Questions Part 2.
These
are questions that have occurred to me as I write, and some hypotheses I intend
to explore.
At one time, the population of Mackville was much larger.
In fact, there were over 800 Black residents after the end of the Civil War,
and now there are none. Actually, there are four, if the family of two parents
and two kids who moved here from New Jersey count.
Where did those eight
hundred people go? Some of the old maps show “African” churches in town,
and I know from interviews that at least some of the former slave families
stayed on as sharecroppers. If, unlike Mr. Railey, they were unable to work two
jobs and squirrel away enough money to finally buy his own house (many of these
families were large; lots of kids lightened the workload), they finished out
sharecropping without owning anything. I’m guessing that when industry and
other skilled jobs moved into town, many of the Black families moved in, too.
They pretty much all live in, or near the confines of
Springfield now. This creates a situation where there are almost no Black farmers (leaving Blacks
dependent upon stores and markets for groceries), no Black students in the
school that lies in the county outside the city of Springfield, and very little
interaction between white residents of the county and Black residents of the
city.
Where
are the bodies?
During the decades of slavery, thousands of men, women and
children died and were buried in these fields and on these farms… where? I
found a raised tomb near my farm for a George Smith who died in 1811. White
landowners and white farmers had marked graves, even on farms, in the early 19th
century. Some, very few slaves’ deaths were recorded by the Catholic Church,
and the Sisters of Loretto have erected a beautiful tributary to the slaves
whose unmarked graves they represent. But where are the others? Can we ever
know?
I’ve read that many slaves continued the old traditions
they and their ancestors brought with them from Africa, burying relics of
spoons or pieces of household items with the deceased. Could someone with a
metal detector find them? I’ve also seen a claim that there’s a gentleman in
the county who knows how to find water by dowsing, and he claims he can find
graves, too. It seems pretty far-fetched since, if the bodies were buried
without any embalming or encasement, the remains must surely be mostly
decomposed.
Why do I care? I feel as if locating these burial sites
would be finding a sacred tomb, equivalent to the burial mounds of the Native
Americans. Through their work, their dedication, and by giving their lives to
this land, they have a claim to it. It should be an honored and cherished
place.
What happened after
slavery?
We know that the
thirteenth amendment did not truly create equality for African Americans.
Particularly in the South, the backlash for those who sought an egalitarian
place was severe. Jim Crow laws, the KKK, lynchings, and generalized fear
injected into the Black population enforced “separate and unequal.” I want to
know how that played out here. What happened in Mackville, Willisburg, and the
outlying parts of Washington County so that no
Blacks live there now?
I asked in one interview whether the “Coon Club” had any
meaning… but no one thought so. It’s a real thing: a small, shingled building
that sits empty except for maybe one evening a week fall and winter, when
pick-ups crowd the pull-out. There are no bars or liquor licenses in the county
(Washington County is a “moist” county; the city of Springfield is “wet” (sells
liquor) and the rest of the county is “dry) and people really do hunt raccoons
with dogs, so I figured this is just one of the gathering spots for the old
guys. But the name is foreboding, especially when the Southern Poverty Law
Center lists an active Ku Klux Klan chapter in the next county to our east, a
town about ten miles from Mackville.
Still, I don’t see or hear the kind of overt racism that I
might elsewhere. That could be because everyone is following the script and
staying within the lines.
Why
do people still fly Confederate flags? Do they know how this makes people of
color feel? Is it intentional, a signal?
What
was it like here in the 1960s and 70s? How did Black residents feel?
What
role have the churches (most especially, the Catholic church) played in the
lives and the histories of the people of the Black community? Does the Catholic
(white) community feel any responsibility toward the descendants of the slaves
who came here with the religious orders?
American
Indians: Where and how did the connections occur between the Black community
and the Native Americans who married or mated with them in Kentucky?
The histories that I do
find, both the local ones and the regional ones, are of the “notable” citizens.
Today, it occurred to me that a big part of my goal is to tell the stories of
the day-to-day folks, the Pansys, the Cissys, the Pappys, and the Foxys. Today
Pansy told me that she was cooking dinner for one hundred people for
Thanksgiving. What?!
She didn’t brag about it. I asked her where she was going
and what her plans were. She told me it was her third year making “American” Thanksgiving
for the people at the Mexican Church in Lebanon. She’d be basting and massaging
the turkeys, stuffing them with orange and lemon and parsley, and mashing
potatoes… she told me fondly how one of the Spanish-speaking women struggled to
ask her to make mashed potatoes, because she forgot what they were called.
She takes care of people, worries about people, and carries
on. The people I have met through Pansy are some of the most genuine, honest,
and accepting people I can recall meeting. It never ceases to amaze me that
they accept and trust me, a Yankee who asks a lot of questions and clearly has
different interests.
I’m
consumed with the need to find the remaining evidence of slavery.
I
think this is because I believe that both white and Black people will benefit
from a discussion about the way there is an easily traceable line of linked
events from slavery up until today, and here, where it happened, and the
descendants still live as neighbors, that can be demonstrated. It can be quantified.
It can be documented. That’s not possible in many other places. As Julia said,
“I think it was really important when Mr. Railey said, ‘What about slavery
now?’ and then he just turnt his head.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “He summed up the book.”
But before the understanding that can be healing and can
bring great things to bear, there will need to be some hard conversations, some
challenging words and some uncomfortable moments.
