Black History Begins at Home

I have always been curious about black history. Curious about the people who moved in life while I was yet a whisper in the womb. But that curiosity, that quest for knowledge about the black people before me, extended beyond the general knowledge of great black figures like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King and other historical figures who symbolized the struggle of blacks in America.

My curiosity went inward toward the story of my own personal black history--the history of those in my family.

Like most black Americans, my knowledge of the family lineage was limited to the 100 years this side of the Emancipation, and this, too, was limited. From my parents’ stories I could go back as far as Mississippi, their home state. From these same stories I had a clear picture of what life was like in Mississippi in the 1930s and 1940s for blacks in general, and my family in particular. I knew, too, that Mississippi historically has been one of the poorest states in the Union, and one whose name was synonymous with violent racism.

My parents left Mississippi and headed north to Illinois after they were married. Their brothers and sisters also left. I was born and raised in the North, with my knowledge of Mississippi limited to periodic visits to my maternal and paternal grandparents who remained as the sole roots to the family tree that had branched out across the country. They were my oldest living relatives, and as I grew older I wanted to know about their life and the lives of those before them as far back as they could remember. I wanted to know what thoughts, what passions, what events had come together in molding my family into the people we have become, and the people we shall become.

Six years ago I traveled to Mississippi in pursuit of my family’s black history. Much of my time was spent with my maternal grandfather--a tobacco-chewing, tough but witty man who didn’tmind my tape recorder playing everywhere we went. He took me around the small Mississippi delta town in which he lived, and we walked and we talked about his life and the family and the things he thought and felt. He talked about the long years of the Great Depression when times were tough for everyone but particularly for a black man in the state of Mississippi. He told me about the struggle to keep the family together, about his trip to Vicksburg to find work, about the callousness and the warmth of human beings--and about his unyielding faith.

My grandfather died two months ago. Today, in the center of Black History Month, my sorrow at his passing has been tempered by the gift he granted six years ago: the gift of his voice on tape telling, in his own words, his life and the life of our family.

I hear his voice and feel the gravel beneath our feet as we walked along the dirt road atop the levee, and touch the bittersweet beauty of the cotton puffed and white in the September sun, and watch the ripples in the water of the mighty Mississippi.

I am thankful for my curiosity. I listen to the tapes. I hear his voice. I know I have something special. It is a gift that transcends his lifetime and will transcend mine.

As we celebrate this month, it is important not only that black Americans learn about the history that we have in common as a group but also that we learn about the unsung heroes in our own families who struggled through life in the best way they knew to make life a little better for the present generation.

Black history begins at home. The strength of any celebration of black history is to be felt in knowing the personal history of our family members who came before us. It is the knowledge of the stony roads they trod, their victories and defeats, their life of living that forms the cornerstone to a strong foundation for black Americans as individuals and as a group.