Slavery forcibly dispersed families whose genealogies oral memory cannot fully reassemble

Evidence

Then I thought about my great-grandfather Renty Taylor Thompson and his mother, Tena, being sold south. Perhaps they were forcibly separated from Delia, his aunt, as well as other family members? I knew that slavery ripped families apart. The cruelty was hard to imagine, and yet having just seen her in those violent and humiliating images, I also knew that anything was possible. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 196