Rock of the Moors: Karma in action, or, reaping what was sown

This is the little village of Roquemaure, in the Languadoc region of France. It is where my last name, Rockeymoore, comes from. There are many spellings of this name from Roquemore, Roguemore, Rochemure, Roquimore, Rougemox, Rocmore and Rockmore, to how my father spelled it which is how my siblings and I spell it.

The name appears to be a slave name only for us, as the Roquemores had many slaves and none of us black male Rockmores have done a genetic test — to check the Y chromosome descent — that I am aware of.

The two brothers who came to the United States in the 1700s were wealthy Huguenots, fleeing religious repression. They and their descendants settled in South Carolina and Georgia and then, in 1849, a branch of the family migrated to Panola County in Texas where their business was agriculture and which makes my living family 4th, 5th and 6th generation Texans.

The name became biracial after the Civil War and there are black Rockmores all over the South and North, many of us probably not blood related either.

The funny thing, to me, is that the original name of the French village and the…