Discovery Led Man to Aunt Who Told Him Story of His Black Ancestors

Zachary Hocker has a passion for learning about different cultures, including when it comes to his own family.

As an anthropology major at Yale, Hocker has traveled and studied in various countries. "The real treasure was just talking to different people," he tells PEOPLE, "getting to know the religions, their languages."

But Hocker, 39, whose mom is Japanese American and father is Black and Native American, knew little of his own family's Black history. Then in October of 2017 he happened to take close notice of a photo hanging at his family home in San Jose, California.

Who, he wondered, was the pale, fair-haired man bedecked in a pinstripe suit, standing in this portrait?

Writing on the back of the picture said it was taken in 1953 and that a man named Uncle Tom was the blond-haired, blue-eyed man. It was given to Hocker's grandparents, Alma and Andrew Hocker, and signed by Hocker's aunt, Martha Annette Hocker Bradley (his father's sister) whom he hadn't seen since he was a small child, over 30 years ago.

Zachary Hocker family histort — Zachary Hocker's great-great uncle, Tom Lewis. courtesy Zachary Hocker

This chance observation sparked Hocker to connect with his aunt, by then an 82-year-old retired teacher from Willingboro, New Jersey, living in hospice care at home with stage 4 colon cancer.

The pair quickly developed a close friendship, with Bradley sharing hour after hour of their family history, which went back generations to the late 1700s. For a year they spoke, and he recorded their telephone conversations, until her death in 2018.

"I'm just so grateful that I had this time with her because I could have very easily gone my whole life without talking to this remarkable, beautiful angel of a woman," says Hocker, who works as a private tutor.

"She had a richness and beauty she imparts in her words," he continues. "When she spoke, it was just like I felt her words sink into the depths of my soul."

Bradley wrote portions of this history in a 55-page lined notebook she gave to Hocker, stories primarily passed down from her grandmother, Rebecca.

"She even drew a map of her grandmother's old neighborhood in Virginia," says Hocker. "She put so much love into it."

During the year of their collaboration, the pair also crafted the manuscript for a novel and a screenplay based on Bradley's memories.

"In African American families, you're lucky if you even get a name of one of your distant ancestors because of slavery, and how they separated us," Hocker says. "So, she told me about our history."

Bradley first shared the mystery behind the fair-skinned man named Uncle Tom. He was Tom Lewis of Richmond, Virginia — and Hocker's great-great uncle.

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As the story unfolded, Hocker learned that Tom's mother, Ida, had been raped by a White man and Tom was their offspring.

"Uncle Tom was not really proud of his White skin," says Hocker. "I think that's really what propelled him to start to really identify as being Black."

Tom married a Black woman named Bessie, and when traveling he'd sit with her in the back of the trolley. "The police would come and they'd say, 'You're White. You sit up front,'" says Hocker. "And he'd say, 'No, we paid our fare' and he would not leave her side. That was a love story there."

Another family member he learned about was Tom's half-sister, Rebecca, who was a midwife and delivered over 700 children throughout Virginia.

"She was a free spirit, according to Aunt Annette, and a really gruff woman if you got on her bad side," says Hocker. "Also, really a sharp shooter with a rifle. Apparently, she was like the Black Annie Oakley."

Bradley devoted 50 of her 55 pages of handwritten family history to Rebecca, who lived in Richmond. But she began and ended the manuscript with the story of Jermame, a girl of about 12 who was captured in Africa and brought to America in the late 1700s or early 1800s. She is, says Hocker, the family's "African foremother."

As Bradley wrote in the notebook: "Thank God for this strong, brave girl whose blood runs through her children's children, and now today we have doctors; we have lawyers, film directors, music video directors, everybody. We have gone to schools like Harvard, Yale, Caltech, MIT, Stanford, everywhere, Columbia."

Upon her arrival in America, Jermame was taken to Richmond, Virginia, and sold to a prominent judge. One of her children, Amanda, "my triple great-grandmother, was born half Caucasian and half African," says Hocker, "so she was most likely impregnated by the master or the judge himself."

Amanda was impregnated four times by the judge's son, says Hocker. Most of her children were given away and they, too, became enslaved.

One of Amanda's children, Ida, was born with blonde hair and blue eyes. "[She] basically looked like a White child," Hocker says of his great-great-great grandmother.

She was also the mother of fair-skinned Uncle Tom Lewis, born after Ida was raped by a White man while her husband, a Native American man, was out of town.

"Tom's older sisters and brothers knew he was a product of rape and for the most part ostracized him because he looked White," Bradley wrote. "But my grandmother Rebecca was nice to him because that was her mother's child."

The pair grew close, a closeness that continued throughout their lives. Tom, a World War I veteran, became a successful builder and prosperous land owner. He gave Bradley's parents, Andrew and Alma Hocker, land in Richmond during the depression where they built their home.

About a month after Hocker and his aunt finished their project, Bradley died in her sleep.

"These were stories literally passed down over generations, stories that otherwise would've been forgotten or overlooked," says Hocker. "This all started with that picture that I saw hanging on the wall in our living room."

To keep his aunt's spirit alive, and that of his "foremothers," Hocker listens almost daily to the recordings of their conversations. "It's comforting to listen to her voice, even though I listened to it a hundred times," he says.

"It's like watching your favorite movie or reading your favorite book, looking at your favorite picture," Hocker continues. "She bequeathed to me my whole family history."

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.

Chance Discovery Led Man to Aunt Who 'Bequeathed' the Story of His Black Ancestors to Him Before Her Death

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