RANTING AND RAVING on a WEDNESDAY NIGHT

          After  many years spent in public school classrooms teaching communication (translate that word into reading and writing) in not one but 2 languages and much of the last decade decompressing and regaining a sense of myself. I am finally giving myself permission to speak and to speak candidly. I am pissed off!  That’s right, you read it correctly. no sugar coating, no polite speak, no editorial correcting the angry black woman’s language. I told you how I feel and now, I will tell you why I feel that way!

            Being born female in this country or in any other supposedly male dominated society is a negative factor. Being born black and female is a double whammy.  Strangely enough because my mother died shortly after my second birthday, the significant adults in my life were my grandmother, a four foot eleven, born red-headed, dynamo along with my father, my grandfather, and my mother’s four brothers. (Told you society, as well as my life, was male dominated!)  Since my family were always my family, I had no clue just how different and egalitarian they were until I reached early adulthood and was confronted with “the world.”

            As  a liberal arts major (languages not history) I have a tendency to acquire books .  Yes, I have a personal library of books on black literature and black history (which I described to the husband of a college friend ….”The day I leave this earth permanently….my children/grandchildren will be downstairs splitting up my library!”).   They might as well since I won’t need the books any more!  All kidding aside…the books I have acquired or reacquired after dealing with two devastating house fires….have value to me because no matter how “integrated” our schools have/have not become…the literary and social history of folk of African descent in the USA has been lost, strayed, stolen and purloined.  We as a people have been carefully edited out.  Of course years ago…..I understood and accepted the responsibility of educating my children about who we were and the validity of our history.

            Anyone who thinks ”edited” out history is accurate has a lesson to learn from a black academic, the holder of a Ph.D. from a major university and a man who teaches the history of black folk at a famous  university in the South. He made the mistake of telling me there were no black folks in Appalachia! I remember sarcastically asking him if I had turned “white.”   Then I realized he genuinely believed what he said. It was school time…for him.  The history of black folks in Appalachia is as diverse as we are, as diverse as are our origins. Immediately I thought about a poet also born in my birth state of Kentucky, Countee (Porter)  Cullen who was born in Louisville in 1903.  I thought about Whitney Young, an early voice in the Civil Rights Movement as president of the National Urban League, born in Lincoln Ridge, Ky. I remember thinking that this professor was a published academic and he had no clue about the origin of many significant black folk!  Henry Louis Gates, well known and published historian, a professor at Harvard University is a native West Virginian.  Carter G. Woodson, a fellow Berea College alumnus, and the “father of black history”  was a native Virginian. Booker T. Washington  was born in Hales Ford, Va., a small town near Roanoke. William C. Matney, my cousin and a national news correspondent for both NBC and later ABC was born in Bluefield, W.Va. Muhammad Ali was born, went to school and grew up in Kentucky. Without thinking, I rattled off names of significant people of Appalachian origin. Perhaps I made the mistake of looking for a depth of knowledge that was not required for history professorships? I knew that the people I have named had Appalachian origins and I have never had a black history class in my life! I thought about the poets – Nikki Giovanni, Bell Hooks, Frank X. Walker whose birth places were all in Appalachia….Knoxville, Tennessee. Hopkinsville, Ky., Danville, Ky. At that point….if  the professor wanted to know of any more black Appalachians…he would have to do his own research…I was through !  (Before anyone starts complaining about the number of Kentuckians named….don’t forget that I am a native born Kentuckian!)

            My list is not definitive, it was not meant to be. I have never  shied away from my Appalachian origins nor will  I.  However, the next person who complains about my identification as a “hillbilly” a.k.a.  an Appalachian very well may find themselves the recipient of either a snub or an old fashioned   dressing down. Let me shut up before I start with the profanity!

MS. MARGARET OF CASSVILLE

Family stories passed from one generation to another are sometimes the only way that one generation  of a family becomes real and tangible to succeeding generations.  In our family, the prime storyteller was my grandfather. He would always respond to the request, “Tell me a story.” To my child’s mind, he told great stories, stories I in turn , many years later, told my children. Sometimes they listened, mostly they filed the information  away  into some mental file called “momma’s  stories.” One day when my daughter was in sixth grade….”momma’s stories” became real. She came flying in from school with a question….

            “Did my grandmother really shoot up a Ku Klux Klan meeting?”

            “Where did you hear  that?”

            “From Liz (a kid on the next street whose family came from my home town in the Big Sandy Valley).”

            “No, my mother did NOT shoot up a Klan meeting..”

            “Liz’s mother said her mother told her…”

            “Her mother has the story a little mixed up but that’s probably not her fault….”

 

            The Old ones came out of Virginia after the end of the Civil War….probably around 1869.  My great-grandfather’s  father had taken him out for a walk one day to talk seriously  about the future. The older man was worried. He was growing older…in nhis middle sixties….and his creeping age concerned him greatly.

            “You and your family need to head west You have to keep my grandchildren safe. If I die tomorrow…you lose your home and everything you have worked for….the others will never let you keep the farm or anything else…because you are a black man…”

            William Henry (according to his son) was outfitted with a wagon (maybe two wagons), the basic tools he would need to work a farm, and more importantly enough funds to but property.  The family (the parents and and  children ranging in age from  15 to a few months)  packed their belongings and supplies in the wagons  and prepared  to head across the mountains.  The second eldest son chose to remain in Virginia. They would communicate by letter from time to time but would NOT see each other again.

            The farms that they purchased and settled on            was in a small town once called Cassville. The family managed to buy enough acreage to support everyone as long as everyone was willing to work. (Almost a century and a half later…part of that small farm is still family owned.)    Cassville was and is the setting for this story…..

            A time arrived when William Henry and his sons had to be away from the farm for two to three days.  Miss Margaret would be at home with the sons’ wives and the children of the family. The women could and would see to the farm chores with the help of the older children. Before he left, William Henry loaded the two ancient shotguns with bird shot and put them in a safe place not accessible to children. The men of the family then left to take care of their business. The mule team pulled  the wagon down the holler, through the town and on to the main road and away the men folk went.

            Certain men of the town watched the family’s men leave. It was obvious that they would not be returning before dark so the town men decided that after dark would be a good time to sneak up on the pasture field hill under three huge walnut trees…to build a bonfire and drink white lightning otherwise known as moonshine. To cover up their true planned activity,  the town men passed the word that there would be a Ku Klux Klan meeting that night at the head of “Nigger Holler.”

            The women of the town were not fools and there was no Klan in the town. By barefoot grapevine….someone’s children were sent from house to house with a message to be passed to Miss Margaret.  When the message got to the family farm…Miss Margaret hatched her own plan. The women would finish all the chores and give the appearance of closing up the house for the night. Miss Margaret and one of her daughters-in law would take advantage of a clear moonlit night and climb the pasture field hilln through the woods. They planned to hide under the hard shell hickory tree on the ridge slightly above the black walnut trees.

            Their vantage point gave them a clear view of the happenings below. The town men gathered, lit their fire and passed the whiskey jugs around.  Miss Margaret and her daughter-in- law waited until the moon made its appearance over the walnut trees and town  men were very drunk. She then propped the first gun against a tree branch and aimed for the center of the fire. KABOOM….she fired….the burning embers exploded out from the fire. The drunks were caught by surprise and ran around knocked cinders and embers off each other.  Miss Margaret took the second gun and aimed into the middle of the gathering. KABOOM! Then drunk men bolted down the hill toward town….screaming…..yelling….and cursing.

            The next day, Miss Margaret took her basket of eggs and butter to sell in town. As she walked through town…women came out of their houses to make purchases and someone whispered that the women were forming a Women’s Christian Temperance Union that very week and had she heard….some of the men had gotten drunk last night, shot each other up and were over at Dr. York’s house getting birdshot picked out of their skin? Would she have more butter and eggs to sell next week?

            The WCTU was formed the Methodist Church, the Klan never appeared in Cassville again and Miss Margaret sold a lot of butter  and eggs.