“I’m sure that at least one of my ancestors lies buried here,” I said, trying to reconnect to them.
“Do you know much about them?”
“Very little, but one was called Mandy. No one knows her African name. She was stolen from Ghana and ended up in a cotton field in a remote part of this plantation.”
“But Virginia is a tobacco state. If there was a cotton field here, there’s no sign of it nowadays,” Lynne said in her raspy voice as a breeze swept her short blond hair off her forehead.
“Mom told me it was small and that the cotton wasn’t very good, so it was only used to make ‘Negro cloth’ for the slaves to make their own clothes.”
“Sounds possible. We know a lot about Montpelier, but we certainly don’t know everything,” Lynne said as we rounded a curve. “We don’t even know who’s buried here. Might be Confederate soldiers.”
I stopped short. Lynne turned to face me. “Confederate graves are scattered all over the South. Men died in battle and were buried near where they fell,” she explained.
“This might not be a slave cemetery?”
“I think it is, but some folks around here disagree.” We walked toward a low hill that rose behind a cluster of trees. A moment later, Lynne said, “This is it.”
The field of bright blue periwinkles took me by surprise.
We stepped off the dirt road and entered a small woods. Blanketed with fallen leaves and cradling the hidden remains, the ground was soft underfoot.
“Because of these periwinkles,” Lynne told me, gesturing toward the flowers poking up through the leaves, “we know this is a burial ground. Back then, people in the South planted them to beautify cemeteries. Under the leaves, we found linear depressions where the graves had sunk a little, all of them oriented east to west. Then last winter, there was an early thaw. The only snow left was in the depressions. Eerie and beautiful white ribbons.”
Lynne guided me farther in, and we were careful not to step on the graves or kick the headstones and footstones, crude blocks of white quartz. One was streaked with brownish-orange veins and mottled with red pits. It looked like dried blood. I sensed my ancestors trying to tell me something.
Lynne and I stood in a kingdom of many trees, but only one of them called to me. I approached it, reverent. The trunk was broad, the thick branches pregnant with pale leaf buds. I touched the rough bark. Nestled at the base was a stone the color of raw flesh, its uneven surface shiny and smooth.
I knelt down and touched it. My hand trembled, and I envisioned my family’s first griotte lying beneath, draped in white muslin. In her callused hands rested her sole memento from her homeland: a single red bead.
The gentle morning sun was warm on my back, countering the chill in the air. My shadow fell over the rock, uniting me with my family’s first matriarch, my five-greats-grandmother. After several minutes, I asked, “Were the bodies placed in coffins or wrapped in winding sheets?”
Lynne replied, “We don’t know, and we never will. We would never do anything to disturb the people lying here.” Her statement embraced the sense of mystery and peace in our surroundings, and I realized that to find the truth, someone would have to disturb this place of final rest.
“The headstones are at the western end of each grave,” Lynne said, “so the spirits of the dead can rise facing east when the Savior returns in the Second Coming.”
“But that’s a Christian belief.”
“Yes, but see that curved, low earthen ridge around us on three sides?” When we reached the center of the cemetery, she continued. “Only part of the border is the natural lift of the land. We’ve studied African burial traditions, so we think slaves built up the rest of the berm to create a haven for their deceased loved ones.”
Lynne explained that in order to keep demons away, the slaves had made sure there were no right angles in the ridge safeguarding the graves. Within this rounded sanctum, the souls of ancestors dwell, taking part in the everyday tragedies and celebrations of the living and providing protection from evil spirits. The east–west orientation of each grave is in harmony with the African belief that the patterns of life and death follow the movements of the sun. Mankind awakens as the sun rises in the east, then he works, struggles, dances, plays, sings, cries, laughs, and loves until the sun has set in the west. The placement of the graves might also suggest that the slaves had woven Christian doctrine into traditional African customs.
The slaves chose a wooded area because, through the generations, the elders and the griots had taught them that the roots of trees guide the spirits of the dead to the realm of the underworld. To prepare the soul for its journey, mourners placed the last item the deceased had touched onto the body. At midnight (midday in the land of the dead), the departed’s strengths and talents leave the object and enter the dreams of descendants in order to inspire them.
My mother’s stories had set me on the path that led to this very spot. Mandy’s hands had sown and reaped the riches of southern soil for someone else. Mandy’s womb had given birth to descendants who had harvested her strength to become farmers, carpenters, teachers, police officers, civic leaders, entrepreneurs, lawyers, dentists, doctors, nurses, social workers, engineers, psychologists, ministers, railroad porters, salespeople, musicians, and artists. “We have wings,” Gramps had told me.
In the seven years since I’d received the box, I had struggled to become the griotte my family deserved and to understand why, or even whether, I should feel proud to be a Madison. The quest, started by my mother, would never be over; there was much more to find out. But I had become the griotte. When the time came, I would pass the box and the quest on to my daughter, Nicole, along with what I had learned: Death is inevitable, but as long as we who are left behind remember our ancestors, they are part of us and remain alive to us and teach us.
The story of my African-American family is ten generations long, and there are many people in our two-hundred-and-fifty-year saga, including villains and heroes, the famous and the obscure, the powerful and the powerless. But it is Mandy who is my inspiration.
Mingling with the sounds of the graveyard and my own breaths, Mandy’s voice rose from my thoughts. I looked up and said with confidence to Lynne, “Mandy lies here.”
Mandy
Mandy was not my name. Never.
My mother often told me, “You were born screaming, ready to fight.”
She said that as I was arriving in this world, my father walked back and forth under a blue sky and a bright sun.
“No men allowed!” the midwife shouted at him whenever he got too close to the opening of our hut. Finally, after many hours, she came out and grabbed his hands.
“A girl!” she said.
He took one step inside but realized he had forgotten the defomo dan, the hand-washing rum that was also the gift for everyone assisting my birth, and he had forgotten one of his cloths to put under my head. My father couldn’t come in without the cloth because it would mean he didn’t want to recognize me as his child. And he did!
He ran back to the tree where he had left everything, then rushed back to the hut, a gourd of rum in one hand and the cloth in the other. Again, he took one step inside, then another and another. With each step, I screamed louder, my mother said, but when he folded the cloth and placed it under my head, I stopped crying. He smiled. I blinked and then fell asleep.
As was our tradition,I was kept in the hut for eight days, carefully watched, to see if I could survive the many dangers outside. Finally, it was time for my outdooring ceremony, the proclamation and naming, my kpodsiemo. Until then, I was unknown, a stranger to the world.
At two o’clock in the morning, my mother wrapped me up, and a pair of elderly women from my father’s hut carried me, the moon lighting the way, to my father’s father. The entire village was there in front of his hut. My grandfather took me in his arms and unwrapped me. I whimpered. Then he held me up and brought me down gently to the ground and sprinkled me with water three tim
es. My father climbed on top of the hut and poured a calabash of water on me so that I would know rain and the earth. I screamed, and everyone laughed, he said. I didn’t stop crying when my grandfather, the oldest man in the village, prayed:
May the gods pour their blessing upon us! May the gods pour their blessing upon us! May the gods pour their blessing upon us! A child has been born; we have formed a circle round to view her. Whenever we dig, may it become a well full of water, and when we drink out of the well, may it be a means of health and strength to us! May the parents of this child live long! May she ever look at the place from whence she came! May she be pleased always to dwell with us! May she have respect for the aged! May she be obedient to elders and do what is right and proper. May many more follow, full of grace and honor! May the families always be in a position to pay respect and regard to this child, and out of her earnings may we have something to live upon! May she live long and others come and meet her! As a Ga person does not speak at random, so may this child be careful of her words and speech and speak the truth so that she may not get into trouble May the gods pour their blessing upon us!
I received many gifts, among them shiny red beads from my mother. Then my grandfather announced my name to the whole village. He had chosen it weeks before my birth. He had thought and thought, my father told me, to find something to make him and my family and the village proud. He’d consulted our ancestors so that my name would bring pride to them too.
My name is a story. There is a message in each part, but the power is in the whole. My name tells the day of the week on which I was born, my soul name. My name represents my tribe, my father, and my birth order. My name tells the history of the family that showed me how to be who I am and to value family above all else. I also have a name for the special qualities my grandfather chose for me. This is my den pa. He chose hopefulness and inner balance and strength for me. I have a pet name, too, one that only my parents and grandparents use. My love name.
My name is my secret. I keep it hidden inside me in the sacred, immaterial vessel I was born with. It holds the spirit of my ancestors, the blessings of my village, and the love of my family. It holds my hopes and my dreams for my children and my children’s children. My secret connects me to my ancestors and my parents, to Coreen and Jim, to Emanuel and Mack, to John Chester and Ruby, to you, Bettye, and to Nicole and her babies, Peter Lee and little Madison.
Secrets are power to those who know the secret. I was stolen, and I never told anyone the name my family had blessed me with at my kpodsiemo. I did not bring damnation to myself, my family, and my ancestors. But when I lay on the bottom of the boat that took me far away, stood almost naked before men who wanted to own me, labored up and down rows of cotton and tobacco, or lay under the terrible weight of the man who violated my womanhood, my kpodsiemo was the only name I called myself.
Massa called me Mandy.
Massa called me slave.
He was wrong.
I am griotte, master of eloquence, the vessel of speech, the memory of mankind. I speak no untruths. This is the word of my father and my father’s father. Listen to me, those who want to know. From my mouth you will hear the history of your ancestors.
19
History, Heritage, Memory
By 2013, I had spent more than twenty years traveling, researching, and writing about my ancestors. Whenever I thought about giving up, I relived the moments I walked in the furrow behind Madison’s mansion, tracing Coreen’s footsteps with my own. She was there with me; I could not let her down. I was excited every time I held my copy of Emanuel and Elizabeth’s “marriage certificate.” I could feel the awkwardness of their first meeting and then their love for each other and their children that transcended the hardships of enslavement and the failures of Reconstruction. I had followed Mandy’s path through the world. The losses and the abuses, including rape, she had experienced would have shattered a lesser person. Hers was a story of strength that demanded to be told.
But when I tried to find proof that she and Coreen and Jim had existed, I ran into one roadblock after another. Without DNA data or archival information to verify the stories told in my family for more than two hundred and fifty years, how could I get anyone to believe me? How could I get anyone besides my own family to care?
In March 2014, I accepted an invitation to James Madison’s former residence to participate in a workshop, Interpreting the African-American Landscape at Montpelier. Since my initial visit in 1992, I had returned several times, developing an emotional connection to the plantation. This was where my black ancestors, held in lifelong bondage, had lived, worked, and contributed mightily to the success, wealth, and prestige of the Madisons and of America. This was where my slave-owning forebear James Madison Jr., the man who became the Father of the Constitution, the secretary of state, and the fourth president of the United States, had read volumes, formulated thoughts, and written reams.
In 2001, at the first “re-membering” of Montpelier slave descendants, I shared my family’s oral history and the search for evidence of my enslaved ancestors, and in 2007, I helped organize the second gathering, so at the 2014 workshop, as I joined other Montpelier slave descendants, the local African-American community, and college educators, I felt at home.
The purpose of the two-and-a-half-day retreat was to help the leadership and staff of the historical site to, in their words, “better interpret the physical landscape—the grounds, slave quarters, kitchens, freedmen’s homes, and other dependencies and farm buildings—so that we can more accurately reflect the lives of the African Americans who lived and worked here in the era of slavery, through Reconstruction and Segregation, and into the modern era.” We toured the estate, listened to speakers, participated in brainstorming sessions, and served as advisers.
The focus was to bring visibility to what recorded history had obscured. We would uncover and promote the importance of recognizing, accepting, and valuing a different kind of national narrative. We honored the vital contributions slaves had made to the United States and its dominance throughout the world. We spoke about seeing beyond the story of our country as it had been conceived and written from the select perspective of select people. Their elite voices, beliefs, and values, legitimized by the records they created and kept, shaped what our nation considered its history. But what of the stories lived and told by people whose lives and thoughts were excluded from the dominant narrative that molded America? Those stories, kept alive by griots and in personal tales and family memorabilia, are also our nation’s stories and should be brought to the forefront and shared.
In the workshop’s opening presentation, Christy Coleman, director of the American Civil War Center, wrote three words in bold letters across the whiteboard: HISTORY, HERITAGE, MEMORY. An attractive brown-skinned woman and the only one in the room wearing high-heeled shoes and a business suit, she was a former actress who knew how to engage her audience.
“History,” she said, tapping the word on the board, “is what actually happened. Heritage is what a community has chosen to embrace and what tells that community why it should care. Memory,” she said as she walked to that side of the board, “is the intimate, individual connection to the story. It is the oral narrative in your immediate circle, your family.
“Imagine,” Coleman said as she looked at each of us, “James Madison carefully crafting the language of our Constitution, crafting it to be a living, breathing document, being very careful to never use the word slave or slavery but rather other persons.”
There was a collective intake of breath, and I watched Coleman watch us as we absorbed this fact. How had I not paid attention to this? I wondered. How was it possible that in all of my American history classes, no one had ever discussed what the authors had done to people of African descent when they excluded two critical words from the document that defined the nation’s image? Their omission made it possible for white Americans to take a figurative look into a mirror and like what they saw and for people aro
und the world to admire a just, compassionate, civilized new democracy. But their omission, I knew, did not mean that slaves and slavery were not vital to America’s existence.
Christy Coleman wasn’t finished. “Other persons,” she said, “is an extraordinary choice of words, because what does it do?” She stepped toward us. “It contains a humanity that was going to have to be dealt with.”
That evening, I returned to my room, questioning the suggestion that the wording of the Constitution acknowledged that slaves were human beings. I found seven items dealing with slaves and slavery, beginning with article 1, section 2, the one Coleman had referenced:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other Persons.
This precedent-setting instrument of government made concrete the perception that African slaves were lesser. By talking around slavery and using the word persons, the Founding Fathers had inadvertently, and perhaps counter to their intent, admitted that the nation’s enslaved were human.
And yet, this choice of words rendered slaves invisible, a vague “other,” no more than an economic necessity and a political tool unworthy of the justice and blessings of liberty the Constitution promised the people of the United States. The real story was not about from whom African Americans descended. The real story was that our stories had been left out. More than ever, I understood that this omission was why oral history was essential to African Americans having knowledge of how crucial we have always been to what this nation is.
The Other Madisons Page 18