How Can Learning Our Family History Help to Heal Our Nation?

            I have two VIPs for this week, Will Ford and Matt Lockett. They are the authors of The Dream King: How the Dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. Is Being Fulfilled to Heal Racism in America.” I would not normally say this, but it has meaning to their story: Ford is black, and Lockett is white. They gave an overview of their story in a podcast with Virginia Allen at The Daily Signal. 


            The story told by Ford and Lockett shows that God is involved in the details of our lives. He has a plan for each of His children, and each child has their own mission in this mortal life. It just so happens that Ford and Lockett share a joint mission. Their story can help America “move forward as a united country, remembering the past but choosing hope and healing instead of unforgiveness.”

The book written by Ford and Lockett was endorsed by Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Will Ford and Matt Lockett are indeed advancing the God-inspired dream of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Two paths, united beyond skin color, came together to bridge the racial divide in this compelling saga destined to turn the pages of history toward a victory.”

            Ford and Lockett met at a 2005 prayer meeting when Lockett listened to Ford’s story of his people and a 200-year-old cast iron kettle pot that was used by slaves in his family. The pot was used for washing clothes, but it became their prayer kettle. The owner would beat his slaves for any reason, including prayer. He wanted his slaves to be Christian, but he did not want them to pray because prayer would give them hope and hope might cause them to run away. Therefore, their prayers had to be in secret – sort of like the people of Alma in the Book of Mormon (Mosiah 24:10-14).


            The slaves held their prayer meetings late at night and used the pot to ensure that their prayers were not overheard. They turned the kettle upside down and propped it up with rocks on the edges. They prostrated themselves on the ground, put their lips in the opening between the kettle and the ground, and whispered their prayers. They hoped that the kettle would muffle their prayers as they prayed through the night.


            None of the slaves believed that they would see freedom, “so they prayed for the freedom of their children and the next generation.” However, freedom came in their lifetime, and a teenage girl kept the pot and passed the story down in her family.


            Lockett’s backstory is that he developed a strong desire to know more of his family history after his father died unexpectedly. The Lockett family did not know any of their genealogy, and he spent about a year trying to figure it out. After the struggle and frustration of searching for a year, he “hit the same roadblocks that other family members had hit in the past.” He could trace his family back to his dad’s grandfather in Kentucky but no further.

During this frustrating time, Lockett “had this very strange dream from God.” In the dream “God began to speak to me … about what he wanted to do to shift America to a culture of life specifically, but how he was going to do that through day and night prayer.” Led by the dream, Lockett tried to track down what happened in the dream.

Lockett learned about a prayer meeting being held on Martin Luther King Day in Washington, D.C. on January 17, 2005, at the Lincoln Memorial. He took time off work and flew across the nation to attend the prayer meeting where he met Ford.

Strange as it may seem, Ford was also there because of a dream. He had been traveling around the country with the pot and telling his story. Ford’s dream was about the dream of Dr. King. In his dream, God began to “deal” with Ford “about the unforgiveness issues that I had with the white community” and the baggage he was carrying. He shared the dream with a friend, and the friend invited him to the prayer meeting at the Lincoln Memorial.

Lockett listened to Ford’s story and was sort of angry because Ford knew his family history and Lockett was still searching. Then he heard Ford mention that the kettle had been handed down after the end of “slavery to Harriet Locket, who gave it to Nora Locket, who gave it all the way down to Will Ford III.” Lockett was intrigued to hear Ford say his family name.

After the meeting Lockett went up to meet Ford, and the two men compared notes about where their ancestors were from and how they spelled the last name. The Locketts were from Kentucky, and the Lockets were from Louisiana. The coincidence was so amazing that they prayed together. They “prayed about the past of America, … prayers of repentance for sins of the past, prayers of forgiveness, and then … for the future of this nation as well.”

That prayer was the beginning of “developing a strong friendship and praying together for racial reconciliation.” They traveled together and learned to love each other. After being friends for ten years, Lockett visited Appomattox Court House, which is in the middle of Virginia and is the place where General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

Lockett and another friend went to the courthouse to pray. While they were in the visitor center, the friend picked up a book and opened it to a random page. The title of the page was, “The Battle of Lockett’s Farm.” Lockett did not know anything about the topic, so he researched it. He discovered that the “last battle of the American Civil War happened in the front yard of a family named Lockett, spelled with two T’s.” Here Lockett was, ten years later, hearing his name again and thinking, “This has to man something.” 

About this same time, Lockett’s brother discovered that the Lockett forefathers came through as settlers in Virginia in the year 1645. Lockett said to his brother, “Virginia? Have I got a story for you.” He tells the story to his brother, and his brother asks, “That’s not that place down by Appomattox Court House, is it? … Oh, I just found the documents on it. That was our family.”

Of course, Lockett shared the discovery with Ford. They were amazed because both had a relic from the past. Ford had a kettle, and Lockett had a family farmhouse that was now a historical site. When Lockett visited the farmhouse, he found the Lockett family history framed and hanging on the wall – and it matched the research done by his brother.

The caretaker asked Lockett how much he knew about the family. Since Lockett knew little, the man started “talking about the Locketts who had left and gone to Kentucky.” He said that some of the Locketts moved to the deep South and were “involved in very significant historical events.” Then he said, “Some left and went to Louisiana and, in some cases, there was a clerical error in the handwritten ledgers, and they misspelled the name and they dropped one of the T’s.” That was the connection between the Locketts and Lockets.

Lockett gathered all the information and went to visit Ford in Dallas. Ford told Lockett that his “grandfather was born Lawrence Locket” but was given a different last name because his parents did not want him to have a slave last name. His family had always known that they were Lockets. Ford hired a genealogist who discovered a man named Isaac Locket who lived in Lake Providence on a plantation in 1870 (1870 census). He was 90 years old five years after the end of slavery, so it is likely that he was a slave on that property. In the document, Isaac Locket said he was originally from Virginia.”

Lockett and Ford compiled research for another year and a half and learned that Lockett’s family owned Ford’s family as slaves. This discovery put the two “friends on a path of forgiveness and reconciliation with one another.” After another year and a half, Lockett discovered that another ancestor, Daniel Lockett, was a Methodist abolitionist that went about setting slaves free during the Revolutionary War. This discovery helped to heal the gap between the two friends, and they felt compelled to tell their story. Ford gave the following explanation for writing the book.

I feel like we wrote it, one, because we didn’t have a choice, the way God interwove our lives together, and we just could not not see the handiwork of God in the whole thing. The Puritans used to have this way of conceptualizing God and talking about … providence, and it was just so interesting that the story starts in Lake Providence, Louisiana.

Providence is the continuous activity of God by which he preserves and governs, just the way God looks over seemingly insignificant things and apparent accidents. Seeing the handiwork of God and how he brought us together, but then understanding it.

If God is that serious about the details of our life in this, it means, one, he’s really serious about life and the intrinsic value of every person, he’s really serious about healing the racial divide, and I also believe he’s really serious about bringing revival, bringing another awakening to this nation.

            This is a powerful and interesting story, especially as we consider the racial strife in our nation right now. The book sounds interesting, but we all have interesting stories in our family history. What have you found in researching your ancestors?