What you are about to read is not a book.
It is a project, and it is not complete nor is it meant to be finished soon.
It began with a series of questions, as good projects do, and then more and more questions arose.
Although it is a collaboration between citizens of the Black community in Springfield, Kentucky and me, it is a project that is intended as much, if not more for the white reader/listener, who, like me, has been able to live without facing the reality of the Black experience in small town America
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It is a testimony of Black experience, and a recognition and indictment of white privilege.
Late in my research, I spoke with a prominent member of the white community, a local historian and grandson of slave owners. He freely acknowledged that his family owned slaves. He spoke about the Black community with a mixture of admiration, suspicion, and convivial condescension. One phrase he uttered stayed with me: he said they had always been a "world within a world." In a way I can't fully articulate, I find this nomenclature exceptionally appealing.
It places the Black community, misunderstood, unheard, disrespected, dismissed, and dehumanized as they have been, here and everywhere they exist in this country, at the center of our "world." We cannot deny them any more than we can deny our own internal organs. They are part of the air we breathe, the God we worship, the institutions we claim to revere. They are us.
Late in my research, I spoke with a prominent member of the white community, a local historian and grandson of slave owners. He freely acknowledged that his family owned slaves. He spoke about the Black community with a mixture of admiration, suspicion, and convivial condescension. One phrase he uttered stayed with me: he said they had always been a "world within a world." In a way I can't fully articulate, I find this nomenclature exceptionally appealing.
It places the Black community, misunderstood, unheard, disrespected, dismissed, and dehumanized as they have been, here and everywhere they exist in this country, at the center of our "world." We cannot deny them any more than we can deny our own internal organs. They are part of the air we breathe, the God we worship, the institutions we claim to revere. They are us.
Initially, those we interviewed were people who had grievances or who had experienced injustice. Soon, we added those who, as long time residents and members of families dating back to slavery, had stories and memories to share. It became clear that today's issues were not separate from but were a continuation of the outrages of slavery and the politics of Jim Crow, segregation, racism, and supremacy that have prevailed in this country since the first Africans arrived.
However, because of the isolation and inertia of this small farming community, this phenomenon comes into stark relief. And, because it is so clear, there is a rare opportunity to not only recognize it but acknowledge it, to not only address it but heal it.
So the lofty but reachable goal of this humble project is not blaming, shaming and estrangement, but reconciliation, and restoration.
Before that happens, however, the truth must be told. And heard.
