Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 531

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois," by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers.

Though he ardently looked forward to his white father’s visits, Micco didn’t receive much attention from his father, either, except when his father insisted that he learn how to read so he could know the most important words to the white men besides their laws: the book that Dylan called the Bible. These lessons were so important to the lonely little boy that when his father hit his mother Micco turned his head and tried to ignore his mother’s weeping. He would lie at the foot of the spot where his parents slept and pretend not to hear Dylan forcing himself on Nila, her sad begging for Dylan to please stop, because Micco lived for the mornings when his father would roughly nudge him with a foot and say, “Good morning, boy.” This wasn’t much, but Micco grabbed at these bits of affection, as children crave the love of their parents.

Inside, the school counselor told us to call him by his first name, because at Braithwaite Friends School everyone was on a first-name basis from the students on up to headmaster. Which meant I couldn't call the counselor anything, because I'd been taught that children shouldn't address adults by first names. I couldn't tell him that, though, because that would be correcting an adult, which I was also forbidden to do. This was a no-win situation.

"Then why do you give a good goddamn about what they think? You could have nothing but white folks on your dissertation committee, and your classmates would still have something to say. I'm sure they've passed around that you're there on a quota. They love to accuse Black folks of taking their place. Even when it ain't but one of us, and fifty of them, they don't even want us to have that one spot."

I stayed quiet.

"You know how I know, Ailey? Because when Chuck Whitcomb and I were at Harvard years ago, that's what they said about us. And it didn't matter that we both worked like dogs to get our grades. We weren't ever going to be good enough for those bastards. If you want Chuck as your advisor, great. If not, choose somebody else. Or go to another university. It's up to you. But instead of you trying to please some white folks whose names you won't even remember a decade from now, how about making your own decisions?"

You had to wade through everything, in order to get to the documents you needed. You had to look at the slave auctions and whippings. The casual cruelty that indicated the white men who'd owned Black folks didn't consider them human beings. When I began doing research in the Pinchard family papers, I wasn't reading about strangers anymore. These were my own ancestors, Black and white. Samuel Pinchard was the great-grandfather of Uncle Root and Dear Pearl.

When I'd done research on the weeping time auction, I'd felt so saddened, but now, when I left the Old South Collections, rage joined my sadness. Every white person who crossed my path made me want to scream so badly, it seemed my flesh burned with the effort to maintain control. And to make matters worse, on my walk across campus from the collections, I'd be forced to go past the statue of the colonial founder of my university, Edward Sharpe. The students called his statue, "Quiet Ned."

Sharpe had owned forty-three enslaved Black folks, but had caught religion during a sermon by a Great Awakening minister. Upon hearing the sermon, Edward Sharpe had decided he was against slavery. but instead of freeing the Black folks he owned and giving them a plot of land to work, he'd sold them for a profit, and bought land and started a university with the proceeds. In the university mythology, Edward Sharpe was lauded as a moral hero, and no information was given on the people he'd traded.

Every time I passed Quiet Ned, I thought of the hurt he's caused those forty-three Black folks. I'd get so angry, it would make me sick, and I couldn't eat for one or sometimes two days. I could only drink coffee to keep me awake. I'd tremble, unable to sleep. I'd whisper curses toward flesh-peddling white men, hoping my words could travel to the past.

He walked to the door, looked outside, and then pushed it closed. He lowered his voice to a whisper.

"You need to know something, Ailey. Nobody in this department ever says they don't want African Americans in the doctoral program. They say it's a coincidence that there haven't been any. Or they say they can't find one that's qualified. Okay, well, now you're here, full of qualifications, and taking the hardest classes and making the highest grades. But they just happened not to give you the mentoring you'll need to continue to the doctoral program. And that's how that goes, Ailey. When we come to these all-white spaces, we have to be tough. We can't show any weakness. I know that's difficult, but that's the way it is, and that's why I'm so hard on you. And I will continue to be hard on you, Ailey, because I want to prepare you for what's coming. It's gone be the Thrilla in Manila when you enter the doctoral program. They will throw everything they have at you. If you fail, they say, oh, that's too bad. You just weren't smart enough. If you succeed and earn the degree, despite all the obstacles they put up, they'll take credit for you success and congratulate themselves for fostering a nonprejudiced environment. But, Ailey, you aren't going to fail, because I am going to help you with every ounce of power that I have, all while pretending that I'm not helping you. For example, you and I never had this conversation. Do you understand me?"

He raised his eyebrows.

"Yes, sir."

"I have faith in you, Ailey. We're going to get you to that promised land, and then I'm gone find a tenure-track Black faculty member to replace me, and then I'm gone retire and take myself back to DC to a chocolate-covered neighborhood! Nah'mean?"

We laughed, and sat there for a long time, talking.

But the third girl, the girl with keloids on her cheeks who'd been in the Wood Place daguerrotype, wasn't in this picture I was holding. For some reason, that girl had been left down south; Eliza Two, my direct ancestor. I wanted to be grateful that she'd remained behind. If she hadn't stayed in Chicasetta - if she'd had no descendants - I wouldn't even be alive. But this meant Eliza Two had endured six more years in slavery, until it was abolished, and all the other crimes against southern Black folks that would come afterward. How much more had Eliza Two suffered on that plantation, after she'd already lost a father and a sister?

I covered my face and began to cry.

I don't know how long I sat there, but the librarian must have taken me up on my offer and called my former professor. Before I heard the other chair scraping the floor, I smelled the incense. Dr. Oludara didn't even ask me what I'd found. She only touched my shoulder, telling me, it was all right. It was okay. Sometimes it hit her like that, too, thinking about our people and those sad days. She patted my shoulder as I sobbed.