Many black people in the South can trace their roots back to slavery.

But for one in ten black people living in the region today, there's another origin story,

immigration.

One person one day, he was like, I knew from Mexico.

I was like, no, I'm from Honduras.

He was like, ah, this black people are Honduras?

I like to ask people what they know about Somalis.

And unfortunately, what most people know about Somalis is like pirates.

That's number one thing.

Hunger and war.

Marangeli Zapata and Leila Ahmed both live in Tennessee, which has one of the fastest

growing populations of black immigrants in the South.

MPR's Leah Dinella spent months in the state talking to black immigrants who have struggled

to make sense of their racial identities here in the U.S.

Like Claude Gata-Bouquet, who came to Nashville in 1995 from Rwanda.

Rwanda's a really beautiful country, but at the time, the sky was covered with a big dark

mushroom and the stench of dust, smoke, burning structures, and decomposing human flesh made

you want to throw up.

I mean, I want to throw up now.

Growing up, Gata-Bouquet says most of his friends didn't know where he was from.

He didn't bother telling them.

That was hiding from my story.

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