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Monday
Thanks to Trump wannabe Ron DeSantis and various other GOP politicians, Black History is under more assault than it has been in years. Suddenly school libraries and school curricula are being scoured of America’s troubled racial past. Someone recently tweeted (spouted actually since I’ve shifted over to Spoutify) that “the people who threw rocks at Ruby Bridges for trying to go to school are now upset their grandchildren might learn about them throwing rocks at Ruby Bridges for trying to go to school.” (Ruby Bridges Goes to School has been under assault in Texas schools.)
I remember when I had my own Black history awakening. The local NAACP, of which my father was a member, had purchased a number of books for Sewanee’s Black school. As it was summer, my father brought them home, which is how I came to read biographies of George Washington Carver and Harriet Tubman. I was inspired by their stories.
Such stories did not show up in my seventh grade Tennessee history class, where plantation slavery was barely mentioned and the major cause of the Civil War (so we were taught) was economic differences between the north and the south. (Also, while learning much about Tennessee favorite son Andrew Jackson, we were never taught about the Cherokee trail of tears that he instigated.) There are important reasons why the nation needs a “Black History Month.”
Lucille Clifton has several poems about White erasure of Black history. In “why some people be mad at me sometimes,” she succinctly writes,
they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and i keep on remembering
mine.
During a visit to South Carolina’s Walnut Grove Plantation, Clifton took a tour and was struck by the guide failing to mention the slaves. She had to prod the man to learn that a field of unmarked rocks was actually a slave graveyard. When she looked at the plantation’s inventory, she discovered that the female slaves were even more invisible than the male slaves. The poem makes powerful use of puns in its pointed climax:
at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989
by Lucille Cliftonamong the rocks
at walnut grove
your silence drumming
in my bones,
tell me your names.nobody mentioned slaves
and yet the curious tools
shine with your fingerprints.
nobody mentioned slaves
but somebody did this work
who had no guide, no stone,
who moulders under rock.tell me your names,
tell me your bashful names
and I will testify.the inventory lists ten slaves
but only men were recognized.
among the rocks
at walnut grove
some of these honored dead
were dark
some of these dark
were slaves
some of these slaves
were women
some of them did this honored work.
tell me your names
foremothers, brothers,
tell me your dishonored names.
here lies
here lies
here lies
here lies
hear
Clifton knows that, in correcting the historical record, she will draw fire. In “i am accused of tending to the past,” she protests that she is not shaping history but merely reporting it. Like it or not, it will speak through her:
i am accused of tending to the past
as if i made it,
as if i sculpted it
with my own hands. i did not.
this past was waiting for me
when i came,
a monstrous unnamed baby,
and i with my mother’s itch
took it to breast
and named it
History.
she is more human now,
learning languages everyday,
remembering faces, names and dates.
when she is strong enough to travel
on her own, beware, she will.
Is Black history strong enough to travel on its own yet or do we still need a Black History month to nurture it a bit longer. Is it still a baby that Ron DeSantis can suffocate in its cradle? I’m not entirely sure.
Nor do I entirely understand what to make of Clifton’s warning. Will failure to tend to our Black past result in a vengeful Black populace? The poem was written around the time that Rodney King was beaten senseless by Los Angeles cops, leading to riots, so maybe that’s what Clifton has in mind here.
If so, subsequent Black history has been far less a threat to Whites than Clifton predicts. In fact, the real danger to the country is White violence, not Black. I have yet to see White supremacists paying a price for their assaults.
But I agree with “History” learning new languages, faces, names, and dates. I don’t think that DeSantis will be able to turn back that clock.
