It's late, I'm tired, and I've been struggling the better part of the day with a recalcitrant four-year-old who runs hot and cold on just about everything he experiences.
Interestingly enough, my little boy has much in common with some of the good folks over in Alabama who are still so torn over their state's history that they can't seem to decide exactly what should be remembered and what should be swept into the dustbin of the past.
As usual, I am compelled to fully disclose lest any reader think I'm spouting off high and mighty with nary a personal experience to bolster my remarks.
Some of my ancestors owned slaves.
More on this later, but now back to the reason for this 'blog post.
A group of Alabama high school seniors -- white and black -- known as the Azalea Trail Maids has been selected to walk in the inaugural parade of President-elect Obama. Alabama NAACP Chairman Edward Vaughn is having to apologize for saying the girls, who dress in traditional antebellum hoop skirts and wide-brimmed hats, are reminders of the era of slavery.
"These are not just regular costumes. These are the costumes that remind someone of the plantation in Gone with the Wind," Edward Vaughn said in a phone interview last week with a local television station. "We needed something that could show Alabama's great progress rather than something that shows a shameful past," Vaughn said at the time.
Sigh.
I'm gonna weigh in here and I'll do it without putting on my Scarlett O'Hara ballgown -- you know, the one she made from heavy velvet drapes because the Yankees had cut off access to real cloth.
Frankly, the NAACP chairman's remarks profoundly confuse me. We are taught from a young age about the Civil War, the Civil Rights movement, and the whole notion of right versus wrong with respect to these issues. Every February as Black History Month rolls around we are all urged, nay, required to remember the past and encouraged to work towards solutions to the problem of racism that, in fact, continues to undermine far too many relationships and hinder too many lives.
My question to Chairman Vaughn would be, "Aren't we supposed to remember our shameful past and if we don't won't we be guilty of revisionism and sugar-coating?"
Now, I suspect that what Mr. Vaughn really meant to say was that the women dressed in Civil War-era garb might serve to glorify that time in Alabama's history. The only problem with this would be the hard fact that what those girls will be wearing is every bit the style that was in vogue at the time. White women from all walks of life wore some degree of long skirt with hoops on special occasions. Black women, of course, were stuck out in the fields and had no opportunity to don such finery.
So what is Mr. Vaughn's real problem? Is it that such clothing was available to white women and not to black? Is it that the style is reflective of the antebellum era, an era in which slavery was the norm across much of the Deep South? Or is it that we should not reference any aspect of the Civil War unless we do so disparagingly, ergo accomplished young women in period costume are just too pleasant to gaze upon?
He doesn't say, but I can guess.
Which brings me back to my ancestral baggage.
My slave-owning relatives. I worked through the self-loathing about 10 years ago, after taking careful time to mull photocopies of actual records on file at the courthouse in Selma, AL. The documents include the will of a distant uncle who bequeathed to his many children a considerable amount of property, including more than 40 human beings.
Slaves. Women, men, children. Entire families are listed along with livestock, jewelry, tools, and other personal possessions.
The day I unearthed the yellowed document and realized what those names signified, I began to shake uncontrollably and I started to cry. Down in the corner of the Dallas County courthouse, I wasn't noticed and so was able to express my horror in relative privacy.
The hardest part was figuring out what to do next. The uncle in question died before the war. So did his sons who inherited some of the slaves. There was absolutely no way to castigate them. Their graves were already a crumbling pile of stone, so nothing to deface. Besides, such a rebuke posthumously would have been a waste of time and energy and I would have likely been arrested for desecration of a grave.
The only thing I could do was to offer up to black genealogists in the area the information I'd obtained in the hope that it would help them find their own long lost kin. Slave genealogy is tricky since virtually no records of birth or death dates were kept and slaves were often buried in unmarked or poorly marked graves.
And that's where the story, for me, had to end.
So, how should I regard my ancestors? At what point would even the most ardent modern-day abolitionist tell me to let it go and move forward in my own relationships with people of all colors?
What am I supposed to remember? How deeply am I supposed to dwell on it? And what, after more than 140 years am I allowed to leave behind?
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