A Delta Discussion

I've been working hard to bring Greenwood to life on the page, and it's working.  I have an amazing research assistant who tirelessly scours digital archives and reaches out to professors in an effort to get the most accurate data we can.  The more that I learn about Greenwood in the 1960s, the more amazed I am.  There's so much about what happened in that small town that sheds light on how regular, everyday people could seemingly ignore systematic, sustained societal racism.

When the documentary about my grandfather premiered in New York City in April, 2012, someone from the audience asked how I would respond to black Christians who hate homosexuals.  He seemed to feel that it was hypocritical for blacks to talk about the oppression of yesterday if they were actively engaged in oppressing homosexuals today.  I agreed with him, but then I explained that every group has their jihad.  Every group has that subset of extremists.  Just because a person is a member of a group, doesn't mean that they represent all of the other members of that group, or that they agree with every idea that comes from that group.

In towns like Greenwood, there were men and women who made it their mission to maintain a segregated state.  What blows me away is the lengths that they went to in order to achieve their goals.  Very, very, very few books talk about this, but there was a newsletter called "A Delta Discussion" that was distributed door to door.  The newsletter was filled with dire predictions about what would happen if the schools were integrated.  They included stories from far off communities that had tried to integrate and then had incidents of violence.  These newsletters also included the names of white store owners who were enforcing the Civil Rights Act, by allowing blacks to patronize their establishments.  Whites were encouraged to stop going to these stores all together.

It's important to remember that Greenwood was a small town, surrounded by plantations.  Most whites in Greenwood had known the other whites in Greenwood for all of their lives.  These relationships had been establishments generations before the civil rights movement came along.  Most whites had grown up with a distorted view of blacks.  They were too close to it to question it.  Then people from the outside (from the Northern states) began to question how Southern blacks were being treated.  Those questions were challenged, not by strangers, but by the neighbors.  Whites who were racist in Greenwood had an enormous amount of influence over other whites because of the familiarity between the two groups.  

Imagine having someone come into your town for a visit and tell you that your wife is unhappy in your marriage.  Your friends tell you not to listen to this stranger.  They can all but prove to you that your wife is happy  Your wife is silent.  Most blacks over the age of 25 were relatively silent on civil rights until the tide started to turn.  Pretending that things weren't as bad for blacks as Northern whites were describing was pretty simple to do.

The efforts to maintain segregation became a complex, intricate, and expertly executed campaign.  The campaign struck people where they would feel it the most.  The average Greenwood citizen was made to believe that if they let integration occur that they would lose their children.  Their children would marry blacks who, according to the campaign were beast-like illiterates.  Many believed that blacks were more sexual than whites.  Why did they believe these things?  Do you believe the earth is round?  How do you know?  Have you personally conducted science experiments to prove it or do you just know because that's what someone in authority told you?

Obviously, I don't support or condone racism or people who ignore racism.  But if I seek only to distance myself from the "white Southerner" and lump then all in with Byron De La Beckwith, then I'm missing an opportunity to learn an important lesson about human nature.  I've forced myself to really ponder whether or not I would have the eyes to see past the rhetoric and see the oppression of the people around me if I was a white middle class person living in Greenwood in the 1960s.

What I know is that Booker Wright provided that opportunity for many Greenwood whites.  He did something that removed their blinders.  And for that, I am thankful.

Family Silence

A few weeks ago I was in Alaska and someone in the audience asked a question that comes up a lot.  "How has this experience impacted your family...are they proud..has it brought them joy....?"  I tried to briefly explain how every step we take to honor Booker Wright comes with the a deepening knowledge of what was lost. So, it's been painful.  The audience was satisfied.

If they only knew.

Sometimes the tiniest details can bring out the strongest reactions in my family. Person A will say that Person B did XYZ.  Person B's cousin will wonder why Person B never mentioned doing XYZ to them.  The cousin feels hurt, left out, and they question why Person B kept this from them.  Even if XYZ is a small detail, it makes the cousin question other things about Person B.  The cousin doesn't know how to feel about the relationship they once had.  Was it all a lie?  They can't get to the bottom of it because Person B is dead.  An unanswerable question has been planted in the cousin's mind and the only way to get rid of it is to forget.

The cousin becomes a lot less talkative.  They stop returning my calls and may even discourage others in the family from talking to me.  Person A will start to feel guilty about stirring up pain and will also pull away from me or, at a minimum, show extreme caution the next time .

Every time I get on the phone with someone in my family they act like anything they say might appear in my book.  The fact is, they're right.  I'm collecting all of these stories for a reason.  So, part of me understands their discomfort.  Part of me has a hard time with it, though.  I'm trying to get as close to the truth as possible.  There are so many things about Booker that I will never know.  But I want to get the details that I can correct.  I don't want to be wrong.

Multiple this by 20 details, one hundred conversations, countless moments and lots of dead ancestors with skeletons in their closets.

One of the topics that comes up again and again when I talk to audiences about my grandfather's story is the idea of family silence within communities of color.  So many adults simply don't know their family stories, oftentimes because those stories are ones of humiliation and pain.  Aside from details here and there, a knowledge of a place of birth, a marriage, a death, so many of us don't know the ins and out, the stuff that glistens from the nooks and crannies.  We don't know and we don't think to ask.  We live with each other day in and day out unconcerned about what came before us.  Until someone comes knocking and unearths it all.

People change their stories.  Loved ones hide from me.  I don't always know why.

I do know that losing someone you love is indescribably painful.  Finding out later that they weren't who you thought they were is something else altogether.

"Finishing the Hat"

Sometimes I just want to write.  Not rewrite.  Not edit.  Or revise.  Years of research and thousands of hours of writing have produced 85,000 words of text that make up the work of my life.  I’ve never worked this hard on any single endeavor.  Ever. 

I tell myself that once I reach a milestone like finish an outline for my agent, research this aspect of the Mississippi River, refine my perspective on the effects of integration, tighten the syntax on that chapter, get the entire book to a readable place so that others can start reading for me, and on and on…once I reach this milestone I’ll blog, do my laundry, clean my house, call my dad, organize the millions of papers my kids have brought home from school…but there is always another book-related milestone rising up in front of me before the current one is done. 

It seems over-simplified to say that I am exhausted.  Sometimes it takes all of the discipline, power of the human spirit, carpe diem, and all that jazz that I can muster to even open up my laptop and start again.  I haven’t taken a day off in months.  I write and I write and I write and when I look up I realize that there is still so much more writing to be done. 

There are things about my book that are like a mad, hot love affair. Paragraphs that so capture exactly what I want to say, that when I read them my heart sings.  For every paragraph like that there are hundreds of others that look at me with weary eyes like half dressed, hungry children wondering when I will find a solution for them.  In the words of Booker Wright, “I’m on my way.”

I like to do endurance events.  I work out a lot because I can justify putting off my writing to take care of my body.  I ran a half marathon and completed a metric century, but those things are a cakewalk when compared to the persistent effort required to complete a book.  Too much time being unfocused and I can lose it.

The truth of each moment that needs to occur in my book come together to make up a pile of wordless feelings.  My job is to put all of those moments down in a compelling order, described in a way that illuminates them – all this while sticking like a magnet to the truth of history.  Every detail, every moment must be fact-checked and double checked.  If I work too slowly, I can lose the essence of the story that’s in my soul, too quickly and I can do it a disservice, failing to properly translate it into words. 

The intangible science of writing is tormentingly fascinating.  I watch myself with awe.  Sometimes I wonder what will happen to me if I finish this book and no one reads it.  The world is full of artists like me – people who did the work, put in the time, let their very lives slip away so that they could finish the hat.  I know that this work is creating in me character.  I know that at the end of every writing session, just like with weight training, I am that much stronger, I am that much better as a writer.  Sometimes I watch the elite athletes who win marathons.  Some of them cross the finish line looking frail, spent, and exhausted, falling into the arms of complete strangers who congratulate and catch them at the same time.  I get it.  

Oh, and if one more person says, "You haven't finished your book yet," I might burst into flames.  

A Meeting in Meridian

He wouldn't come out of his cell.  I traveled all the way there, stayed in a hotel, had a friend take off work to go with me, and he wouldn't come out of his cell.

This was the one variable that I had not prepared myself for.  The paperwork was processed.  We went through the crazy security process, where the guards were sure to subtly remind us over and over again that they could curtail our visit.  In the end, just when I knew we'd jumped through all the hoops, word came down from his floor that he would not see me, he would not come out of his cell.

I don't know if it's a game or fear or maybe something else.  I felt stupid.  I put myself in a position with him where he had the power.  I gave him that and he used it.  Maybe he was afraid.  He hasn't had a visitor in years.  I want to have sympathy for him and to assume the best, but I'm not there yet.  I'm angry and sad.  I promised myself that no matter how things went that day, that I would let go of this piece of the puzzle, I would stop looking so closely at the murder.  I said that when I thought I would see him.

I'm still on the fence about next steps.  I'm focusing on other things...working on other chapters...pulling my book together without the answers I was hoping for.

I want to write to him to ask what happened.  But I wonder why he hasn't written to me to tell me.  I don't want to be in relationship with a mad man, with the man who shattered my family with a blast of pellets.  I feel like I started something that I want to stop, but can't.  I feel like a fool.