(Sculpture by Hayward Oubre, 1963)
Yes, we are all Black Americans.
Bioanthropology shows that all humans are children of our mitochondrial genetic African Mother, “Eve,” as all humans migrated out of that continent some 100,000 years ago. After that, culture divided us by “race” and positioned some of us over others of us. Especially here in America, race has divided us. Looking at me, most would never think of my Cherokee and African American branches that add to my EnglishFrenchAlsaceLorraineIrishScots background.
Two recent documentaries and a book give us an entry point to understanding how all of us are Black Americans either from direct familial involvement in slavery or from ancillary benefits.
(Sculpture by Hayward Oubre, 1963)
Moving Midway http://movingmidway.com/ , a documentary written, directed and produced by film critic Godfrey Cheshire offers a touching and unflinching view of his family’s North Carolina slave owning plantation past.
Cheshire’s documentary weaves together family memories, suburban development, and the symbolic place of The Plantation in the American imagination. The film, which opened in NYC in September and is making the rounds to accolades Moving Midway Reviews, points to an important aspect of the legacy of slavery in America. As Cheshire was researching his film, he met Dr. Robert Hinton, Asst Director of NYU’s Africana Studies program, Assoc. Producer Bios of the film, and a descendent of slaves owned by the Hinton’s-- Cheshire’s Mother’s family.
Hinton grew up in segregated Raleigh, NC not too far from Cheshire and not too far from Midway Plantation. Both men now NYC residents were contacted by other NY Hinton’s and this time Cheshire found a whole new family—this time a black one from a common ancestor--that Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemming’s thing Hemmings--Jefferson.
A key theme of the film is the place of the Southern Plantation in the national imagination—think Gone with the Wind and Tara.
This symbolic place allows Americans to relegate any responsibility or accountability to all those bigoted Southerners and to a misty past. But Moving Midway along with Edward Ball’s monumental 1998 family and social history Slaves in the Family Slaves in the Family show that the misty past is just a phantom of the movies. The Balls were the largest rice planting family in South Carolina, owning many plantations and hundreds of slaves over more than two centuries. Like Cheshire, Ball found a contemporary Black family with members living all over the country.
Traces of the Trade
Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North which aired on PBS this past spring is another family story. Browne’s documentary foregrounds more clearly how we all are beneficiaries or victims of slavery.
In investigating her family the Bristol, RI Dewolf’s, she called upon 200 hundred other white descendants to come with her on a journey from RI to Ghana, Cuba and back to RI—the Triangle Trade. She documented that more than 10,000 slaves worked the Dewolf’s Cuban sugar plantations that made the molasses from which the RI distilleries made rum, the foundation of the family fortune. Other slaves were sold outright to work cotton that was woven in the northern mills and cheaply clothed Americans. The Dewolf’s were not the only beneficiaries. Immigrant labor filled the factories and cleaned the houses of those who got rich off the trade.
Others came in from the farms to work in the mills that funded the great industries under girding American wealth in the 20th century—the wealth finally just evaporating in the economic meltdown of last month. From the 10,000 slaves the Dewolf’s owned or traded, more than 100,000 descendents are living today and no doubt voting in today’s election.
And then there is Polly Rice Ranson, my great grandmother who may have been related to the Ball family.
Growing up, my mom and aunt promised they would tell me the family secret, the skeleton in the family closet when I was old enough.
That time came about 20 years ago when my ex and I were visiting. During dinner one evening, mom and aunt revealed that after my great grandfather was killed at Manassas, the first battle of the Civil War,
my great grandmother Polly who was living in Genrostee, SC, either had a love affair or was raped by a black man.Her minor children were taken away and sent to North Carolina to live with their older brothers, which is how my grandfather came to Huntersville, NC and ultimately met and married my grandmother Ellen Hunter.
Polly had a daughter from that union, but their stories have blown way and their ends are unknown at this point. What happened to the man was probably hanging, evisceration or worse. But I think that like others, I have unknown cousins and an unknown Black family.
When I learned the sketchy fragments of this part of my family story, I was shocked and angry at the sexism and racism. Like others I have expanded my notion of my self as an American and now feel that I am like the rest of us a Black American.