Whenever my wife needs me to move the couch around the living room or some yardwork, I become 'John Henry'. If'n the job is big enough, I will put on my work gloves and a bandana. No matter how big or small the job, I adopt a southern accent, act very politely and slyly ask Ma'am if there is anything else her husband h'aint done 'round the house. It's our little joke.
Recently, somebody wrote me romantically of the old days on the farm when black women raised white kids to be polite and respectful, when biscuits were made from scratch and that black man over yonder could fix the most busted up tractor before noon. Doubtless, there were many miracles wrought by many a black man and woman three generations ago down South. But we African Americans today don't even know what a plow looks like, much less how to hitch a bull to one. What happened to Old Joe and Aunt Mae? Why did we forget them so soon?
Was Alice Walker telling us something? Surely every black man who owned his own house and farm wasn't a two-timing tyrant like Mr. __ or a spineless party boy like Harpo. Surely it wasn't only women who went North to find their fortune, or who stayed home to set what's what at the Thanksgiving Dinner.
There's a position somewhere between silly romantic notions and ignorant disdain I think has been charted out most elegantly and powerfully by Ernest J. Gaines, and I think it's something we ought to remember. Some time ago, on my journey South to the 'Mecca' of Atlanta I was on the same trip as Jill Nelson when she wrote 'Volunteer Slavery'. I had finally learned enough about Corporate America to discover that it was just another part of America and not so tightly wrapped as in our striver's row bourgie dreams. And so the next themes were encapsulated in 'Pushed Back to Strength' and a rediscovery of the Blues Aethetic via Murray's Seven League Boots. It turned out that neither were quite appropriate to me and I ended up consuming mostly Applebome's work on the South - discovering the truth of that which had not been better stated until Brooks' Patio Man.
As I reflect on it, those were probably the last two books of black fiction that I ever imagined using to do any rough shaping of my life. I browsed them mostly in my mid thirties and from that point on was quite satisfied that I would have no more black existential battles, which has been true. Which makes it all the more significant that the last great black book for me was Gwaltney's, and although I have read most of my Baldwin since then no lesson has had quite the impact. The net result of this is that all of the great African Americans are men and women of the 40s and 50s. Those old enough to remember the Depression and who could see change a-comin'. Those who were confident and strong; those who clung fiercely to their families and grew great men and women from poverty. We still know them, and yet we forget them.
My cousin actually read, scholar that he is, some original slave narratives. He said that he was constantly amazed at the strength, intelligence and perserverance of those writers. They were every bit as smart as us, and they did it without Image Awards, or role-models, Affirmative Action or even the benefit of the most fundamental guarantees. They were people who understood themselves and people. I can't remember all he said, but I know it threw a wrench in any theory of 'the Legacy of Slavery'. If there was one, it was one of strength he'd be proud to inherit. There was no native alienation, no great gap and loss of Africa, and things native. These were the people who changed Christianity and invented Gospel music. They didn't ask the Lord to take away their stumbling blocks.
Maybe it was Malcolm. Surely it was Sidney who gave us our man in suits. That polish, that erudition. Oh we wanted to wear the duBoisian suit and elucidate, didn't we? We wanted to be Paul Robeson, All American and urban, urban, urban. We wanted to say, "Get outta my way, buster.", like a Park Avenue swell. We wanted to be flying aces in uniform - officers and gentlemen. We wanted Dorothy Dandridge, not the country girl. I wonder if we wanted wrong. I wonder what we might have had if we stayed and fought for Tuskeegee instead of going up north to Howard. Maybe the Dirty South wouldn't be so dirty.
In Cobb, this edition, I am looking back as a conservative to some simple truths. I am trying to grow my family organically as fast as the progress I can make allows. I am trying not to make mistakes of expecting now to be better than then so I don't invest in futures that aren't reasonable. I am essentially trying to be Old Money without the Money so that when it comes I won't be foolish. I understand that the first corruption of a society is found in the depraved indifference of its elites, and I am biding my time to take the reigns when I have become adequately wise. So long as my soul is relatively pure I will feel this ambition and love for my fellow man. If there is a will to nobility, then I hope that is the pull I feel. And I am recalling the spirit of those people - their soul and my moral projected memory of Old Joe and Aunt Mae. They are the people you would trust with your life and I think we would all do well to remember and embody their grace, competence and dignity, even if we're just moving a couch.
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