Want To Start A Conversation?

 

Walk up to a Black person and say, “My family owned your family”.

 

Elijah Leftwich Sr., son of Thomas Leftwich Jr. and Mary Moxley was born about 1731 in Caroline Co, Va. He died before 1787. 1782 King William County Taxable Land shows Elijah Leftwich 217 acres;1800 Tax List, 0 white males, 5 horses, 5 slaves >16, 0 slaves 12-16;

 

That was seven generations ago.

I don’t know if the slaves were purchased or given, but you were listed as part of my family estate.

 The only family ancestry listings I’ve read only have relative’s names with dates of birth and death, which was married and how many kids they procreated but few reference to slaves.

It seems my family arrive in the late 1600’s to “the colonies”. Don’t know why they left England? Did the King grant them land? Escaping debt? Religious persecution? Adventure in the New World?

Whether they were rewarded the land or ‘colonize’ it by running off whoever was living there is unknown. Trees had to be cut, ground plowed to grow food for everyone was a farmer (Ukrop’s hadn’t been invented yet). Neighbors were far away and unless the family had amassed able-bodied males instead of pregnant women (the other product of colonization) without huge wealth to hire workers, there was no one else to help with the chores.

 Since slavery in England had transitioned to serfdom in the Middle Ages, it is not probable you came with my family from Leftwich Hall in Cheshire?

Finding the ‘colonies’ a forest, everything had to build from scratch. Roads, waterways, homes, churches, taverns and jails all had to be constructed for the good of society and the growth of a country. The New World needed cheap labor.

The Mediterranean countries continued in the ‘human trafficking’ business and offered you a free ride across the pond and guaranteed work. What they didn’t tell you are you don’t get paid for your effort. You were now classified as ‘chattel’ like a cow or a pig or a horse. Though you were the same size as us and had the same bodies as us and could even speak and learn language, we treated you different by the color of your skin.

We didn’t understand the ‘indigenous’ people who we pushed off their lands. They had their own tribe society, language, music, religion and customs but were not compliant into becoming slaves, so we forced them into areas that no one would prefer to live on and call it ‘reservations’ (early public housing).

So you were brought into this area of chaos with no power or influence and under bondage.

My family somehow acquired your family.

The land became profitable with tobacco and cotton which all had to be picked by hand. You were chosen to be the hand as free labor.

How you were named or treated, there is no record.

What happened when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued? Did the Union Army chase you out? Did you walk away? Did you stay without a clue of what else to do? Did my family leave you alone?

According to what I can read, my family moved to Richmond (after the defeat of the war between the states) and then showed up in North Carolina. How they adjusted to former cultural changes or bias is unknown?

Were we mad at losing a ‘free’ workforce? Were we afraid of the change? Were we afraid of you? What propaganda was printed in the newspaper or spoken in the church or agreed to in taverns (the social media)?

When I got here there was a process called ‘Jim Crow’.

You were designated spaces to live (reservations), you were not allowed to drink out of the same water fountain, you were not allowed to sit in the front of the bus, you were not allowed to eat at the Woolworth’s counter (though you were allowed to served from the other side), you were not allowed to attend ‘our’ schools, you were not allowed to clean our streets or join our police.

You were not at our beach, you were not at our country club, you were not at our classroom (that taught the lesson of the ‘Lost Cause’), you were not in our church, you were not in our neighborhood and you were not at our polling stations.

When diversity became mandatory, you were hired in our office. You were a ‘token’ but like the first of the integrationist students, you changed our perceptions under force of the law.

Did you make a position on the board of directors? Were the Confederate general monuments still there? Were you still defined by cleaning the bathrooms, serving the food and taking out the trash?

You were never invited to our parties. We were never invited to yours. Even in groups, we still segregated.

Little mingling didn’t stop mix-race procreation. Perhaps this is the final solution?

How my grandfather would react to ‘Black Lives Matter’ is unsure? How my father, who read the Harry Byrd opinions in the newspaper, would react to the Confederate monuments coming down can only be speculations?

At an age when revelations of truth that were blatantly visible but avoided in polite society discussions of our cities history, wonders how two people grew apart for so long while we were working together?

 

OR

Walk up to me and say, “Your family bought my family”.

It wasn’t our idea to be here.

We were doing pretty well. We had our own tribes, our own dress, our own music, and our own food. We had created our own culture and religion, but that wasn’t acceptable to you.

In your European expansion of ‘colonization’ you gathered us up, put us on boats, shipped us across the ocean and delivered us as a product for purchase.

Don’t know if your family bought my entire family or just a few of us for we were dealt off to the highest bidder.

Once dragged to your land, mostly under bondage to prove servitude, you provided us with a space to build our own shelter. You fed us enough for we had no tools to grow or cook food. You gave us enough hand-me-down clothing until we could sew. You gave us jobs and quotas with no incentive than the whip.

We were in a foreign place with no money or transportation and nowhere to run. We were not compliant; we were enslaved.

You gave us Bibles to convert us to your Protestant belief and we learned how to read. Since we had no schools, the church was our teaching.

How your family treated us, there is no record? We were just a number on the ledger of property.

When it was announced ‘we’ were free, what could we do?

We had no money. We had no land. We had no support. You opened the gate to the barn and let us go free.

No matter where we went or what we tried to do, you restricted us by laws, prejudices and violence. It was hard to escape because we were not the same color as you.

We wanted to eat in your restaurants, attend your theaters, join your dances, and drank from the same water fountains but we were not allowed.

We wanted to share the same books in schools, swim in the same pools, get the same jobs and purchase a house in the same neighborhoods but we were not allowed.

We were allowed to die for the service of ‘our’ country, clean the restrooms, shine the shoes and beat each other for your entertainment.

We are survivors and worked around our restrictions. We created the blues. We created jazz. We danced like no one else and kept our interpretation of religion to hold us together.

Dogs, bombed, beaten with clubs but we continued to press for rights beyond the color of skin. This must have been hard for your family to adjust to, but the generation that wanted senseless wars to stop started to understand.

Maybe it was Motown or James Brown to cross the line? Maybe it was Afros and dashikis? Maybe it was Black Panthers? You read Malcolm X and started to understand.

You now don’t ask ‘who’s’ blood is in the bottle but you probably think it. You will die with your bias prejudges because you were brought up in the time when we were not equals.

Maybe someday the plantation will be remembered like concentration camps? The antebellum southern romance will be gone with the wind.

Until then, we will continue to struggle to be classified under the terms of the United States constitution “All men are created equal” to The equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment means that states must treat ‘all their citizens’ equally.

 

There are many stories untold. If we are civil to each other with respect for a different point of view and honest to listen, we can put racial bias behind us as human beings. If not…