The Race Card Project
By Michele Norris
Erik Shawn Frampton,
Charlotte, NC.
I am the descendant of a line of plantation owners in South Carolina. As a gay man, my upcoming marriage will finally occur on our 20th anniversary together. My larger southern family struggles to see my identity as sacred, just as they struggle still to see minority life as sacred. But what progress. From chains to wedding bells with a gay Asian man.
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.
Susan Lanford,
San Antonio, TX
p>I grew up in southern Louisiana where racial slurs were normal yet one of my friends in High school lived in N bend and that was normal too. I’m fascinated with how African Americans out smarted the plantation owners using quilts via the Underground Railroad and so my quilt journey is just beginning.
Ayla A. Wilk,
Blacksburg, VA.
I grew up in a small town in the south side of Virginia. Our town was built on a foundation of tobacco plantations and textile factories. We had only one high school. The population breakdown was nearly 50/50 African American to White – other ethnic groups were negligible. The blessing was that we all mixed – black, while, rich, poor. Sure, there were cliques, but everyone knew each other. My friend group was a little more diverse than that of the average high school student. Two of my best friends were African American, and I picked up their lingo. They would often turn racial stereotypes into good-natured jokes. One I remember distinctly was “That is SO black.” The phrase was used any time (a) an African American person had distinguished themselves through their behavior, clothing style, or attitude. or (b) white people would adopt a stereotypical African American tradition, such as eating certain foods or wearing a certain hair style. As far as I understood it it was sort of a compliment, like “See? Our culture is so awesome, white people want to emulate it.” We threw the term around casually, never thinking about their implications. My wake up call came when I got to college. A group of us were planning a picnic for our dormitory. The (white) leader of our group suggested fried chicken, potato salad, and watermelon for the menu. I laughed and said something along the lines of “our picnic is going to be SO black!” Among my high school friends, that would’ve been a compliment – meaning it was going to be a hell of a good picnic! But the room went silent. The one African American student in our group gave me a frightening glare. “That was TOTALLY inappropriate” our leader said. My face flushed as I realized how racist my statement had sounded to the others in the room. It was then I learned that what you say can mean something very different that what you intended it to mean, depending on the color of your skin.
Michelle Hill,
Oakland, CA.
Our family is so fortunate that my great, great, great grandparents were not separated from each other and their children during slavery. Because the family stayed together, we have a family Bible, pictures and records that document their lives in this country. My great grandmother, Mama Lizzie, was born in 1870 to a slave girl who was raped by her former master. Slavery had ended, but the freed slaves were still living on the plantation because they had nowhere to go. Mama Lizzie’s life spanned 94 years from the end of slavery to the mid-20th century; from a family of slaves to a family of land owners. She and my cousin Mary shared a room for 18 years in the family’s farmhouse. Mama Lizzie passed the family stories on to my cousin. Cousin Mary wrote Lizzie’s Story: A Slave Family’s Journey to Freedom to document the challenges, persistence, perseverance, ingenuity and strength of our ancestors. As African-Americans, we have been given a rare gift to know our family genealogy and heritage as far back as 1850. http://www.amazon.com/Lizzies-Story-Familys-Journey-Freedom/dp/0759699208
Michael J,
Rochester, MN.
I just feel I am a little tired of feeling guilty about being a white male. My family came from Norway and Sweden, we never owned slaves, and moving to Southern Minnesota, didn’t even have a plantation. Nevertheless it seems that this issue is somehow my fault as well.
Benjamin Baugh,
Athens, GA.
I am a white man and my daughter is a black girl. One day, I will have to walk with her down into the woods behind the old family farmhouse and show her the place where the short row of cabins once stood, and I’ll have to own that ancestral sin absolutely and without the equivocation my Southern upbringing inclines me to make.
She will own the old house, and the land it sits on one day, and it’ll be her decision how to handle that legacy. I hope I have it in me to always speak truth about these things to her.
Carolyn B. Smith
Atlanta, GA
Shugan Ransome Davis (“Sugar”) was my great great great grandfather. He was from Halifax, NC but moved in 1824 to Alabama and established a plantation in Suggsville. His will is from 1857. When I saw it, I was struck by the value of an adult male slave when compared to an acre of land. No wonder no one wanted to give up slaves! They were by far the most valuable part of his estate. Sugar’s family paid for the system: he had 5 sons and during the Civil War, 3 were killed, one had a leg blown off and one drowned right after the war. I am decended from his daughter, Lucretia. It is very hard to imagine “owning” another human being now, yet human trafficking exists and it is slavery.
R.Henry Goins
San Francisco, CA
I am a genealogist. I have been researching my North Carolina family for about ten years now. I found my great grandfather’s family in some notes held at the North Carolina Archives. The family lived in Belews Creek and Sauratown. Sauratown sounds like sorrow. I found a ledger with the name of the overseer of the plantation written in it. When I first read it, it looked like grief. I actually think the overseer’s name was Greif, but I could not help but see it as grief. Grief is here. Grief will not let me go any further until I acknowledge it. Finding grief stopped me in my tracks.
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