Hilltop Haints

I just returned from the national gathering of Coming to the Table. This is the group that brought Tom and I together in 2008 and led to our collaboration in writing Gather at the Table. The group has grown a lot since then.

Sixty-five inquisitive, motivated souls gathered at Richmond Hill, a location of enormous historical importance. We spent a weekend engaging in dialogue about history, slavery, racism, and healing. As the birthplace of both America and American slavery, Virginia (not to mention Richmond) held deep meaning for us all.

Over the course of the weekend, Tom and I made a presentation about our book to an enthusiastic audience. The many compliments we received for our reading inspired hope that our book can become a best seller. I also led a genealogy workshop to teach people how to do both forward and reverse research to discover linked descendants. During my personal time, I spent several hours at the Library of Virginia, a leading research center for genealogists and historians.

The great irony for me was finding out that the man who gave the city of Richmond its name in 1737 is connected to the family I am researching in Mississippi. William Byrd gazed out over the horizon at what is now Richmond Hill in 1737 and named the town for his birthplace at Richmond-on-Thames, England. One of Byrd’s descendants, Bathia Byrd, married Charles Gavin — the great grandfather of Robert Gavin — the man who fathered 17 children with my GGGrandmother, Bettie Warfe.

It is a small world indeed when one can time travel through centuries and find such profound connections. That idea is even more poignant when considering that Richmond Hill is so near to St. John’s Church, where Patrick Henry delivered his speech that extolled: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!” Richmond went on to become the capitol of the Confederate states. Richmond Hill is today an ecumenical retreat center focused on prayer, healing, hospitality and reconciliation.

This experience reminded me once again how powerful ancestral spirits can be. The bright ones stand with us as we attempt to heal from the traumas of slavery and racism. There was a great deal of talk about that over the weekend — along with a heap of praying and reconciling.

My takeaway from all this is the satisfaction of knowing that many people see things the way I do. Our “hidden wound” longs to be healed and there are at least 65 people on planet Earth who are committed to transformation. It was powerful indeed to sit atop Richmond Hill in unity, gazing out at a future we will help unfurl.

After processing my feelings on the long drive back home, I arrived to updated news about the Obama family being eviscerated yet again; women under assault over reproductive rights; growing outrage over the murder of a boy named Trayvon Martin and the impending trial of a soldier who massacred 16 people in Afghanistan.

When Gather at the Table goes on sale on October 9, our greatest hope is to be a beacon of light in a dark and scary world.

Ashay… ashay… to the ancestors who brought us this far.

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!

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?