the anchorman.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Jones responded, sitting back in his chair and wiping tears. “I had a hard time even getting my head there. It didn’t even occur to me that would be a possibility.”
“They didn’t even need Lincoln to free them,” Jones added.
Gates and Jones dug into how his family achieved freedom, mentioning a will Mark’s enslaver, Joseph Kuykendall, had that granted his family freedom only if he paid his sons $800. However, Mark remained a slave even after Joseph’s death.
Mark would soon be charged with murdering Joseph’s son and his new slave master, Benjamin Kuykendall, by shooting him.
He was sent to jail but managed to escape.
“Part of what I think is inherent to being Black in America is this hope that you can beat the odds,” Jones remarked. “That you know the odds are against you but that there’s some way that you can beat them. That’s where the soul and the drive and the pain and the pride all come from…going up against the odds. He went up against the odds and won.”
Mark was caught in Louisiana and returned to Arkansas, where he awaited his prosecution for murder. The “fugitive” was convicted of manslaughter, a lesser charge, because of the Kuykendall brothers. They still wanted their money. If Mark was executed as most slaves– the brothers couldn’t collect their $800.
He was sentenced to serve three years in prison but didn’t serve the entire sentence. The governor gave him a pardon, and Mark was discharged from prison.
Jones’ ancestor was returned to the Kuykendall brothers but managed to escape with three women named Priscilla, Betsy and Eliza. He remained free.
The irony of the journalist’s antecedents fighting for freedom and their lives was apparently lost on Jones. He ended up marrying a white woman, Jana Carter, in 2005. They divorced in 2019 and have two children.