Ryan contemplates his family history

Many of whom I told in Cape Town about my family history are quite surprised to hear that my parents are 3^rd generation South Africans. Coming to South Africa I didn’t know much about our history and family roots except that they were both born and raised in Johannesburg. After traveling there for our spring break excursion, I’ve learned a lot about their past. My dad came to the U.S. at the age of 17 as a high school exchange student in Illinois. At the end of the school year on his way home, he spent a night at a college professor’s house near Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. The next morning before his continuing journey for the airport, the professor asked if my dad would be interested in attending the college he taught for. This was the beginning of our family in the United States. My mom grew up in a less privileged family as the youngest sibling of many. She was lucky enough to be the only daughter to attend university of her sisters with help from an older brother and against the beliefs of my grandfather. It was really cool to pass by and briefly see the University of Witwatersrand where she got her medical degree and to pass by my parents’ hometowns of Robertsham and Mondeor on our way back from Sharpeville. It was really interesting to be able to link the historical event of the Soweto uprisings to a major influence in why my family immigrated shortly after 1976 learning that they lived only 25 minutes away from the area where people were getting shot and killed in the streets. Traveling to Johannesburg and talking with Vernon really helped point me in the right direction with the questions I had such as why my parents were classified as non-white and not colored or Asian, and where my last name ‘King’ originated which is clearly not Chinese. In my conversation with Vernon over breakfast one morning, I learned that some Asians were classified as non-white and given honorary white status as a result of diplomatic relations between South Africa and countries before its isolation. Visiting the Hector Pieterson museum and learning an interesting fact that his family surname had been changed in attempt to obtain a more privileged classification, really made me ponder the idea that my surname could have a similar history. As these are just thoughts, I hope to obtain more information on my family history when I travel back to Johannesburg next month with my parents and sisters to meet more extended family.