Roots of Return
Genealogy
 

I often say, half in jest and half in defiance, that the reason some consider me “wayward” is because I stem from a line of regulators. That rebellious edge, that unwillingness to conform for conformity’s sake, that drive to speak truth even when it's inconvenient, it isn’t a character flaw. It’s an inheritance.
 

You see, I’m the 6th great-granddaughter of thee Gideon Gibson, Jr., of the Pee Dee region of South Carolina. Not just a name in the footnotes of history, Gideon Gibson, Jr., was a free man of color, a landowner, and a central figure in the Regulator Movement, a grassroots uprising that challenged colonial corruption, elitism, and legal injustice in the backcountry of South Carolina in the 1760s.

Let’s pause and take that in,

A Black man, before the American Revolution, standing shoulder to shoulder with settlers and frontiersmen to demand accountability from a colonial government that had no real desire to represent them. He wasn’t merely a witness to history. He made it. And whether history books say his name or not, his blood runs through mine, and with it, a calling.

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Who Was Gideon Gibson, Jr.?

The Regulator Movement emerged from frustration with the lack of justice and civil order in the Carolina backcountry. Courts were miles away. Bandits roamed freely. The colonial elite hoarded power and resources while rural settlers, many of them Black, Native, and poor whites, were left to fend for themselves.

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Gideon Gibson, Jr., like his father before him, was a free Black man navigating a racial caste system that had not yet fully calcified into what we would later recognize as the machinery of chattel slavery. Despite the racial lines that history later drew with thick ink, Gibson defied them. He owned land. He was legally recognized. And when injustice became too bitter to bear, he didn’t shrink, he organized.

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He and his fellow regulators took up arms not to start war, but to reform society. They challenged the governor’s militia, disrupted the power structures of the colonial elite, and demanded that the rule of law serve all people, not just the wealthy few. For this, they were branded lawless and rebellious. Sound familiar?

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Inherited Rebellion, The Weight and Gift of Legacy

When I speak my mind or challenge injustice, whether in academia, church spaces, genealogical societies, or community organizing, it sometimes rubs people the wrong way. I'm told I don’t "know my place." But maybe I do. Maybe my place has always been on the edge, clearing paths through thickets of injustice like Gideon did. Maybe “wayward” is just another word for “disobedient to oppression.”

I’ve come to believe that lineage doesn’t just give us names and DNA, it gives us assignments. Being a descendant of Gideon Gibson, Jr., means I cannot quietly accept dysfunction, dishonesty, or dehumanization. The same fire that made him raise his voice in the 1760s burns in me today. It whispers that silence is complicity. That to be neutral in the face of injustice is to side with the oppressor.

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Modern Day Regulation

If Gideon was a Regulator of the 18th century, then perhaps I, and many others of his bloodline or spirit, are regulators of the 21st. We regulate lies with truth. We regulate shame with memory. We regulate silence with testimony.

For me, that looks like,

• Reconstructing erased histories of Black families in the Pee Dee and beyond

• Teaching others to reclaim their ancestry as a form of healing and resistance

• Calling out inequities in institutions that claim to serve our communities but often center power over people

• Carrying oral histories and passing them on like sacred texts, because our stories are survival tools

We are regulators not of militias, but of memory. Not of frontier courts, but of forgotten truths.

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A Final Word to the “Wayward” Ones

To those who have ever been dismissed, labeled difficult, or cast out because they refused to sit quietly, maybe you’re not lost. Maybe you're a regulator, too.

Legacy isn't always about pride or praise. Sometimes, it’s about responsibility. And when you come from someone like Gideon Gibson, Jr., you don't get to hide behind comfort or compliance. You rise. You speak. You push back. You carry the story forward.

Because freedom isn't found in obedience to broken systems,
It's found in the courage to fix what our ancestors never stopped fighting for.

So yes, I am “wayward,” and gloriously so.
Because I come from Gideon.
And that means I come from resistance.
I come from righteous disruption.
I come from legacy.

And I will not be silent.