Dedication
For James William Richardson Jr.
and Sidonie Colette Jeffers:
brother and sister,
heart and heart
And for my mother,
Dr. Trellie Lee James Jeffers,
who gave me our land
and our people
Family Tree
MICCO CORNELL’S FAMILY
Unknown married Nila Wind (1747–1797)
Micco (Jonathan) Cornell (1764–1840)
Micco (Jonathan) Cornell married Mahala Norman (1766–1838)
Bear Norman Cornell (1785–1845) and Jonathan Norman Cornell (1785–1846) (twins)
Arthur Norman Cornell (1787–1847)
Eliza Rose “Lady” Cornell (1802–1870)
AHGAYUH’S FAMILY
Ahgayuh “Aggie” Pinchard (1800–1865) married Midas Pinchard (1798–unknown)
Tess Pinchard (1821–1865)
Tess Pinchard married Nick Pinchard (1817–unknown)
Eliza Two Pinchard (1840–1934) and Rabbit Pinchard (1840–1869) (twins)
Eliza Two Pinchard (later Freeman) married Red Benjamin (later Freeman) (1845–1875)
Sheba Liza-May Freeman (1861–1882)
Sheba Liza-May Freeman
Clyde Nick Freeman (1877–1941) and Benji Nick Freeman (1877–1944) (twins, unknown father)
Charles Nick Freeman (1878–1939) (unknown father)
Adam Nick Freeman (1880–1956) and Abel Nick Freeman (1880–1956) (twins, unknown father)
Maybelline “Lil’ May” Victorina Freeman (1882–1918) (unknown father)
Maybelline “Lil’ May” Victorina Freeman, unmarried liaison with Thomas “Big Thom” John Pinchard Sr. (1860–1924)
Pearl Thomasina “Dear” Freeman (1900–1987)
Jason Thomas “Root” Freeman (b. 1907)
Pearl Thomasina “Dear” Freeman married Henry John Collins Sr. (1905–1959)
Miss Rose Collins (b. 1920) and Henry John “Huck” Collins Jr. (b. 1920) (twins)
Annie Mae Collins (b. 1927)
Annie Mae Collins
Pauline Ann Collins (b. 1944) (unknown father)
Miss Rose Collins married Hosea Leroy Driskell (1910–1974)
Roscoe Nick Driskell (1938–1966)
Jethro Leroy Driskell and Joseph John Driskell (1939–1939) (twins, died in infancy)
Norman Hosea Driskell (b. 1941)
Maybelle Lee “Belle” Driskell (b. 1943)
Maybelle Lee “Belle” Driskell, married
Geoffrey “Geoff” Louis Garfield (b. 1943)
Lydia Claire Garfield (b. 1966)
Carol Rose Garfield (b. 1969)
Ailey Pearl Garfield (b. 1973)
SAMUEL PINCHARD’S FAMILY
Samuel Thomas Pinchard (1785–1868) married Eliza Rose “Lady” Cornell (1802–1870)
Victor Thomas Pinchard (1826–1891) and Gloria Eugenia Pinchard (1826–1859) (twins)
Samuel Thomas Pinchard, unmarried liaison with Mamie Pinchard (unknown–1817)
Nick Pinchard (1817–unknown)
Victor Thomas Pinchard married unknown
Thomas John Pinchard Sr. (1860–1924) and Petunia May Pinchard (1860–1915) (twins)
Thomas “Big Thom” John Pinchard Sr. married Sarah Marcia Dawson (1868–1888)
Thomas John Pinchard Jr. (1888–1957)
Thomas “Big Thom” John Pinchard Sr., unmarried liaison with Maybelline “Lil’ May” Victorina Freeman (1882–1918)
Pearl Thomasina “Dear” Freeman (1900–1987)
Jason Thomas “Root” Freeman (b. 1907)
Thomas John Pinchard Jr. married Lucille Anne Sweet (1885–1954)
Cordelia Sarah Pinchard (b. 1925)
Cordelia Sarah Pinchard married Horace Rice (1925–1982)
ZACHARY GARFIELD’S FAMILY
Zachary Pierre Garfield (1919–1979) married Claire Mignonette Prejean (b. 1920)
Geoffrey “Geoff” Louis Garfield (b. 1943)
Lawrence Garfield (b. 1945)
Epigraph
They that walked in darkness sang songs in the olden days—Sorrow Songs—for they were weary at heart. And so before each thought that I have written in this book I have set a phrase, a haunting echo of these weird old songs in which the soul of the black slave spoke to men. Ever since I was a child these songs have stirred me strangely. They came out of the South unknown to me, one by one, and yet at once I knew them as of me and of mine.
—W. E. B. Du Bois, “Of the Sorrow Songs”
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Family Tree
Epigraph
Song
I
Dream and Fracture
The Definitions of Siddity
Song
II
What Is Best
Permission to Be Excused
Jingle Bells, Damnit
Song
III
Deep Country
Creatures in the Garden
Happy Birthday
Pecan Trees and Various Miscellanea
An Altered Story
Song
IV
Brother-Man Magic
We Sing Your Praises High
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, Goddamnit
In This Spot
Feminism, Womanism, or Whatever
V
This Bitter Earth
You Made Me Love You
Don’t Let Me Lose This Dream
A Change Is Gonna Come
Do Right Woman, Do Right Man
VI
The Debate
Founder’s Day
The Dirty Thirty
Reunion
I’m Hungry
All Extraordinary Human Beings
Nguzo Saba
Song
VII
For You to Love
The Night I Fell in Love
Till My Baby Comes Home
My Sensitivity Gets in the Way
A House Is Not a Home
The Other Side of the World
VIII
Keeping the Tune
Whatever Gets You Over
I Need My Own Car
Shower and Pray
You Can Be Proud
Song
IX
Which Negroes Do You Know?
Mammies, or, How They Show Out in Harlem
Umoja, Youngblood
Song
X
The Peculiar Institution
Plural First Person
The Thrilla in Manila
Witness My Hand
My Black Female Time
Song
XI
Who Remembers This?
Any More White Folks
Mama’s Bible
Like Agatha Christie
Not Hasty
Every Strength
The Voices of Children
Acknowledgments
Archival Coda
About the Author
Also by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Copyright
About the Publisher
Song
We are the earth, the land. The tongue that speaks and trips on the names of the dead as it dares to tell these stories of a woman’s line. Her people and her dirt, her trees, her water.
We knew this woman before she became a woman. We knew her before she was born: we sang to her in her mother’s womb. We sang then and we sing now.
We called this woman back through the years to our early place, to our bright shoots rising with the seasons. We know her mingled people. How they started off as sacred, humm
ed verses. And now, we go back through the centuries to the beginning of her line, to a village called The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees. And we start with a boy, the child who will change everything on our land.
Wait.
We know you have questions, such as, if we tell the story of a woman’s line, why would we begin with a boy? And to your wonder we counter we could have begun with a bird’s call or with a stalk of corn. With a cone from a tree or a tendril of green. All these things lead back to this woman’s line, whether we mention them or not. Yet since our story does not follow a straight path—we travel to places here and across the water—we must keep to the guidance of time. To the one who first walked past a tall, grass-covered mound in a particular place in the woods—and we have questions as well, for, despite our authority, we cannot know everything.
And so we ask if a child cannot remember his mother’s face, does he still taste her milk? Does he remember the waters inside her? Can you answer those questions? No, and neither can we. Yet, we remind you that many children commence within women, and thus, this is why it is completely fine that we begin with a boy.
And so we proceed.
The Boy Named Micco
The boy lived on our land. Here, in a Creek village that was between the wider lands straddling the rivers of the Okmulgee and Ogeechee, near the Oconee River, which crawled through the middle. Though Micco had playmates among the children of his village, he was an unhappy little boy, for he felt the tugging of three sets of hands. Whenever this tugging began, he felt confused and miserable.
There were the hands of his father, a Scottish deer skin trader named Dylan Cornell. There were the hands of his mother, Nila, a Creek woman who belonged to a clan of the highest status in their village, the Wind clan. The little boy’s parents were yet alive, but the hands that pulled at him the strongest were of a man who probably was dead, though no one knew for sure. They were the hands of his mother’s father, a man who appeared one day in the village.
This was in the years after 1733 and the arrival of James Oglethorpe and his ship of petty English criminals, what he called his “worthy poor.” They were those who had been sentenced to death or hard labor for the stealing of an apple or a loaf of bread or some other trifling thing.
When Oglethorpe came to our land, he thought he found a comrade in Tomochichi, the leader of the Yamacraw people, another tribe of our land.
Yet Oglethorpe had not made a friend. Tomochichi had not made a friend, either. He’d only encountered a pragmatic white man determined to set anchor and build a colony for his English king. Tomochichi had seen white men before, so he was interested in trade, which was a long-standing commerce. There had been Englishmen moving along the paths, going north and south and east and west, for more than a hundred years. Though Tomochichi was a wise leader and probably smelled greed on Oglethorpe, he had no idea of what would follow: sin.
For the original transgression of this land was not slavery. It was greed, and it could not be contained. More white men would come and begin to covet. And they would drag along the Africans they had enslaved. The white men would sow their misery among those who shook their chains. These white men would whip and work and demean these Africans. They would sell their children and split up families. And these white men brought by Oglethorpe, these men who had been oppressed in their own land by their own king, forgot the misery that they had left behind, the poverty, the uncertainty. And they resurrected this misery and passed it on to the Africans.
And now we reach back even further.
The Grandfather of the Boy
The young man who would become the grandfather of Micco was perhaps eighteen or nineteen when he appeared next to the tall mound that marked the entrance of The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees.
The young man was barefoot, and his soles were thickened and rough. His gray-colored shirt and pants were wrinkled, and even to those who were standing far away his garments gave off the smell of mildew—which made sense, because when someone asked him in English how he had arrived at their village he only told them that he had been walking when he’d arrived at a river. Then he’d found that he was hungry, so he had tried to seize a catfish at the edge of the water but had fallen into the river. He talked with his hands, making wide gestures and animated facial expressions—even more so when he described falling into the river—and the villagers laughed. Yet he did not want to offend. He laughed along with them.
“Where do you come from?” an elder of the village asked.
“Over there.” The young man pointed vaguely. He smiled some more, and when the elder asked another question—where was he headed—the young man said he meant to go south.
“Truly?” The elder looked back wisely at the rest of his cohort, and the other men held this elder’s gaze.
Then there was more talking and more asking. But when the young man told them a very small man the size of a child had pulled him from the river and led him through the woods to the mound at the edge of the village, then the small man suddenly had disappeared, the elder gave his cohort a new, surprised look. Now this? This was a different matter altogether. And so the elder and his cohort clustered, whispering in their own language while the young man smiled and nodded as if he understood the snatches of words that he was hearing. He did not understand at all. The elders were whispering about what the young man meant when he had said that he was headed “south.”
They did this because the young man who had found his way to the village was a Negro.
Thus, the elders assumed he was headed to the lands that the Spanish called “Florida,” and that the young man was looking for certain Seminoles. The people who lived in The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees knew much about the Seminoles, because the Seminoles had once been a part of the Creek people before they had broken off to form their own nation. And the Seminoles gave sanctuary to Negroes, taking them into their villages. They mated with Negroes, too.
And so if this young man with mildew-smelling clothes was seeking the Seminoles, that meant that he was not free.
Though slavery wasn’t legal yet in the territory Oglethorpe had settled—that would come years later—there were ways that the English or Scottish got around the law. And one of those finagling men owned this young Negro, which meant that somebody might come looking for him and that somebody might try to cause some trouble. Ordinarily that would mean the people in The-Place-in-the-Middle-of-the-Tall-Trees should take hold of the young man, carry him back east, over the Oconee River, and collect a reward from the English or Scottish person who owned him. Yet the young man had mentioned that a very small man had pulled him out of the river. Could this mean the young man had encountered one of the “little people”? These were supernatural beings and when they chose to show themselves it was a serious matter indeed. The small man would not be happy if this chosen young man was betrayed.
While the male elders talked, they tried to ignore the nudging and giggling from the women of the village. The women were looking the young man over: Though he was not tall, he was inordinately handsome. His forehead was high, and later, the people would discover that was a natural characteristic—he did not pluck around his hairline, as some men in the village did. The young man’s kinky hair stood at some length. His dark-dark skin was smooth. His muscles were well formed. His teeth were white as sweet corn, and when he smiled, there was a warmth to his entire face.
As the older women watched the young man, they reminisced about the days when they still visited the moon house during their bleeding times, when their breasts were high and their bellies did not carry pouches of fat. And the younger women who still saw the moon fantasized about rolling on top of the young man and riding him fast, like a warrior chasing battle.
The male elders came out of their huddle, and their leader asked the young man what was his name?
“My name be Coromantee,” he said.
Yet we can tell you, the young man was lying; this was not his real name.
And we can tell you that, though he had been born here on our land, his mother had been born across the water. She had been pushed out of her mother in a place in Africa called “Gold Coast” by the English, who had been traders in slaves and riches and goods for many years. The white men had invented an aberration and called the African people of the Gold Coast “Coromantee.” In the future, no one would know where this term had come from, or why the white men had invented it, only that, as white men are fond of doing, they decided that whatever moniker they gave those that they encountered was right. And so when the white men traded with the residents of the Gold Coast: Coromantee. When the white men took the Gold Coast women for temporary wives: Coromantee. When they herded these people into the dungeons of the slave castles along that coast: Coromantee.
We can tell you the origin story of this young man’s grandparents, and the origins of their parents, until we reached the very beginning of what you know as time. We can tell you the lives of gods—but truly, don’t you want to return to this charming young man with the beautiful, dark-dark skin?
He stayed more than mere days in the village, for each time the young man declared his intention to go south the elders urged him to stay. They did not want him to leave. When Scottish deer traders came through the area, their arrival was never a surprise, and by the time these traders rode their horses into the village, the villagers had hidden the young man they had begun to cherish. Eventually, he was so loved and admired that he was adopted by a Creek family who was of the Panther clan.
Thus, the young man’s name became “Coromantee-Panther.”
From an uncle in his adopted family, he learned manhood skills, as is the Creek way. He learned how to use poison on the water or a net to catch smaller fish and how to catch the bigger ones by grabbing into their mouths. He should ignore the pain of their bites. And Coromantee-Panther told his new uncle he was grateful for these skills, for he had not been allowed to learn how to feed himself in the place from which he had escaped. That is all he would say, and because Coromantee-Panther seemed sadly pensive whenever he mentioned the time before he came to the village, the uncle did not ask him to elaborate.
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois Page 1