The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

  After the war, Meema and Pop George continued to share the favor of their former master: they weren’t charged rent for their spacious cabin, and no one who lived there had to chop cotton for a living, either. There was a large garden on the side of the cabin, and Meema freely picked peaches for preserves from the orchard on the farm. There were chickens in a coop out back of the cabin. In a pen, always a hog that was butchered every winter. As a very old man, Pop George didn’t work anyway, and Meema’s daughter and grandchildren didn’t do much, either, except take care of the garden and animals. Meema’s only paid labor was providing root remedies to women for their ailments, along with interpreting the dreams of the superstitious. Many of her clients were white ladies.

  Thus, Meema and Pop George were “yard niggers.” Pop George stayed in her cabin because he’d always lived with her family, even before she was born. He was very spry, so he didn’t need Meema to help him bathe or walk around. She only cooked for him. In the evenings, they sat together in serenity. If the season meant that light reigned, Meema would pull their chairs outside of their cabin. She would quilt, piecing together discarded scraps from old clothes.

  Pop George still would tell stories to children. Though slavery times were over, they were drawn to the cabin where he lived. Sometimes the children’s parents came to visit as well, and maybe it was on one of those visits when one of the men approached the old man, telling him they needed land for a church. Since he had given Meema the only consistent peace she had known, when Pop George asked her to approach their former master instead, she told him she would do her best to acquire the land.

  The day that Meema walked up to the big white house, she headed up to the kitchen house, and greeted Venie James, the cook. Meema asked her to send word to Victor Pinchard, the owner of the house and the farm. Please beg his pardon and ask him, could he spare some time for her?

  Meema would not tell her descendants the exact exchange that took place in that kitchen between Victor and her, whether he called her “Auntie” in the way of paternalistic white southerners. There was no way he would have given a Black woman the honorific of “Miss” or “Mrs.” That would put her on the level of a white woman, and that would never have done.

  But by the end of the meeting, Meema had the promise that Victor would sell her a parcel of land. That parcel was not profitable for farming, though, so perhaps he was not so reluctant to part with it. Though the soil was very rich under the thick grass, the plot wasn’t level. In centuries past, when the Creek had lived on the land, they had constructed a large mound in the center. If somebody wanted to plant anything there, they’d have to work around the mound.

  The Black men of Wood Place began to collect dimes and nickels to purchase the land. That took a year. And then another year of saving change to purchase the lumber from Victor. Then another year to build the church. As sharecroppers, the men on the farm could hammer only on Sunday, after the open-air services on the grassy plot where their wives had envisioned a sanctuary. Pop George had been selected as the elder of the church. He sat in a cane-bottomed chair that was placed in the grass, holding the Bible open in his palms, though that was for show. He never had learned to read, but his memory was extraordinary. He possessed long passages of scripture in his head: Isaiah and Luke. Here and there a bit of Ruth and Esther.

  During services, there were prayers and lined-out songs, not the tidy, blanched versions of the songs that would be paraded in front of white audiences in North America and in Europe, in years to come. These songs were messy and sweet. Deeply felt in the guts of folks who picked the white fluff from cotton plants. After services, the fellowship meal was laid out by the women. Then, with full stomachs, the men would begin their work of building the church. In the background, the mound that the Creeks had built rose over the folks.

  But somebody else had wanted that land: a white man named Jeremiah Franklin.

  He was mad about that land. It was in his blood, the need to finally own something for himself. Jeremiah was a sharecropper, too, on Wood Place. Victor had moved him from a cabin that stood by the mound to another plot near the southern property line of the thousand acres that Victor owned. A plot far away from the Black folks, because Jeremiah was, after all, a white man, too.

  Meema told her great-grandson Root, Jeremiah was one of those types who always stayed mad. It was hard to know why, but commonsense dictated, he probably was angry to be poor in a white man’s time. The war was over, and so was Reconstruction. Union soldiers had abandoned the south, and their protection of southern Black folks had left with them. Those few years of racial equality would forever appear as a fever dream. Once again, it was a white man’s era in the south, but Jeremiah didn’t have anything to show for being white. His labor in cotton fields corded his muscles. It was backbreaking work that took place when the sun was high and stained his neck a telltale red, the mark of poverty. Despite that labor, he was poor—poor as any Black man—and that probably hurt his feelings. No matter how low, everyone wants somebody to look down upon.

  Jeremiah didn’t own one acre to his name, and land was what white men throughout the history of this nation had killed and employed deceit to get. Land occupied a space in white pride, and a white man without land was no better than the Black man he had enslaved or the Indian he had stolen from, through murder and connivance and a lack of sympathy. White men had laughed at the anguish of the displaced Creeks: sooner or later, every conqueror laughs at his victim. That’s what makes victory sweet, and more than that, justified.

  Jeremiah approached Victor for the plot that had been promised to the Black sharecroppers for their church. Whether he knew the land was no longer available was not known. All that Venie James would report was that Jeremiah came for that same parcel that Meema had attained. He’d knocked on the door of the kitchen house. He told Venie to send word to Victor, but Jeremiah hadn’t been polite: he hadn’t even taken off his hat.

  When Victor came to the kitchen, Jeremiah tried to order the cook to leave, but that didn’t work. Venie sat in the corner of the kitchen house and listened to the entire conversation, then spread the news about how Jeremiah had asked to buy the parcel of land. How he had been summarily turned down, so that the land that Jeremiah had saved to buy would serve instead as the blessed earth for the church where Black sharecroppers would worship, which would be called Red Mound Church.

  But that’s not the end of the story, for Jeremiah bided his time.

  That’s what poor folks do, whether they are Black or white. Poor folks have patience. They’re used to waiting a long time to receive what they view as justice. And in 1881, after the final plank of heart pine was set in the floor of the sanctuary, after Pop George had blessed their efforts, five white men rode up to the yard in front of Red Mound Church. Naturally, they were there to cause trouble, for all of them had the last name of Franklin. It was broad daylight, but they wore no hoods. In a few decades, they would officially be known as the Ku Klux Klan, but that year, they did not wear sheets or elaborate costumes. There was no official Klan in Chicasetta, a tiny town. That bureaucracy had spread nationally, but it took a while to arrive in the deep country. But let’s say—for the sake of argument—that the Franklins were the Klan, Jeremiah was the chapter president, and his four sons were the members who regularly attended meetings.

  They hopped off their horses and walked into the sanctuary. They kept their hats on and did not wipe their feet, tracking dirt across the heart-pine floor. Pop George was so busy preaching, so caught up in the Spirit that he didn’t really hear the gasps of his congregation at first. When one of those Franklins pulled Pop George from his chair, his last strength sparked. He shouted to his flock to run, but several of the men ran toward the front of the church, including one named Holcomb Byrd James. Holcomb wanted to defy Pop George’s orders and save the elder from sure death. His chest was barreled, and he was not afraid, but the old man screamed at Holcomb to run for his life. Pop George kept shouting for eve
rybody to get out of there, and finally, Holcomb not only corralled Venie and his own children, but Meema and her family, too. Everyone grabbed children and ran outside the church as the building caught fire.

  Before she fainted, Meema would remember the smell of the bug juice, strong liquor made from corn. When she awoke, she was lying on the feather-stuffed bed in the front room of her cabin. Sheba, her daughter, was wiping her forehead with a water-soaked rag. She told her mother that Holcomb had carried her down the path from the church, and yes, Meema’s grandchildren were alive.

  The congregation waited two days to return, and Meema came with them. They all dug several hours through the rubble, but not even a splinter of Pop George’s bones could be found.

  On Sunday, the congregation held a homegoing for him next to the ruins of the church, though there wasn’t a body. The women wailed, and the men shook their distraught shoulders. The following Sunday, the congregation met again, but they could not even lift a prayer. It seemed faith would be lost, but Meema had tied a clean white rag around her head. She was familiar with earlier fires, how they could break the spirit, so she gave the grandbaby she’d been rocking over to Venie, as Sheba was holding the other grandbaby and was pregnant again besides.

  When Meema recalled this day to her descendants, her story would alter. She always would say that she stepped forward and began to line out a Spiritual, but through the years, the song would change. Sometimes it was “I want Jesus to walk with me.” Other times, there were no words to Meema’s tune, just a humming, as the others in the congregation played instruments of foot, hand, and tongue. Yet when they asked Meema to lead them in a word, she felt her strength wane. She reached her hand out, seeking aid, and Holcomb Byrd James stepped forward and began a long, passionate prayer.

  Holcomb was only a sharecropper, but he had a high standing in the congregation. For starters, Venie, the cook at Wood Place, was his wife. And she kept her eyes and ears open and reported important news of the white folks living in the large house where the Wood Place landlord resided, as the moods of their white employer greatly impacted Black folks living on his farm. Thus, the James family was greatly respected. And there was something else: before the Civil War, Holcomb had passed as a white man, when really he was the son of Cherokee Indians. He’d been the overseer on the Wood Place Plantation. But after the war, he’d become a sharecropper on the premises instead, relinquishing his position as overseer. He did this because he didn’t want to sneak around with Venie, who was the mother of his children. It was against the law for Blacks and whites to marry then, and it was against custom for a white man to live with a Black woman. A white man could rape a Black woman or pay her for sex and keep her a secret, but to live with her in an honorable way was not allowed, not in Georgia in the 1800s. But Holcomb wasn’t going to use Venie like that. He wanted to marry her. So he gave up his past privileges and lived the life of a colored dirt farmer. And that made the folks respect him even more. And love him, too.

  After Holcomb’s long prayer, he told them to recall the difficult times that God’s other children had gone through, many years before: The Cherokee and the Creek, the original people who had lived on this land before it had been stolen. The slaves who had worked this earth with no hope of freedom. But some of these children had remained, and their children and so on. They were the members of the church’s congregation, and surely God traveled among them. By the end of that service, Holcomb would be appointed the new elder of the church.

  On the next Sunday, Meema climbed up onto the bench that had been dragged next to the rubble. Throughout the week folks had been expressing fear that the Franklins might return and enact more terror, and these murmurs had gotten back to Meema. She stood there, holding the shotgun she’d brought.

  “Ain’t nobody gone turn me from God,” she said. “They might can kill me, but ’fore they do, I’m gone take somebody wit me.”

  Far from giving disapproval, Holcomb nodded enthusiastically. He advised that the congregation should elect her as a mother of the church, because Meema had surely been called by God, as those of the Old Testament had been called through blood and battle and burning bush. He urged the men to do the same, to bring their shotguns every Sunday. To get ready for what was coming in the days ahead, but to not be discouraged: though it was true that the Devil didn’t sleep, neither did King Jesus.

  And after the sanctuary was rebuilt, the Franklins didn’t dare come back, for there had been hell to pay. When Victor Pinchard had learned of the devastation that Sunday, he’d ridden his horse out to Jeremiah’s cabin. He’d talked down to the man, because he had not climbed off his animal. He told Jeremiah not to ever mess with Wood Place sharecroppers again, not unless he received permission. For it was one thing to lynch a few troublemaking niggers. That was all fine and dandy, but to show up on a Sunday when the well behaved were praying, and then to set fire to a church with an old darky inside? Only a redneck cracker would do a thing like that.

  When he arrived back at his big, white house, Victor told this story to Venie James, who told the story to Meema. In this way, Meema understood that she should consider herself blessed to be a yard nigger for him. That Victor was supposed to be “good white folks.” Like other lords of the manor, he would expect many displays of gratitude for his protection. And Meema obliged, smiling broadly whenever she encountered her landlord and former master. Repeatedly, she thanked him every year, when he gifted her that new hog that resided in the pen behind her cabin. She sent a few nice cuts of pig meat to his kitchen, too. On holidays she sent bottles of her homemade wine, so her landlord would know that her gratitude was certain.

  But Meema Freeman didn’t like Victor Pinchard, not at all. Nor had she liked his ill-mannered children, Thomas and Petunia, back when she had been their mammy. But she figured she’d use Victor, in order to protect her family and the Black sharecroppers of Wood Place. As Victor had used those same folks to make himself a rich white man, perched far above somebody like Jeremiah Franklin.

  * * *

  After the service, my mother and I lifted Uncle Root from his wheelchair, while David softly offered help. No, we had it, we told him. I was cranky, my tone brisk, but David wasn’t bothered. He kissed my forehead and told me he’d been protective about Mr. J.W., too.

  Usually Mama and I would push the wheelchair together across the field to the cemetery, where the old man liked to visit. But that afternoon, it was too much for Mama, it made her too sad: her husband and her child were buried in that place. So I told her I could push the old man by myself. Uncle Root kept both hands on the flowers piled high in his lap, bouquets for every woman in his family who was buried in that graveyard.

  In the cemetery I put the brake on the chair and kneeled to begin the work of pulling weeds. I started with my father’s grave, then moved to Lydia’s. Before I’d moved to Chicasetta, I’d never done this work. As girls, Coco and I had reclined in the grass, her bossing me around in whatever game she thought up. The elders and Lydia had cleaned the graves in the cemetery, talking in cheerful voices. The only indication of the work’s importance had been the short prayer after the cleaning was done, the squeeze from each hand holding mine.

  After I shared my research with her, my mother had purchased a stone for Judith Hutchinson and placed it in a space beside that of Eliza Two and her only child, Sheba. She’d had the carver chisel both names—Judith Hutchinson and Rabbit Pinchard—along with BELOVED SISTER OF ELIZA TWO FREEMAN AND FORMER SLAVE. For a long time, we’d considered the last phrase. Did anyone want to be called “slave” on her tombstone? But what about the generations of our family to come? They needed to know the history, in case someone else was born as curious as I was.

  There were markers for Ahgayuh—Mama Gee—and Tess, her daughter, but my mother hadn’t bought those. Someone else had made sure that stones had been placed for them. Lil’ May’s was the most elaborate marker. A few family stories and some stones in a cemetery. These were the stingy rema
ins of over two hundred years of family history. After I plucked the weeds, I placed the old man’s flowers, unsure of whether to walk away to give him privacy. I’d made up my mind to leave when his voice stopped me.

  “This was my mother,” Uncle Root said. “This was my wife. This was my sister. That one was my great-great-niece.” His voice caught, and I knew why. On grave-cleaning days, Mama and the others had not talked about the ones who had gone before, not until they’d left the cemetery behind. If you start to weep over the dead, you might never stop. “Why am I here when all my women are dead?”

  I didn’t know what to say to him. Though Uncle Root’s mind was quick as ever, the once incredibly handsome, not-very-tall man now sat in a wheelchair. His body sank like the graves in the oldest part of the cemetery, the ones marked by bald rocks, or wooden crosses. Some had nothing except a slight depression in the ground. No words to tell onlookers who lay in which plot, only a hope that someone else would take up the charge of remembering to pluck the weeds. How foolish I’d been to think he wouldn’t ever get to this point. Every strength must break apart. I should have known that, more than anyone.

  “Uncle Root, how can you say that? Miss Rose is alive. Mama’s alive. I’m here, and we all love you.”

  “Oh, child.”

  I kicked up the brake on his chair, but one of the wheels was caught in something. It had been so easy to push the chair over the field no more than a hundred yards. It never occurred to me that it would be a task to turn the chair around.

  Then, from across the field, David called. Knowing what would happen in the cemetery, he had come to help us. He waved his arms wide, and the old man and I waited with our kin for him to join us.

  The Voices of Children

  In my dream, I’m settled down at the table in Dr. Oludara’s office, reading articles for her. I open up a folder and see a moving picture. I lean closer and I expect to fall inside, but I don’t. But then the picture is gone, the table is gone, and I’m standing underneath a peach tree in Miss Rose’s orchard.