Anna Deavere Smith

Basil Biggs

The fellowship project is the play Basil Biggs. In 2014, Henry Louis Gates, Jr featured the family of Anna Deavere’s Smith family in his widely acclaimed PBS series, Finding Your Roots. He presented his findings to Smith turning the pages of a large, ornate book designed for the show. Page after page held fascinating stories about both her maternal and paternal lineage. He landed on one page that elicited from Smith the exclamation, “That’s a play!” It was the story of Basil Biggs, her great-great-grandfather, a conductor on the Underground Railroad. He also ran a crew of eight Black men who, after the Battle of Gettysburg, disinterred bodies of Union men, laid them out to be identified, put them in coffins, and re-interred them.