On Wondering About Your Relations
Telling Truths and Shaming Devils
I wonder if anyone has
in their family tree
or wedged deep between Jesus' red script
in the holy Bible
their MeeMaw kept,
names of the party-goers -
the gloating proud men,
who took the law in their own hands,
the smiling glad pre-teen boys
happy to be brought along,
the women who would've
lied about an alleged look,
a whistle never made
or a rude word not spoken;
their daughters, taught
that this is where nigra men
rightly belonged
hung by the neck from a big oak,
then castrated and burned
for good measure?
These could be your ancestors;
Geat Granddady Theodore,
Uncle Bob, Cousin Lemuel,
Sheriff Tompkins
Great Aunt Flo --
somebody's best god-fearing friend,
the preacher perhaps?
Lynch-mobbers and murders
every last single one.
Would you claim their blood
in your genealogical log?
This inquiring Black mind
wants to know.
I have pondered this question and looked back as well. Mine's not the worst, but it's not pretty. My godmother and great aunt, immigrant from Calabria in the 1920s, poorly educated, widowed without children in 1955, told me in response to meeting my 1990s boyfriend from Somaliland (then Somalia) that Ethiopians ate Italians. My grandmother (Gramma), also Italian, born in BC, educated in the Pacific Northwest, called him my chocolate pie, intended as an endearing compliment.
Gramma & Papa grappled hard with their racism as other grandchildren married darker mates and a few great-grandchildren came in shades of brown.
Fortunately for us, Gramma and Papa were 90% love and came around quickly.
Dad's side was all white and poor from PNW (Elma, Grays Harbor), lumberjacks, hunters, some blatantly racist, at best biased. Too many bad jokes, but also mostly love.
I am certain going back further would get very bleak in short order as does looking close up sometimes.
Awareness is an essential practice in the battle against bias.
This poem is blunt truth. I have wondered this many times about my ancestors: who would I see in those horrifying photos of complacent or celebrating crowds, if I could recognize them. I don’t have to go back far, one grandfather was a criminal court judge for 30 years in Florida, and he was a racist. Surely he meted out injustices within the legal system, destroying people, families, communities. it’s right that you confront us with this poem, Drew, and demand we look deeper and not away.