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From Sheila
Read past article by Sheila "From the other side of the desk."
On Whose Shoulders I Stand
Sheila J. Williams
 Thirty years ago, Doubleday published a book written by Alex Haley called ROOTS. Nearly everyone read the book and watched the TV mini-series. African Americans from the Pacific to the Atlantic and all points in between revisited their own “roots”: interviewing great-aunts; poring over microfilm (no ancestry.com then!) and squinting to make out spidery handwriting on 19th century documents. We wanted to know. Who are we? Where did we come from? On whose shoulders do we stand?
When I was a child, my great-grandfather presided over the Thanksgiving table, assisted by my grandfather, who carved the turkey, and served by my father and mother. If I behaved myself (which I often didn’t), I was allowed to stay up past my bedtime and listen to the grown folks’ conversation. It was the late fifties and we were colored then. They talked about the NAACP and discussed articles in The Crisis and what Mrs. So-and-So down the street was doing. And later, if I was still awake, I heard family stories, too: the “mountain man” grandfather who smoked a cheroot pipe; the grandmother who gathered herbs and plants to make medicines. I wish I’d asked more questions but I didn’t.
Now, I’m the griot of my family. When my mother passed away in 2004, my sister said “You should write down the family stories.” A chill came over me. I remembered making the same request of my Great-Aunt Emmie, many years ago.
My deadline for excuses has run out. I spend my Thursdays in the John Parker library of the Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, poring over census records and putting my files in order. I’m organizing the families on a spreadsheet listing names, dates of birth, death and occupation. I examine each scrap of paper and transcribe the scribbles. I check and recheck each factoid. But there’s something missing.
The slave pen sits on the second floor of the Center. It is a hallowed place. I cannot walk past it without weeping. I have no idea how many of my ancestors suffered in a place like this but the voices of those who did whisper. They call out to me. They admonish me: Tell the stories, girl. Tell them WHO we were.
Beyond the dates and the statistics. Beyond the lined spread sheet. Tell them WHO we were.
They were John, who served in the Virginia infantry against the great army of King George III in what would be the Revolutionary War. They were Becky, known only as “n.Beck.” on a 1787 tax roll. They were two Abrahams, a Bennett, John, Edward Augustus and others, father, sons, cousins, who left their Midwestern homes, volunteering to fight to save a Union that refused to recognize them as human. They were Mary Louisa, who, in 1837, made the long journey from upstate New York to rural Ohio with her new husband. They were Dick, stolen from his Cherokee family during Jackson’s removal, and sold into slavery in Georgia. They were five-year old Jack who held his mother’s hand and watched as Sherman’s troops marched through the fields towards Savannah. They were Julia, mother to eleven, midwife to hundreds. They were farmers, parents, lovers, soldiers, grocers, children, masons, cooks and healers.
They are me. And I will write our stories using the best words that I have. I will weave them into paragraphs and stitch them into pages. And I will bind them into a book with my own hands if I have to so that I can tell my granddaughter, whose shoulders she stands on and who she is.
“…the memories and the mouths of ancient elders was the only way that early histories of mankind got passed along…for all of us today to know who we are.”
Alex Haley,
Introduction to ROOTS, p. viii
(Doubleday, New York, 1977)
*2/19/2008, SJW |
