Recently, Wiz Khalifa sat down with Henry Louis Gates Jr. for an episode of the PBS series Finding Your Roots. During their conversation, the rapper received some difficult news about his family history. His fifth great-grandfather, Howard Williamson, was enslaved in Alabama in the 1870s. According to Gates, Williamson lived next door to the family that owned him.
“I think I’m programmed to feel a little bit pissed,” he said of the man who owned his fifth great-grandfather. “But just him owning my family just sounds crazy. That sounds wild. I feel some type of way about that.”
“It’s crazy to see him as a nameless person on a grid,” he continued. “And to know how valuable that property is because it’s a life and it’s not actually property, it’s a person. No name, just a color and an age and what sex you are.”
Wiz summed the heavy conversation up to a “reality check.”
Wiz Khalifa Romania Arrest
When Williamson gained his freedom, he registered to vote, despite the danger Black voters faced after the Civil War. “Even I feel all of them around me. I just don’t know who they are," Wiz Khalifa said of his late ancestors. "So now I’m able to say their name. So that just makes it even better."
The artist learned that his grandfather, Willie Wimbush Jr,. moved from the South to Pittsburgh during the Great Migration later in the episode. "It’s really good to learn it,” Wiz said of his grandfather's history. “Just to know, just to feel Papa Bush’s ambition through his story. That’s what I could feel.”
Wiz Khalifa's appearance on Finding Your Roots comes just a few weeks after it was reported that he could be facing up to nine months behind bars in Romania for alleged illegal drug possession. During his set at the Beach Please! Festival in Continesti, he allegedly lit up on stage, resulting in a 3,000 leu fine in addition to potential prison time.
