One man says his father was born into slavery. Here’s what Juneteenth means to his family.

In a northern Florida graveyard, as the trill of insects filled the air, 83-year-old Wilbur B. Bell knelt in the shade of overgrown trees and tapped on a worn gravestone.

“This is my father,” Bell said. “He represents memories.”

His father’s name, Cornelius Bell, is etched on the weathered marker along with a date of birth, May 18, 1865 — mere months before the 13th Amendment was ratified, officially abolishing slavery in the United States.

That would mean Cornelius Bell was born before slavery was outlawed in the United States. It was common law among slave states that the children of enslaved women legally became slaves.

Bell, according to his family, was born in Clinch County, Georgia, and was 75 years old when Wilbur – his eighth and youngest child – was born.

Today, only Wilbur and his sister, Lutisha, are still alive.

In 2022, a man named Daniel Smith, “who was believed to be the last surviving child of an enslaved person,” died at 90 years old, according to the New York Times. The article notes it’s difficult to know if there are other children of enslaved people still living.

Bell says he’s among those unaccounted descendants.

“We might be the only people in the United States who really can say that their parent, or parents, were born in slavery,” he told CNN, adding that he didn’t know his father had been born into slavery until “probably about 50 years ago.”

“We didn’t really dwell on it,” Bell said of when he first found out. “It was something at the time. That was it.”

But Bell said this year, a combination of curiosity to learn more about his family history and an appreciation for its historical significance compelled him to do something he’s never done in 83 years — visit the town in Georgia where he says his father was born.

“Everybody’s past is important,” Bell said.

Cornelius Bell was born in Homerville, Georgia, a town today of just over 2,000 people near the state’s southern border with Florida.

Last month, Bell toured the town with his daughter, Desiree Bell Davis, and his nephew, Vincent Bell, reflecting on, “what it must have been like in 1865, 1870, 1875.”

As they walked the small town streets past a large Methodist church on a hot southern Georgia afternoon, Bell marveled at his personal proximity to slavery, America’s original sin.

“I’m only a generation removed,” he mused.

It’s an era of US history many of Bell’s fellow citizens have vigorously debated how to remember. Nearly 160 years after Cornelius Bell’s birth and the abolition of slavery, the United States remains bitterly divided over the enduring legacy of the institution. A culture war has been fought in Congress, classrooms and courthouses over how to preserve and teach both the history of slavery in the US and the enduring impact centuries of racism and subjugation continue to have on people of color in the US.

But the fight to preserve that legacy is far more personal for the Bell family. A shared pursuit and passion for their family’s history brought Vincent and his uncle closer than they had ever been. The trip to Homerville marked the first time that they’d ever met in person.

“Just a few years ago, I had no idea that this part of my family existed,” Vincent said.

“My dad passed last year,” he added, choking up with the recognition of his rapidly fading links to both his family and this integral part of American history.

“When he passed, that was one less person that could say what my uncle can say.”

For Wilbur Bell, simply being in the town where his father was born was powerful.

“Just to be here at this age and you know, have my daughter and my nephew on both sides really witnessing this thing so down the road 50 years from now you’ll say I was part of that. You were a part of the discovery process,” said Bell.

Desiree shares his passion to teach future generations of their family about their history.

“Being his daughter, passing it on to my children, but also my grandchildren, this is something that’s going to be able to be passed on without them having to go and find it,” she said.

But the Bells, like many Black Americans, still know very little of their family history. Slavery ripped families apart, causing ruptures in ancestral lines that can prove to be difficult to retrace because records were often incomplete or scarce.

The Bells visited the Huxford-Spear Genealogical Library, hoping to learn more about their family’s roots.

The library manager, Elizabeth Coleman, showed them various cemetery and church records, as well as the family trees of others who share their last name in the hope that they may have enough similarities to offer clues about their origins.

Wilbur laughed as he pointed to a “Judge Wilborn Bell,” born in 1860 in nearby Lafayette County, Florida.

“There’s some name correlation, like there’s a ‘Wilburn’ Bell and here I’m a Wilbur Bell, so they forgot to put the ‘n’ on my name,” he said with a smile.

Bell also told CNN his father Cornelius Bell left Homerville and moved to nearby Lake City, Florida, when he was around 30 years old. So, they shifted their search to include those records as well.

“The next page is Falling Creek Cemetery,” Coleman said as she brought over a new set of documents. It’s the cemetery where Bell’s father is buried.

According to Cornelius Bell’s obituary, written in 1961, he was born in May 1865, and died on December 6, 1961, as a “highly respected citizen” who “owned and operated a farm and was retired at the time of his passing.”

Records from this time, however, were not always consistent.

A CNN review of federal census data from 1940 and 1950, and of Florida statewide census data from 1935 supports that Cornelius Bell was born either on or before May 1865. Both his tombstone and obituary list him as being born in May 1865, as well.

However, federal census records from 1930 list Bell being born in or around 1872.

CNN also obtained a death certificate from the Bell family which lists his birthday as May 1868, which Wilbur Bell insists was a mistake that was overlooked when a family member signed the certificate decades ago.

Wilbur Bell told CNN when he was born in 1940, his father was 75 years old.

The varying listings are indicative of a “challenging” dynamic, particularly for census records between 1790 and 1940, according to the US National Archives and Records Administration.

The National Archives notes “names, ages, birthplaces, and other information may not be 100% correct on each census. Accuracy depended on the knowledge or memory of the person providing the information.”

It also wasn’t even until 1933 that all states were registering live births and deaths “with acceptable event coverage and providing the required data to the Bureau for the production of national birth and death statistics,” according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Despite the conflicting records, Juneteenth has come to hold a special significance for the Bell family. The national holiday – celebrated on June 19 – commemorates the day in 1865 when the last enslaved Black Americans in Texas were finally set free – nearly three years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

The commemoration acknowledges that freedom and equality for people of color in the United States has been a hard fought, gradual process — and that fight continues today.

Cornelius Bell was born almost seven months before Georgia ratified the 13th Amendment, satisfying the number of states needed to officially ratify the amendment abolishing slavery.

It’s been more than 150 years since that time and yet for the Bells the connection is only a family member away.

Wilbur Bell said for most of his life, Juneteenth “didn’t ring a bell because we never celebrated it.” It was only recently that he and his family began commemorating the day, along with the rest of the country, he said.

“With the pushback on history and what the country’s been going through for the past, I guess eight years, Juneteenth was a new day for Black people,” Bell said.

It also marks “a new day for the country because it brought people closer together,” he added.

Vincent Bell said he recognizes slavery “really wasn’t that long ago,” and knows commemorating that freedom is important, but he also wants freedom from it.

“I wish we just stopped talking about slavery,” he told CNN, as he reflected on how at times he sees it as a mental hurdle toward future progress. “We can’t do anything about it. It was a horrible thing and to some extent, perhaps we still feel the effects of that. But we can’t grow, and we can’t move forward if we don’t let it go,” he added.

Wilbur Bell tends to agree, as someone who says he’s had to hustle for everything in his life.

“It’s about moving forward, ya know?” he told CNN.

Moving forward while honoring the past — that’s what Bell said he hoped to achieve this Juneteenth by retracing his father’s life and keeping his legacy alive for future generations.

“I remember talking to my father. He was a hard worker. He was a farmer,” said Bell, who ultimately settled on one enduring description.

“He was a survivor. He was a real survivor.”