Monday, July 15, 2013

Old battles fought anew

I am a fifty six year old Caucasian man who was born in Western Kentucky in the 50's. When I was born, the local train stations Clarksville, Tennessee and Hopkinsville, Kentucky used wooden wheeled wagons to collect luggage, air travel was unusual and interstate highways were less prevalent than travel by train. When I was born in December 1956, my father was in training for employment with IBM to act as a computer engineer. Still, it was just a few years since Brown v Board of Education had been ruled on by the U.S. Supreme Court and most school systems in the South and a lot of the U.S. were still segregated. There were still separate facilities for white and black citizens in many places in the South, from kindergarten to college. My genetic background is almost exclusively from the British Isles. Having said that, there are a wide variety of stories in my background which show the schisms which follow being part of the wash of British and American history. My distant Baynham ancestor came to this country and landed in Charleston harbor on a fourteen year sentence of exile from his home in the west of England. Two generations later, his grandson was present in General Washington's army when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. My distant Meacham ancestor was forced to leave his employment as farm labor on the island of Barbados and travel to North Carolina because the English landowners in Barbados decided it would be more profitable to use African slaves to cultivate their sugarcane and indigo. My McElroy ancestors left Northern Ireland because the English parlaiment had passed legislation that would invalidate Presbyterian marriages and prevent Presbyterians in Ireland from holding office or finding certain work. Three McElroy brothers soon found themselves in the western part of North Carolina, fighting the British at Kings Mountain and Cowpens and were also present at Yorktown when Cornwallis tendered his sword. My Gary ancestors, originally McGary, were possibly part of that mass movement from Northern Ireland through the port of Philadelphia and down through the Shenandoah River Valley of Virginia and on into Kentucky and Tennessee. They also may have been from Connacht, a western province of Ireland. A Hugh McGary was part of the group of Americans in Kentucky who were with Daniel Boone and his family, battling the Shawnee and British in Northern Kentucky and Southern Indiana. A story I read in a biography of Daniel Boone told the story of how the Kentucky settlers were following a band of Shawnee towards the Ohio River. When they got close, McGary convinced the settlers that they should take on the Shawnee against Daniel Boone's better judgment. The result was a disaster for the settlers and the death of Daniel Boone's son, Israel. I don't know if this McGary was related to me, but it is possible. My French ancestors, the Agees, left Nantes to escape religious persecution by King Louis XIV and the Catholic Church and to emigrated to England in support of King William and Queen Mary in the Glorious Revolution which supplanted the Stuart claimants to the throne of England. They were awarded land in Manakin, Virginia, never to return to their native France. My paternal grandmother was born a Cooley. The family is descended from an ancient Ulster family about whom the earliest epic poetry in Ireland revolves. When my ancestor married a Scots Presbyterian, his Catholic family in Dublin kicked him out of the house for marrying a Presbyterian and sent him and his wife to Tennessee. A generation later, their son married a young lady descended from the Flemish weavers who had escaped Catholic persecution and settled in England. Upon marrying this son of Ireland, her family refused to allow her to return home because she had married an Irishman. Finally, my great, great grandfather was married to Mary Catherine Jefferson, a descendant of Thomas Jefferson, grandfather to the third president. Despite writing the defining mission statement of this country, based on the supposition that we citizens are all created by God equal, my distant cousin continued to own slaves and apparently had children with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, who probably was his sister-in-law by this father in law. The members of my family who came to this country came to escape a variety of injustices. In some circumstances, they got their justice upon the establishment of this country and the opportunities which were available in the New World. However, when they got here they tried to make a new life for themselves and their families. Most of them were farmers and merchants. Many owned slaves. Even after the Civil War was fought and African-Americans were freed, my ancestors lived in a society which placed those former slaves in a state of neo-servitude as share-croppers and prison labor. African-Americans continually prevented from rising in society by Jim Crow laws and the social attitudes of white citizens. Still, when I was born, this culture was in transition, both politically and socially. Despite a basic intolerance and bias toward these members of our society, changes were happening in the South. I don't remember separate water fountains where I lived. I don't remember hearing the "n" word being used in polite conversation in my family. I know there were jokes and stories told, but it wasn't a common occurance in my family. But we aren't that far removed from the Georgia which changed the state flag in the 50's to include the confederate battle flag as a component part to show their solidarity with other southern states who were fighting the dictates of the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education. The flag wasn't changed to a different flag until about ten years ago. Knowing that, is it that unusual that a media icon like Paula Deen, who grew up in segregated Albany, Georgia, which saw a lot of racial strife in the 50's and 60's, would admit to using racial slang? I would argue that it would be a little more believable if she had admitted to using such racial slang under more common circumstances. In the racially charged world of the South in the 50's and 60's, that language was common in white culture. To deny it is somewhat akin to the post World War II Germans who denied that they were Nazis or supporters of the German government during the heyday of German National Socialism. Expecting people who grew up in the segregated South to have never used racial slang is naive and ignores the recent history of the region. On the other hand, punishing people for things they said in the past, in light of the changes which have been made in our culture over the past fifty years, is intolerance, plain and simple. Such behavior is far from helpful to the cause of racial tolerance and social growth in our country. In the United States, we live in a multi-cultural society. To paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners live next door to each other and share neighborhood facilities and the streets upon which we live. The work of racial tolerance is not over. But the intolerance of the past should not be punished today.