Tim Minter,
Bellevue, NE

I am the descendant of slave holding Americans. My ancestors owned a plantation in Sedalia, SC – and, along with that plantation, slaves to work the land. Predictably, reconstruction bankrupted them – sharecropping wasn’t as efficient as outright owning people.

Family lore always sought to justify slave holding. I was taught at a young age that the civil war was the “war of Northern Aggression,” and that my ancestors fought against an invading Northern Army. Regarding the slaves, I was told that my ancestors “treated them like family” and that “they took our family name because we took good care of them.” (No, it was because we took their original identities away from them.)

A few years ago, I was standing in line to vote. I was wearing my military uniform on the way home from work. That uniform had a nametape on it with my last name. This little old African American lady saw my last name. She wanted to know if we were related. I didn’t have the heart to say “maybe,” because of what the implications of that might have been.

As I raise my children, I am trying to teach them to reckon with our family past. They dont need to be ashamed for what their ancestors did, but they also shouldn’t take pride in the things they did wrong either. Since the past is never dead – it’s not even past – they need to know where we’ve come with so they can understand the seams in our society. There is no way that the descendants of the slaves my ancestors owned did not have some negative impact from that atrocity committed upon them. We can’t make right that historical wrong, but we can make sure that we don’t commit our own. In an era where bigotry and intolerance thrives unashamed, we must be clear that all people have value.