Happy New Year – (or as we think of it, 282 days until pub date)

Welcome to 2012! Today is the first day of the year in which Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade will be published by Beacon Press.

Sharon and I will spend most of this year preparing for (and anxiously anticipating) our book to hit shelves (both physical and virtual) on October 9. Gather at the Table will be available in hardcover as well as electronically (Kindle, Nook, etc), and hopefully on audio.

Throughout this year we will update you on news about the book, our ongoing journey, and will create occasional videos from our travels together. We thank you for spreading the word to your friends. Anyone can subscribe to this blog (click the link in the upper right corner of this page) and to our YouTube page (yellow “subscribe” button near the top left of the page).

We’ve just posted our latest video, a brief encapsulation of our 6,000-miles-in-one-month-road-trip through 21 states this past spring. Let us know what you think!

Occupy Wall Street!

The United States has a long history of powerful, privileged people successfully dividing less-powerful and less-privileged people by race, class, gender, and other social constructs in order to protect their power and privilege.

Over the past year the world has witnessed the less-powerful rising up in more than a dozen countries in what became known as Arab Spring. Regimes have toppled in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Protests have now sprung up across the United States as mostly-peaceful protesters rise up against a system they conclude does not represent their interests and well-being.

Over the past three years Sharon and I have visited twenty-six states, Washington, DC, and Tobago as we researched and wrote Gather at the Table together.  We’ve witnessed the impacts — past and present — experienced by the less-privileged, the disenfranchised, the 99%. As Sharon wrote in Special Delivery, our most recent drive in her Jeep took us to Boston to deliver our manuscript to Beacon Press.

Upon our return to New York on October 25, we parked near her son’s home in Harlem and took the subway to Zaccati Park. We wanted to check out Occupy Wall Street for ourselves. What we found bears little resemblance to the negative media reports we’ve seen. We encountered a multicultural, multi-generational group of people that are passionate about a variety of interconnected issues.

First Amendment rights have, in the past few decades, been increasingly restricted by more and more government regulations about when and where and how loud and how long people can protest. Yet Occupy Wall Street continues.

Several friends, upon learning that Sharon and I planned to visit Occupy Wall Street, asked me if I could find out what the protesters want. There’s no singular voice, no clear list of demands, no real organization. What I believe is that the eclectic, unorganized nature of this organization is its greatest strength. They don’t fit a “mold” that is easily understood by older generations of people raised to respect “order.” I think we’re going to have to get used to the discomfort.

I don’t get the sense that most protesters want to end capitalism. Rather, they want justice and equity that have been sacrificed in the name of greed. As Nicolas Kristof pointed out in “Crony Capitalism Comes Home” in the New York Times, Wall Street tycoons are capitalists when they are raking in the dough, and socialists when everything crashes and they happily rake in government bail-outs.

“…many of America’s major banks are too big to fail, so they can privatize profits while socializing risk.

“The upshot is that financial institutions boost leverage in search of supersize profits and bonuses. Banks pretend that risk is eliminated because it’s securitized. Rating agencies accept money to issue an imprimatur that turns out to be meaningless. The system teeters, and then the taxpayer rushes in to bail bankers out.”

It will be interesting to see how Occupy Wall Street evolves as protesters are faced with winter’s rain and snow, increased anxiety from local government officials and police, and a presidential election year.

Support is growing in two sectors that some may find surprising. Military veterans are increasing their presence and profile. Thousands of wealthy people have joined together as We are the 1%. From their website:

For those of us with more than we need who believe in a more just distribution of resources, it’s important that we stand up and tell the truth about how the deck has been stacked in our favor, and that 100 percent of us need a different world.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is directly related to our Gather at the Table effort to live the model of healing embodied in Coming to the Table; to understand and acknowledge the truth of history, to make connections with others, to heal our collective damage, and to take action together.

We are the 99%.

(For additional perspective, read “Gandhi’s Wings: Occupy Wall Street and the Redistribution of Anxiety” by Robert Johnson; formerly Senior Economist of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, Chief Economist of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, and founder of the Move Your Money campaign)

Family Reunion

Gavin Road, Noxubee County, Mississippi

I just returned from a family reunion. It was attended by people, old and young, who have been getting together for more than 30 years. I had never known any of them until we met this weekend at the Elliot School of International Studies at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.  I was scheduled to deliver a genealogy presentation that would help explain how we are all related. I did my best.

Everyone at the reunion is connected, either through genetic or affinitive relationships, emanating from a Scottish immigrant named Charles Gavin. Charles arrived in America in 1695; one of a group of twelve led by his father-in-law. The group settled in North Carolina and became quite prosperous owners of land and slaves. Charles’ children spread their wings as economic opportunities became available; migrating into Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, where they also owned lots of land and slaves.

My job at the family reunion was to share what I have learned through genealogical research over the last three decades. Supported by documents that prove my findings, I put it all into an historical context that was easy for people who are not genealogists to understand. As I delivered my presentation, I was greeted with stunned silence, followed by ovations. For the first time, everyone in the audience was given the opportunity to see a coherent picture of our history and relationships. We finally had a place to “belong.”

The part of the Gavin family history that involves me (and the people at the family reunion) starts in Mississippi. Just as  Charles had come to America, they went to Mississippi as a group. They arrived sometime around 1831, after the signing of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, which ceded Native American lands to the U.S. government. The treaty created a major bonanza for people like the Gavins and they took full advantage.

In this quest for economic advancement, the ancestors I claim had nothing to celebrate. They were slaves. It was their free labor that built the Gavin franchise.  Collectively, the Gavin family owned at least 125 people in five counties. And that was just in Mississippi. Family members also had plantations in Alabama, South Carolina and Florida. After the Civil War, they even went to Brazil as “Confederadoes” and owned coffee plantations and slaves there as well.

Our side of the configuration forces a confrontation with the proverbial “nig—- in the woodpile.” At least two Gavin men fathered children with female slaves. In my line, that slave woman was Bettie Warfe. She was taken to Mississippi from Virginia as a nine year old child by John Warf, an ambitious man who hoped to cash in on the frontier bonanza. He bought some land near the Gavins in Noxubee County, Mississippi and proceeded to cultivate cotton, just like them. But he didn’t do as well as they did. In the wake of the Civil War, he cashed in, selling his land and slaves. He traded Bettie to the Gavins for a horse and ventured further onward into Mississippi, where he bought a farm christened “Starvation Hill.”

My ancestor (Bettie) had 17 children with  a scion of the Gavin family. He was the nephew of  another Gavin who fathered children with yet another slave woman. His name was Gabriel. Her name was Harriett. She had four children with him. Owned by Gabriel’s father (remember Charles? Gabriel was one of his sons), Harriet ultimately became part of an inheritance. Charles’ will left his slaves to his wife Margaret. When she died in 1853, these slaves were distributed to the next generation. In 1853, Harriet and her children were broken up and dispersed to other family members (not the father of her children), where they would continue their servitude.

When both this man (Gabriel) and his nephew (my ancestor) died, the family fought tooth and nail to keep their wealth. Neither of them left anything whatsoever to their offspring. Both were adjudicated by law to be lifelong bachelors with no heirs.  My slave ancestor (Bettie) fought the estate of her children’s father for five years after he died in 1896. She was ultimately “settled” in 1902 with $125 and an admonition to “get out of Mississippi before we start treating you like the nig……s you are.”

My “little” story is just one in a cavalcade of historical rumination. African Americans have a long and arduous history that reaches from the cotton fields of the South to the industrial cities of the North. We provided the labor that built America — literally. We are the only American immigrants who did not come here by choice and, over the four centuries we have been in this land, have contributed in every possible way to the evolution of American society.

I have a hard time coming to terms with all this history. Engaging in a journey with Tom DeWolf, who descends from the largest slave trading family in American history, and writing Gather at the Table, is my attempt to find resolution and peace. Attending the Gavin family reunion is another.

Our ancestors struggled too long and too hard to be forgotten and I am firmly committed to the idea that we can empower our future by honoring our past. I can think of no better way to do that than by researching my genealogy and seeing life through my ancestor’s eyes. Tom has asked me why I don’t claim the white part of my ancestry. If you read the story above, I wonder: Would you?

Once my research led me to the GAVIN surname, a door was opened for me to journey to courthouses, cemeteries and farms all over Mississippi. Whenever I go, I do my best to walk consciously in the footsteps our ancestors left behind. I have been all over Africa, the Caribbean and America. I have been to every county in Mississippi where I found the Gavin name. I have spent days poring over books and microfilms in the research hall of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson. I have been to what remains of the Gavin family farm in Noxubee County — along the road that still bears their name. I crossed a cow pasture to explore the Gavin graveyard, carrying a machete to cut back weeds and wearing boots to deter snakes. I drove through Gabriel Gavin’s Sandy Land plantation and found a place still known as “The Quarters.” This is, no doubt, the historical location where the slaves (the ancestors whom I proudly claim and honor) lived.

Farther afield, I have walked the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where civil rights demonstrators were beaten and incarcerated on “Bloody Sunday” so that my great grandparents could exercise their right to vote. I went to Bryant’s Store in Money, Mississippi to witness where a boy named Emmett Till made a fatal mistake. I visited Tuskegee Institute, where my grand uncle (a child of rape by a white man against a black woman) learned the electrical trade. I stood at “The Forks in the Road,” a slave market at Natchez, Mississippi where my ancestors might have been bought or sold. I have been to Mocambique, where DNA testing said the genes of my ancestor, Bettie Warfe Gavin, were born.

There is a bitter memory associated with almost every location I have visited. Yet, every time I venture forth, I am reminded of a paradox. As bitter as the memories may be, the South is the only homeland most African Americans will ever know. And Africa is a great mystery we may never discern. No matter where we live now, these are the places that, through genealogy, should live forever in our hearts.

There is much we need to know, not only about our ancestors, but about the times in which they lived. A good genealogist is also a good historian. We know that we can’t impose the standards of our modern world on the conditions of the past. Yet, I continue to try and come to terms with the gravity of history that juxtaposes against my own personal family story. I truly want to find a place in my heart where forgiveness resides. It will be obvious from this essay that it ain’t easy.

It is high time that America get over it’s obsession with race. I know that and appreciate the call. In response, I engaged in this “healing journey” that Tom and I are on; hoping to deliver a book that will help show the way for others to reconciliation and peace. It continues to be a journey that is fraught with anguish on my side. I can only hope that I am up to the challenge.

Lawd, help me!

Founder’s Day

a ruminating cow

I spent a lovely day yesterday at the Founder’s Day Street Fair in the town in which I live. I volunteered to man (?) the information booth for the local chamber of commerce. I figured this would be a good way to meet my neighbors and begin to assimilate into the local community.

It was a great experience!

One of things I did as I sat there — waiting for people to stop to get site maps and buy raffle tickets — was to think about culture. What is “culture”? What is “American culture”? How does it express itself in places like this? Who gets to participate? Am I one of “them” or an “outsider”?

I should explain at this point that I moved to this place in 2010 after a lifetime of living in big, cosmopolitan cities. It is a small, rural town on the outskirts of New York City. In its heyday, it was a summer mecca for families hoping to escape the summer heat of the city. It is a place where the sky is blue, the stars twinkle at night and I can hear the sound of a babbling brook in the background after a  big rain — not to mention the whippoorwills that sing in the evening and the rabbits that hop across my lawn in daylight. People here hunt and are very patriotic. They are mostly Republicans. Like everywhere else these days, unemployment is a big problem. Most people work in either health care or prison industries. Oddly, even in the wake of economic distress, most do not farm or have home gardens, which I would expect since we all live on pretty large homesteads. Of the one thousand or so people who live here full time, less than 30 are African American.

When I came here, I was worried about my safety. There are some “sovereigns” roaming around and I was accosted in my early days by a man at the post office who apparently didn’t like my Obama bumper sticker.

Other than that, living here has been a productive experience. As I write my book, the solitude is a blessing. And then, there is my garden, which yields tasty (yes, they DO have a taste) tomatoes, lettuce and other succulent delights.

But back to Founder’s Fest….

At the dunking station manned by the fire department, one of the first comments I heard was “Come on, hit me… you’re throwing like a girl!” Guess this town has a way to go on gender equality

I met the guy who is running for city supervisor. He’s a DEMOCRAT! He said he was not really a politician, but realized that, if things are to get better, somebody has to stand up and try to make a difference. And that was not a black/white thing; it was just citizenship in action. We talked about how people get “the government they deserve.” He was so sincere, I think I’d give him a shot.

There were hot dogs (all American?), Italian ice and calzone at the food booths (a nod to the big Italian population hereabouts). There was also a white guy (ethnicity unknown) slaving over a barbecue grill billed as “Hog Heaven.” The Chinese people who operate the local Chinese restaurant weren’t in evidence, although I saw the East Indian guy who runs the gas station, pushing his kid in a stroller. There was at least one Latino family. I only got to meet two of the African American adults. The six black children I saw were in the company of white people who were obviously not their parents. (Where were their parents?)

The bands did their best to play “down low blues” and jazz…. as well as hard rock (ZZ Top) and hard core (Hank Williams) country. On a couple of occasions, I couldn’t resist tapping my foot.

A person who signed his raffle ticket “USMC” won the VFW raffle. I honor whatever service he is giving and hope it is not in Afghanistan.

I bought a bubble gun for my grandchildren and a plastic slinky… not as good as the old metal ones, but it will do.

My conclusion at the end of the day is that is that there is — definitely — an “American culture.” It is mostly a European culture that does not — and has never — had to consider us minorities, until recently. But that definitely seems to be changing. I can’t fathom comments like the one Michelle Bachmann made recently about “not all cultures are equal.” From my vantage point — today more than at any time in history — our cultures ARE equal. They ALL need to be honored and celebrated — just not to the diminution of others.

I don’t want to be angry at or afraid of white people anymore.

The Promised Land

When I was a child, many of my friends were recent arrivals from the South whose families came north during “The Great Migration.” Those of us who were born in Chicago sometimes laughed at their funny accents and country ways. There were also many children who disappeared every summer. When school let out for vacation, their parents sent them south to experience country life with their grandparents.

I was not one of those children. Although I have undeniable roots in Alabama and Mississippi, I was not born there nor did I have grandparents in those locations to spend my summers with. I didn’t visit the South until I was a married woman with a child of my own. I have been making pilgrimages back at almost every opportunity since.

My journeys take me to a lot of old courthouses, cemeteries and farms. As a genealogist, I believe the best way to appreciate the truth about my ancestors is to walk in their footsteps. And that is one of the things I did during my most recent excursion with Tom DeWolf.

Together, we visited the courthouse in Forrest County, Mississippi; a county named for Nathan B. Forrest, a Confederate general and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. We also went to Money, Mississippi where we saw the dilapidated remains of the general store where Emmett Till purportedly whispered at the proprietor’s wife, Carolyn Bryant. We walked the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma where civil rights demonstrators were beaten and incarcerated on “Bloody Sunday”; Tuskegee University, whose buildings the KKK had a habit of burning down and Clarksdale, where, as late as 1997, the high school prom was a segregated affair. (No wonder Clarksdale is known as the place where the blues was born.) We went to Charlottesville, Virginia where 80 of Thomas Jefferson’s 200 slaves were held in bondage — including some of his own children. In Richmond, we experienced ghostly chills as we walked the Slavery Trail. In Tulsa, Oklahoma we relived “the single worst incident of racial violence in American history” which involved  the entire black part of town being burned to the ground in  a fit of white rage.

Almost every location we visited has a bitter memory associated with it. Every time I go South, I am reminded of that and the paradox that the South, as bitter as the memories may be, is the only homeland most African Americans will ever know.

It is interesting to note today that African American people are engaged in a reverse pattern of migration. They are pulling up stakes in northern cities like New York and Chicago to return to places like Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia.

One thing my elders used to tell me is that Southerner’s were not hypocrites. They let you know straight out where you stood. That place was at the back of the bus, in the balcony of the theater, drinking at the colored water fountain and standing in line while others were served. In the north, they played a game of saying you were equal and that color didn’t matter, even though it did. We were last hired and first fired, paid less and expected to do more, given the dirtiest and most menial of jobs, redlined into conclaves where integration was a myth and educated to the point of only functional literacy.

I have a hard time these days gauging whether and how much things have changed — South OR North. A recent Pew Center poll (April, 2011) of Mississippi Republicans reported that 46 percent think interracial marriage should be illegal. At the same time, Mississippi leads the nation in growth of interracial relationships. According to Census Bureau data, the figure went up by 70 percent between 2000 and 2010. The nation’s mixed-race population is also growing dramatically, with the South leading the way. In Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee, this population expanded by more than 50 percent. I am not sure what this translates into in terms of actual numbers. If you start with two people, a 50 percent increase would take that up to three.

I am not advocating here for interracial relationships or reverse migration. The gist of the matter is that, in spite of all the bitter memories, my ancestral paths keep leading me South. In almost every town, I haven’t needed a GPS to find the ancestral homestead. At virtually every cemetery, I feel like I’m holding a dowsing rod as I discover graves of ancestors I may not even have been looking for. I feel very much at home with my former in-laws in the little town of Tallassee and enjoy riding back roads during deer season with my shotgun in tow.

If my son weren’t so committed to living in New York with my grandchildren, I might be on the midnight train because, after all is said and done, where — exactly — IS the promised land?

 

Should African Americans portray enslaved people at historic sites?

Nicole Moore, Public Historian, Blogger, Consultant and Interpreter of Slave Life

After posting Colonial Williamsburg: History on Steroids a few days ago, I received more comments on Facebook than for anything I’ve written in several months.

In response to this statement, “it is often quite challenging to find people of color willing to act as interpreters for displays of enslaved people” one friend wrote:

I would strongly discourage any African American from participating in a re-enactment as an enslaved human. I wouldn’t give anyone that satisfaction of being on display in that way. What’s worse, many people would visit those places and find satisfaction in seeing that (and not as a learning experience).

Other Facebook friends responded:

there are some things that are not fit for “re-enactment”…how does one do that with any degree of reverence when the experience itself represents one of the worst forms of human debasement?…degradation in the pursuit of profit…

and…

it would make about as much sense as having Jews re-enact what it was like to be thrown into the ovens.

and…

My take is that these “interpretations” are far from that. They’re reenactments that don’t provide any political context, or moral and ethical critiques of what’s being presented as American history. The actors (or reenactors, a telling term in and of itself) aren’t provided with adequate training to lead much needed dialogues that engage visitors in making larger socio-economic connections, talking about race head-on, and the issues the enslavement of African and then African-American people bring up. Jews have reenacted not “what it was like to be thrown into the ovens” but what happened to Jews when they were murdered en masse in Europe’s gas chambers to ensure that this world history will not be forgotten, to educate, to pay tribute, and have done so very effectively in movies, where the historic context exists within a clear moral one.

Then someone suggested we check out the website Interpreting Slave Life by Nicole Moore. What an eye-opener! I quickly became Facebook friends with Nicole and she soon entered the conversation:

I think what people may miss about re-enactments and interpretation is that there are mainly two different ways to handle it. What Williamsburg does is first person interpretation…so that the visitor gets the experience as if they traveled back in time. Other sites will do a third person interpretation where you may look the part and do the work (as the case for living history sites) but they are explaining and demonstrating to the visitor rather than “acting” for them. Both are very powerful tools to explain difficult topics but I would encourage the visitor really look at their own comfort level and see if they are ready to step outside of it. I love what I do because I get to really expose people to a difficult topic but tailor the experience to what they can handle.

Interestingly, NPR ran a story the very next day, June 13 on this very subject: Actors, Interpreters Bring US Colonial Past Alive. The interview refers to a story from the Washington Post that ran June 9: The Complicated History of Colonial Williamsburg. I strongly encourage you to read both articles and spend some time on Nicole Moore’s website and get her take on What is Interpreting Slave Life?

Thank you to all my Facebook friends who participated in this lively conversation, and especially to Nicole Moore. It shows just how much we can learn from each other.

HOME

Ooooooooooooooo what a trip!!!

Tom and I just arrived back in NY state after a grueling 22 day journey of  5,867 miles through 21 states.

I am SO HAPPY to be back to the place I call home these days. Upon arrival, I leapt out of my Jeep with joy! After making sure my key still fit in the front door (it did), I hugged my obviously ecstatic but ungrateful Khatsi (she cooed and then swatted me) and embraced my house. I walked through all the rooms, opened all the windows, fed my neglected plants, watered my dry garden, fired up the aromatic oil dish and (thanks Tom), unloaded the car. (Oh, yeah — just to be honest — somewhere in that process, I made a strong welcome home vodka cocktail.)

This road trip was unlike any other I have ever taken in my life. To say that  we experienced and learned a lot would be a gross understatement. From the backwoods of Alabama through the byways of Mississippi to the tidewaters of Virginia…. almost every stop was a revelation.

I had hoped to be much more prolific along the way. When we embarked on our journey, I promised myself that I would overcome my habitual writer’s block and produce reams of reportage. I really wanted to share a blow-by-blow account of it all. But there were just so many things to do, see and think about that my vow quickly fell by the wayside. The emotions of so many profound moments consumed my resolve.

I literally slept in “Miss Ann’s” bed; figuratively hoed cotton like a sharecropper; prayed at Dr. King’s grave; retrieved slave transfer documents; overturned historic tombstones; walked in the footsteps of people sold “down river”; sang the blues; ate like a pig (and then petted one) and found respite at a monument to reconciliation.  Whew!

I am hoping to be more prolific now that I am back at “home base” — the nest that gives me comfort as I try to unravel the evidence of historic mysteries that have made me laugh, fume, weep and sigh my whole life long.

This journey is at the heart of what Tom and I are trying to write…. to share…. to express…. so that others will not have to drive so far for so long to so many places with a simple goal of finding peace.

It is amazing grace that brought us here. I need that peace be still so that I can untangle what I have learned.

Colonial Williamsburg: History on Steroids

Sharon and I decided to wrap up our three-week U.S. road trip with a visit to a couple of famous and significant sites that interpret the arrival of European and African people to the Virginia shore. We bought tickets ($35 each) to Colonial Williamsburg and intended to follow a day there with a visit to Jamestown. Things looked promising.

Among the many historic homes, tours, interpreters, and displays on more than 300 acres at Williamsburg we would visit Great Hopes Plantation and take in two presentations. “Revolutionary Woman of Consequence” is the story of Edith Cumbo, a free African Virginian woman who describes the role of women during the American Revolution. “Workin’ the Soil, Healing the Soul” explains the lives of slaves on plantations, the laws they lived with, and how they survived.

Unfortunately, things did not go as planned. There is no charge for either performance, but you do need reservations. Both were already full. We decided to try to make the best of things and walked to the Great Hopes Plantation,which “represents African American slave interpretation, carpenters, and working farmers who were not part of huge tobacco plantations, showing what they did and how they lived.” On the Saturday when we visited, there was only one interpreter at one building inside the entire enclosure and no signs at any of the buildings to explain what we were viewing.

We left the plantation and decided to check out other exhibits. It was hot. We were disappointed. I was irritated. We saw nothing that interested us; nothing that contributed to the purpose of our journey. We were soon lost with no idea how to get back to the entry and our car. Williamsburg is huge. Eventually we found a shuttle bus that took us back.

I’m sure that many, many people benefit from all there is to learn at Williamsburg. It just didn’t work for our purposes. The kind folks there understood our situation and gave us a refund for our tickets. Sharon described Williamsburg as “the Frontier Culture Museum on steroids.” On the one hand, it’s great that so many people are interested in history. On the other hand it feels a bit like Disneyland. How do you balance such things? How do you achieve huge success and still maintain a personal feel for visitors? I’m going to have to think more about this.

The day before, Sharon and I found the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton quite by accident. We saw a road sign on our way into town and looked it up on the internet. It wasn’t busy when we arrived so were treated to a private tour from one of the volunteers. We were quite impressed. It’s a “living” museum. The interpreters wear hand-made period clothing; often from silk or cotton cloth made on site. Food is grown and harvested and cheese is made there. Everything sold in their museum store is made in America.

From their website:

“To tell the story of these early immigrants and their American descendents, the Museum has moved or reproduced examples of traditional rural buildings from England, Germany, Ireland, West Africa, and America. The Museum engages the public at these exhibits with a combination of interpretive signage and living history demonstrations. The outdoor exhibits are located in two separate areas: the Old World and America. The Old World exhibits show rural life and culture in four homelands of early migrants to the American colonies. The American exhibits show the life these colonists and their descendents created in the colonial backcountry, how this life changed over more than a century, and how life in the United States today is shaped by its frontier past.”

I’m so glad we found this place. We interacted with interpreters at each village or structure. The only disappointment was that the interpreter at the West African Igbo Village was not of African descent. We’ve heard now from three different places we’ve visited that it is often quite challenging to find people of color willing to act as interpreters for displays of enslaved people; which may explain why the only interpreter at Great Hope Plantation at Williamsburg was white.

I don’t want to discourage anyone from visiting the more popular and busy historic sites. Anything that helps people better understand and acknowledge our nation’s troubled history, and learn from it, will help on the road to healing and understanding. I do, however, encourage others to seek out the many lesser-known historic destinations as well. We have much to learn and many places at which to do so.

See more photos from our journey here.

Sarah Palin versus the National Park Service

It isn’t often that I intone the name of present-day political figures when I blog. I find that names like Barack Obama or Sarah Palin tend to elicit such emotional reactions from readers that the actual intent of the post is often lost as readers react with their feelings about the lightning-rod figure instead.

Today I’m making an exception. Having now driven more than 4,200 miles through sixteen states, Sharon and I have visited many historic sites, museums and interpretive centers. Our experiences with National Park Service sites and interpretive centers, in particular, stand out as one of the most significant discoveries we’ve made. We are exceedingly impressed with the work the NPS is doing to inform visitors of the many truths of history–including the ugly aspects that are often difficult to take–at interpretive centers across our country. We have found modern facilities that use current technology to great advantage. Interactive exhibits bring history alive. Well-trained staff offer interpretation and contextualization that help visitors recognize how that history continues to impact life today.

We learned a great deal about the Selma to Montgomery march for Voting Rights at the Lowndes County Interpretive Center. We discovered enlightening information about Abraham Lincoln at his home in Springfield, Illinois. Many other sites are operated by private organizations and some are better than others at exposing the truths of history. There is so much information available at one’s fingertips online that there is really no excuse for not learning more about the facts of history, its interpretation, context, and import for today.

Sarah Palin recently visited the Old North Church in Boston and mangled American history even more than Henry Wadsworth Longfellow did with his famous poem. Longfellow’s intentions in writing The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere were political. It was 1860 and the Civil War was looming. Longfellow wanted to unite people, remind them of the sacrifices of previous generations that led to the creation of the United States. He wanted to preserve the Union and so romanticized–and changed the facts about–history.

So did Palin. She didn’t get everything wrong. When Revere was captured by the British he did warn them about the numbers of rebels and the weapons at their disposal. But that wasn’t the purpose of his ride. Palin’s wording is misleading and confusing. When she then defends her words rather than clarifying them, the problem is amplified. Palin’s words are repeated on news broadcasts. She is spoofed by comedians, trashed by opponents, and lionized by supporters. The truth and its impact are sacrificed. Her political goals, unfortunately, appear more important to her than accurate reflections of history.

If I had a magic wand I would wave it over Sarah Palin’s tour across America and make sure she paid close attention to the well-educated National Park Service staff, the historians and interpreters at sites operated by other groups, and instill an interest in her to do a great deal more research before she speaks into the many microphones that are held before her.

Most of us, of course, don’t face the challenges Sarah Palin and other famous people face. We can take our time to learn more about our nation’s history. We can take our children and grandchildren to significant sites where history has been made. I suspect most people think of camping when they think about the National Park Service. I grew up visiting the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Crater Lake, and many other National Parks with my family. I’m blessed on this trip with Sharon to learn just how much the NPS has to offer at interpretive centers across our nation as well.

Oh, and the other thing I would do with my magic wand (I mean, if you have a magic wand you may as well get plenty of use out of it, right?) is wave it over every American and instill the interest and ability to visit historic sites and learn more about our nation’s history and what has brought us to the place we inhabit today.

Know All Men By These Presents

Sometime around 1811, Sylvester Dunn relocated from South Carolina to Amite County Mississippi. He was one of the very first settlers of the new American territory carved out of the Choctaw nation. The fact that Sylvester had the benefit of a free land patent and free labor surely contributed immeasurably to his success on the frontier.

Gavin Road - Noxubee, Mississippi

On the 19th day of September 1822, Sylvester signed over Bess (32) and her child Caesar (13), Zapheniah (4), Lanah (2), Rachel (30) and her child Milly (8), Anne (7), Charles (5) Prinney (45) Tony (50), and Sophy (an old woman) as collateral for a loan of $1133.32 from the Bank of Mississippi.

On the same day, he signed for a second mortgage on 650 acres of land plus Jack (45), Phillis (40) and her child Cynthia (20), Carolina (19), Enery (16), Jack (14), Ben (10), George (8) Saul (5), Simeon (14), Chaney (20), Friday (7), Susan (5), March (22), Sarah (26) and her child Sain (10), Kate (8), Raymond (5), Jane (4), Lucy (35), Little Sarah (17) and her child, Laney (19), Doll (13), Jefferson (12), Charlotte (9) and Aron (25).

Sylvester made good on his borrowings by 1829, when he paid off both loans. In 1830, he was the master of a total of 28 people.  By 1831, however, he was on the dole again. This time it was Messrs. Davis and Maxwell who loaned him $687.96 against his land and many of the same human beings he had promised as collateral to the bank back in 1822.

Fortune smiled quickly this time. Sylvester paid off his debt in a mere 24 months. His fortunes were on an upswing. He took the opportunity to express his “natural love and affection” for his children by giving them slaves “forever, together with any future increase arising from said negroes.”

To his recently married daughter Mary, he gave Sandy (21), Lauler (5), Abel (12) and Nancy (a small girl).

Her sister Elizabeth got Ig(?) (a black boy about 22), Ann (a girl about 16), Bob and Charles (about 4 or 5).

To his son Alexander he delivered George (19) Raymon (16), Cate (16) and Dick (3).

To Martha, he gave Isaac, Moriah and Legatt along with her children Jim, Char, Elvira and Lafayette.

Joseph was gifted with Jack (25), Aaron (16), Charlotte (16) and her mulatto boy child Edward.

Robert seems to have died, so he passed along two treats to his children, Bolivar and Harriet. To them he gifted Paul (a boy about 16) and Rachel (about 4).

I offer this information as poignant evidence of just how pervasive, lucrative and insidious slavery was. It is said that the Bank of Mississippi was a virtual cash machine for planters. And one man, Sylvester Dunn, availed himself of their good offices to sustain ownership of at least 28 people, whom he traded back and forth whenever he needed cash. It was on their backs that his personal wealth was built. And that was on top of the free land patent he received from President James Monroe as “bounty” for military service.

The heart searing reality is that all of this historical information circuitously routes back to me. Sylvester Dunn was the father of Mary Gordon Dunn who married John Edward Gavin in 1831 and moved to Noxubee County, Mississippi. They were the parents of Robert Lewis Gavin, the white man who fathered 16 children with my African American great great grandmother, Bettie Warf.

John Gavin emulated Sylvester’s personal industry. After similarly migrating from South Carolina, John and his eight brothers all started accumulating slaves. Collectively, they owned more than 100 people by 1860. It is undoubtable that Sylvester Dunn’s other sons-in-law brought even more human beings to the trough.

1860 Slave Census - John Edward Gavin

Knowledge is but one of the fruits of this “healing journey” Tom and I are on. These are the most complete records I have ever found on any one person in either of my family trees.

How am I supposed to feel right now?