Seven Points for Teaching POC Genealogy

family photographs
Three photo postcards from Mayaguez Puerto Rico from the early 1900s, two toddlers flank a young girl.
Three photo postcards from Mayaguez, ca 1910. Postcard collection, EFS.

It seems almost weekly, we see articles describing tone deaf and racist approaches to the teaching of slavery, on which the foundation of this country rests, and maintains today. Part of the problems rests on the disconnect between this history and how and what we learn, together with where and who delivers a particular narrative about the past. The Southern Poverty Law Center, in response to the recent spate of incidences in schools across the country, issued a report with seven common problems in teaching about slavery, which I rewrote here to apply to genealogy.

1. We understand that slavery is not a universal experience for POC, but it is the fact of how this nation was founded. We seek to research, learn and understand the roles and experiences of families and communities within these systems.

2. We acknowledge that flaws are embedded in particular understandings of American history, and that by understanding their role in impacting family history, we can also work towards change.

3. Enslavement is an American institution that crosses time and place. It existed in all colonies and states at the time of the signing of Declaration of Independence, and its principles continue to be bound with the economic fate of the nation today.

4. We speak to the ideology of white supremacy, and point to its outline and role of eugenics within the formation of genealogical practice. We also consider the perpetuation of slavery within forms of structural racism today, that connects past and present.

5. We deal with traumatic experiences as part of our history; the focus within our approach is on resilience and survival.

6. Genealogy and family history are contextual practices- we seek to incorporate the scope of POC experience by not divorcing it from the cultural currents and practices of the time.

7. Our focus on the lives of POC decenters white experience, and instead references a framework of relevant political and economic impacts in the time leading up to and beyond the Civil War. African American institutions provided structure and opportunity, thereby affording a way out of no way.

These two quotes, from a speech made by James Baldwin in 1980 still resonate today when thinking about family histories, genealogy and their use in interpreting the larger context of living and understanding the past:

“I want to suggest that history is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history.”

“You got to find out the reality which surrounds you. You got to be able to describe it. You got to be able to describe your mother and your father and your uncles and your junkie cousin. If you aren’t able to describe it, you will not be able to survive it.” “Black English: A Dishonest Argument.” Randall Kenan, ed. James Baldwin,  The Cross of Redemption, Uncollected Writings. 2010. 

Resources

Teaching Hard History: American Slavery. Tolerance.org PDF. SPLC, 2018. https://www.tolerance.org/sites/default/files/2018-02/TT-Teaching-Hard-History-American-Slavery-Report-WEB-February2018.pdf

Teaching Hard History: Podcast – Seasons 1 & 2 https://www.tolerance.org/podcasts/teaching-hard-history/american-slavery

Ellen Fernandez-Sacco, “Can Genealogy Be Racist? Identity, Roots & the Question of Proof.” Blogpost, 22 March 2018, Latino Genealogy & Beyond.com. https://latinogenealogyandbeyond.com/blog/can-genealogy-be-racist/

Cite this post: Ellen Fernandez-Sacco, “Seven Points for Teaching POC Genealogy.” 27 September 2019, Latino Genealogy & Beyond.com

Resources on the History of Prostitution, Underground Economies & Family Histories

A supplement for Episode 89: Dangerous Liaisons: Jailbird Relatives and The Freaky Underside of Genealogy. Black ProGen Live! July 30, 2019

Lewis Hine, View of Red Light District on C. Street, N.W., near 13th,
Lewis Hine, View of Red Light District on C. Street, N.W., near 13th, with Griffin Veatch, who was showing me around. No. 6 Special Messenger Service, 1223 New York Ave., N.W.; he lives 1643 Cramer St., N.E. He said he commenced the messenger service at 11 yrs. old. Has worked all night a couple of years, and now works until 10 P.M. Is known to Truant Officers. Family has had trouble with him. Says he is 17 but doesn’t look it. Quite profane, but (apparently) not very wise about this district although he says he goes to these houses occasionally. Location: Washington (D.C.), District of Columbia. Library of Congress.

There’s no family history left untouched in some way by underground economies and prostitution. Prostitution or sex work, can be understood as a means of survival first and second, an avocation, either by choice or coercion. Beyond the economic question of support, there are questions about the nature of history that can exclude the marginalized worker, questions around ideas of gender, masculinity, power and the network of beliefs and the structure of law that declares it legal, illegal or a fusion of the two. So, if we think about family histories that deal with aspects of an underground economy, it means dealing with variables in time and place. For many this was a temporary connection or situation, a form of employment that was often unpredictable. Only for a select few, was it a situation under their direct control.

In art, prostitution is the subject of painting, literature, cinema and photography; it shapes the nature of urban, modern experience and informs the realms of tourism and the military. There are stereotypes that circulate in popular culture, in different societies, best viewed as means of defining ideas and assumptions around gender, race and various social boundaries. Looking further back, sexual slavery was also a feature of the transatlantic slave trade that used men women and children, and there’s the trafficking that continues into the present.. Columbus established a sex trade on Hispanola by 1490, with children as young as 9 years old serving as sex slaves.

Prostitution as an organized business arrived in Puerto Rico (and by extension to other colonies) with Spanish colonization in the sixteenth century. After the Spanish American War, for example, policing these boundaries of gender and race drew on discourses of eugenics and public health, so that women were subjected to moral judgements, incarceration, forced medical treatment and framed them both as a targeted category of control and as fulfillment of eugenic policies. Any behavior viewed as questionable by women living in poverty, or regarded as promiscuous, were targeted and swept up as a means of social control, even if they never worked ‘the life’.

Family, Context, Options and Motivation

Understanding how illicit businesses like prostitution, numbers running, and black market participation shapes your family history, can open up a history of different social networks, and is an opportunity to understand the various social constraints and options people faced to sell the only thing they had left to sell to survive.

Often there is an economic reason that leaves people in desperate situations, as with the women mantua makers of the 1840s whose poor pay for long hours hand sewing then-fashionable hooded outerwear. As they contended with rising expenses many were left working a sex trade in order to make ends meet. Some were persons who suddenly found themselves without other means of support; still others (a much smaller group) decide on it as a business, contending with the legal structures on the local and national level to keep business going. Employment by any means necessary was for some, key to survival. In Harlem of the 1930s, Stephanie St. Clair known as “Queenie”, “Madam Queen”, “Madam St. Clair”, and “Queen of the Policy Rackets”, ran a numbers racket that kept some 2,000 people employed during the Great Depression, despite attempts by the Mafia to take her empire over. When a young man in New York City, my paternal grandfather kept food on the table for his family by being a numbers runner, the person who brought the bets to the bookie.

Violence & social control

Depending on the age and racial designation, there may be no effort to help or investigate the murder of sex workers, denying justice as well as legal and medical support services to those who remain. Or, there is wholesale denial on offer, as with the so-called Korean ‘Comfort Women‘ forced to serve the Japanese Army during WW2, who went on the promise of factory employment and instead found themselves in harrowing conditions. Yet, acknowledgement and apologies from the Japanese government were not forthcoming. Oral histories are key to knowing and understanding what happened.

Violence, repression and incarceration are also part of the picture, adding to the complexity of understanding the past. Law enforcement was anything but consistent. Conditions vary, whether streetwalking, brothel, escort, and the legal stance per country can exacerbate or support those involved, and class made a huge difference. Military prostitution, child prostitution, trafficking and tourism are other aspects to consider when researching the past. The question of slavery, whether legal condition or condition of labor repeatedly comes up. Studies do show it’s better to have regulation and laws that protect the worker rather than have an illicit trade where it is not those who labor who gain the income.

Finding Information: Some Resources

Oral histories, photographs, police reports, newspapers, census and military records, are just some of the materials in various collections that may have information on a family member. As the essay from the Framing Resources site at GMU notes, there is no one class, cultural, religious or social perspective on prostitution, and it’s a field of study that has much to offer in terms of understanding the historical context of family histories involved with the practice, some of it very recent. Also the site provides a small area that lays out some questions helpful for working on genealogical research in terms of the nature of primary and secondary materials you’ll encounter in libraries, special collections both online and off.

Take a look at Tyler Schulze’s Black Sheep Ancestor pages “Search for your Blacksheep Ancestors in Free Genealogical Prison and Convict Records, Historical Court Records, Executions, Insane Asylum Records and Biographies of Famous Outlaws, Criminals & Pirates in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada” http://blacksheepancestors.com

I Dream of Genealogy has a cluster of 7 states (CA, FL, IL, IA, LA, NV, NY) with access to admittedly a small group of free Prison and Arrest Records listed in http://www.idreamof.com/prison.html?src=gentoday

The Internet Archive has over 1400 items in a search result, some of them guidebooks, others, legal statutes published during the 19th century, books and other related materials to download or borrow. See link below.

Also included are the links to special collections on Storyville, New Orleans from the Library of Congress website. Please scroll down towards the end of this post.

This list is not exhaustive, but intended to give a sense of the wide variety of materials and approaches that you can apply to your searches.

Resources

General

“Framing Resources Essay: Case study on prostitution” – Women in World History Website “These varied materials reflect differing class, cultural, religious, and social perspectives on prostitution, especially in the modern, Western world. They tell us what observers thought about prostitution and how their attitudes changed over time. Until recently, there were few personal accounts by prostitutes to provide clues about their varying motivations or their attitudes toward the governments, organizations, or individuals that sought to regulate the practice or abolish prostitution. Oral histories as well as the anthropological and sociological studies that document the lives of prostitutes, many of them from Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe and almost all of them poor, have begun filling this gap.”
http://chnm.gmu.edu/wwh/essay/essay.php?c=resources&r=case

Andy McCarthy, “Genealogy Tips: New York City Cops in the City Record.”
“…For the five boroughs, there really is no collection of historical “police records.…”
https://www.nypl.org/blog/2017/08/18/researching-nypd-city-record

NYPL Record Requests: FOIL
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/services/law-enforcement/record-requests.page

Cyndi’s List: Occupations: Prostitution
https://www.cyndislist.com/occupations/prostitutes/

Judy Rosella Edwards, “Genealogy of Communities: Prostitution” Genealogy Today.
https://www.genealogytoday.com/articles/reader.mv?ID=2916

“Researching the Oldest Profession.” Family Tree Magazine
https://www.familytreemagazine.com/premium/researching-the-oldest-profession/

“Prostitution in the Americas.” Wikipedia.
[Note the status of countries as legal, legal and regulated and illegal]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_the_Americas

“Prostitution in the United States.” Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_the_United_States

“Prostitution in Paris” Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Paris

Andrew Israel Ross,  “Sex in the Archives: homosexuality Prostitution and the Archives de la Prefecture de Police de Paris”, French Historical Studies, 2017 (free access)
https://read.dukeupress.edu/french-historical-studies/article/40/2/267/9914/Sex-in-the-ArchivesHomosexuality-Prostitution-and

Elizabeth Garner Mazaryk, “Selling Sex: 19th C New York City Prostitution and Brothels.” 3 Sep 2017
https://digpodcast.org/2017/09/03/19th-century-new-york-city-brothels/

New York State Prostitution Laws
https://statelaws.findlaw.com/new-york-law/new-york-prostitution-laws.html

William E. Nelson, Criminality and Sexual Morality in New York, 1920-1980. Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities.
https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1091&context=yjlh

LaShawn Harris . “Playing the Numbers Game: Madame Stephanie St. Clair & African-American Policy Culture in Harlem”. Black Women, Gender and Families (2008). (2): 53–76.

Bastiaens, Ida (2007) “Is Selling Sex Good Business? : Prostitution in Nineteenth Century New York City,” Undergraduate Economic Review: Vol. 3: Iss. 1, Article 8.
http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/uer/vol3/iss1/8

Oral History of the Korean “Comfort Women”, Columbia University http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/korea/comfort_women.pdf

Blackburn, George M., and Sherman L. Ricards. “The prostitutes and gamblers of Virginia City, Nevada: 1870.” Pacific Historical Review 48.2 (1979): 239-258
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3639274?seq=1/subjects

Fabiola Bailón Vásquez, 2017. “Reglamentarismo Y Prostitución En La Ciudad De México, 1865-1940.” Historias, n.º 93 (junio), 79-98.
https://revistas.inah.gob.mx/index.php/historias/article/view/10910

Revista Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña.
Carlos A Rodriguez Villanueva, “Amor licito e ilícito: un escape a los patrones amorosos establecidos [Historia socio-sexual en ella Caribe Hispanico, siglos XVIII-XIX: Cuba, Santo Domingo y Puerto Rico]”; Jose E Flores Ramos, “Vida cotidiana de la prostitutas en San Juan de Puerto Rico: 1890-1919”;
Nelly Vazquez Sortillo, “La violencia dentro de la violencia: un caso de violencia domestica en una hacienda esclavista en Puerto Rico (1871).”. 2006 vol 13, 2nd series. Issue downloadable from issuu.com
https://issuu.com/coleccionpuertorriquena/docs/segunda_serie_n__mero_13

348 Dra. Nieves de los Ángeles Vázquez Lazo “Historia de la prostitución en Puerto Rico, de 1876 a 1917.” Angel Collazo Schwarz, La Voz del Centro http://www.vozdelcentro.org/2009/08/23/la-historia-de-la-prostitucion-en-puerto-rico/ Podcast: http://www.vozdelcentro.org/mp3/Prog_348.mp3

Isabel Luberza Oppenheimer, ‘Isabel la Negra’, Madam & owner of Elizabeth’s Dancing Club, Ponce, PR. Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabel_Luberza_Oppenheimer

Juan A Vera Mendez “Legalización de la Prostitución” (slide presentation has helpful overview on prostitution in PR)
https://studylib.es/doc/6024328/la-prostitución—universidad-interamericana-de-puerto-rico

“1970s New York City: The dangerous & gritty streets during a decade of decline.” NY Daily News. Photographs of NYC’s sex workers included.
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/gritty-new-york-city-1970s-gallery-1.1318521

Basin Street brothels, New Orleans, 1908. Wikipedia

Books

Timothy J Gilfoyle, City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920. (1994)

Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860. (1987)

Shirley Stewart, The World of Stephanie St. Clair, An Entrepreneur, Race Woman and Outlaw in Early Twentieth Century Harlem. Peter Lang Publishers, 2014.

LaShawn Harris, Sex Workers, Psychics and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy. U Illinois Press, 2016.

Shane White, Graham White, Stephen Garton, Stephen Robertson, Playing the Numbers: Gambling in Harlem Between the Wars. Harvard UP, 2010.

Karen Abbott, Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys and the Battle for America’s Soul. [Chicago] Random House, (2008).

Laura Briggs, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science and US Imperialism in Puerto Rico, University California Press, (2002).

Eileen J Suarez Findlay, Imposing Decency: The politics of sexuality and race in Puerto Rico, 1870-1920. Duke UP (1999).

Donna J. Seifert, Elizabeth Barthold O’Brien, & Joseph Balicki, “Mary Ann’s First Class House: The Archaeology of a Capital Brothel.” Robert A Schmidt & Barbara L. Voss, Archaeologies of Sexuality. Routledge, (2000), 117-128.

Wild West Book Review: Jan McKell’s Red Light Women of the Rocky Mountains UNM Press, 2009
https://www.historynet.com/wild-west-book-review-red-light-women.htm

Heather Branstetter, A Business Doing Pleasure: Selling Sex in the Silver Valley 1884-1991. Wallace, Idaho. (author blog)
https://abusinessdoingpleasure.com
Race & the Houses
https://abusinessdoingpleasure.com/2017/08/17/race-and-the-houses/
Files at the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office
https://abusinessdoingpleasure.com/2014/10/02/aboutthescsofiles/

Isabel Luberza Oppenheimer (1908-1974), colloquially known as ‘Isabel la Negra’ Madam & Owner, Elizabeth’s Dance Club, Ponce, PR

Reports

“Garden of Truth: the trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota.” Minnesota Indian Women Sexual Assault Coalition.  Report (2011)
https://vawnet.org/material/garden-truth-prostitution-and-trafficking-native-women-minnesota

“Prostitution: A violent reality of homelessness” (2001) report
https://www.issuelab.org/resource/prostitution-a-violent-reality-of-homelessness.html

Historical resource
Medievalists.net list of posts on prostitution, various locations during the medieval period 
http://www.medievalists.net/tag/prostitution/

Mapping

Hell’s Half Acre, 2017 [Victorian Los Angeles]
https://la.curbed.com/2017/11/17/16654292/history-prostitution-los-angeles

Selected Items from the Internet Archive, Archive.org items

Search results: simple search, prostitution yields 1400+ items 
https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Prostitution%22

US Congress, House Committee on Interstate Commerce, Memorandum on white slave trade. 1909
https://archive.org/details/memoranduminrewh00unit/page/n6

Rosine Association, Reports and realities from the sketch-book of a manager of the Rosine Association, December 1855.
https://archive.org/details/reportsandreali00pagoog/page/n7

An ordinance relating to houses of ill fame and prostitution Salt Lake City, UT, 1877
https://archive.org/details/ordinancerelatin03salt

Special Collections

KC History Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library Results – 60 objects
https://kchistory.org/islandora/search/Prostitution%20?type=dismax

Annie Chambers, (1843-1945) 19 results 
https://kchistory.org/islandora/search/Prostitution%20?type=dismax&islandora_solr_search_navigation=0&f%5B0%5D=kcpl_mods_local_subject_ms%3A%22Chambers%2C%5C%20Annie%22

Modern Pornography & Sex Work Collection, 1960-1990. University of South Florida 
https://digital.lib.usf.edu/SFS0050529/00001

CSUN, The Oldest Profession (Collections overview)
https://library.csun.edu/SCA/Peek-in-the-Stacks/prostitution

Dr Bonnie Bullough Collection, 1954-2000. CSUN, Oviatt Library, Special Collections
https://findingaids.csun.edu/archon/?p=collections/controlcard&id=445

Reverend Wendell M Miller Collection, 1928-1988.
Citizens independent Vice Investigating Committee (CIVIC)  CSUN, Oviatt Library, Special Collections
http://findingaids.csun.edu/archon/?p=collections/controlcard&id=102

Prostitution Collection, 1834-1954., Five Colleges (MA)
http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss108.html

Prostitution at Brigham Young University, 1997
https://findingaid.lib.byu.edu/viewItem/FA%207/Series%2010/Subseries%204/6.10.5.6.2/

Minnie Fischer Cunningham Papers, Standard Statistics on Prostitution Syphilis & Gonorrhea (1919)
https://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/p15195coll33/item/224

Guide to Shelley Bristol Papers UNLV
https://www.library.unlv.edu/speccol/finding-aids/MS-00398.pdf

The Real Rainbow Row, Charleston Hotel
College of Charleston, Special Collections
https://speccoll.cofc.edu/the-real-rainbow-row/charleston-hotel-200-meeting-street/

New Orleans

The Library of Congress’ page on Storyville has several special collections from New Orleans which I have included below.

Storyville: A resource guide to commercialized Vice in New Orleans. Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/rr/business/storyville/books.html

IAL COLLECTIONS
Storyville: a resource guide to sources about commercialized vice in historic New Orleans.
February 2018
Table of Contents
Overview
Selected Book Titles
Newspapers
Special Collections
LC Subject Headings

Archives of the City of New Orleans. New Orleans Public Library.
http://nutrias.org/~nopl/inv/synopsis/synopsis.htm 
This includes ordinances related to prostitution.

Louisiana State Archives. Baton Rouge.
https://www.sos.la.gov/HistoricalResources/Pages/default.aspx 
See Research Historical Records  section.

Louisiana and Special Collections. Earl K. Long Library, University of New Orleans.
http://libguides.uno.edu/special 
Includes the following collections: New Orleans Chamber of Commerce Records, MSS 66  and Josie Arlington Collection, MSS 270.

Louisiana Research Collection. Howard-Tilton Library, Tulane University.
http://larc.tulane.edu/ 
Search in the following collections:
Al Rose Collection, RG 606  : Although listed as a jazz archive, Storyville was the place to hear jazz musicians. Search:  Prostitution.
Master Rolls, Battalion Washington Artillery: 1861-1865.  
New Orleans Travelers’ Aid Society Papers, RG 365.

New Orleans Records. New Orleans City Archives, Louisiana Division New Orleans Public Library.
http://nutrias.org/spec/speclist.htm 
This collection includes arrest records, arrest index, ‘Jewell’s Digest of the City Ordinances’, etc.
Note: this collection is also available on microfilm at the Library of Congress.

New Orleans. Ordinances, etc. Jewell’s Digest of the city ordinances, Rev. ed. New Orleans, 1887. 
LC Call Number: Microfilm 21895 JS
LC Catalog record: 47035734

Williams Research Center. Historic New Orleans Collection.
https://www.hnoc.org/ 
Blue Books in the Williams Research Center’s collection, probably the largest extant, is available for research. View one of the digitized Blue Books here. Please contact the center for more information.
Last updated: 02/09/2018

Beyond Transcriptions: Jose Antonio Caban Nieves and his five wives

Detail: Barrio Naranjo. Centro Geográfico del Ejército, Itinerario de Moca a Añasco, 1893

What’s in a name?

How many Jose, Maria and Juans have you come across in your tree? Frequently repeated first names can reflect religious preferences, as in Saints Day names or Marian names. The repetition of names can also be a simple preference due to precedents within families or by popularity.
 Sorting out whether a name that keeps cropping up are made up of one or multiple first and last names requires caution as one seeks the supplemental evidence that adds weight to a proof. Even better is locating a document where the informant knew quite a bit about the deceased, to the point of citing several marriages, parents, children or grandparents. There are documents that just begin to knock some brick walls down– and this 1904 document provides just such a moment. 

The son who remembered 

When Jose Antonio Caban Nieves died in 1904, his son, Lorenzo Caban Babilonia was able to recite the names of all the women in his father’s five marriages. Now both of Lorenzo’s parents were gone, as his father  contracted a severe intestinal illness, that resulted in his rapid demise.  How long Jose Antonio’s condition lasted went unmentioned in his death certificate.  Such details are included in more recent certificates, after 1935.

Wives, children and memory 

Jose Antonio Caban Nieves lived long enough to be a 70 year old man who had 16 children, most of whom survived to adulthood. His marriage with Pascasia Babilonia,  was likely the longest of all. Remarkably, his son Lorenzo Caban Babilonia (1866-1946) listed the  names of the children from each marriage.  This also reflects an oral practice of transmitting names and committing them (successfully) to memory, so Lorenzo’s feat was part of learning one’s own family history. We know it’s oral, because at the end of the document, is stated “..firma el Comisonado y los testigos por el declarante no saber firmar, le hace a su ruego..” the Commissioner and witnesses signed on his behalf, because the informant does not know how to write. His father left a will, so there’s additional documentation in the Protocolos Notariales at the Archivo General de Puerto Rico.
As it turns out, NONE of the additional 14 people linked  to Jose were indexed in FamilySearch— another reason why it’s worth checking the original document. 

Detail, Acta de defuncion, Jose Antonio Caban Nieves, F186 #12   1904 image no 1236. Registro Civil, Moca, FS.org
  • Parents:  Marcelo Caban & Ynes Nieves
  • First Marriage: Pascasia Babilonia [Quinones]
  • 10 children, only 8 mentioned: Lorenzo,  Juana, Bibiana, Calista, Ricarda, Anastasio, Juan y Segundino Caban Babilonia.
  • Second Marriage: Felipa Marrero [Hernandez]
  • 3 children: Cleofe, Adelaida & Antonia Caban Marrero 
  • Third Marriage: Juana Babilonia [Perez]
  • 1 child: Juana Nieves Babilonia
  • Fourth Marriage: Evangelista Ortiz [Perez]
    No children
  • Fifth Marriage: Sinforosa Soto [Hernandez]
  • 2 children: Luis y Marian Caban Soto 

What this also tells us is that childbearing proved deadly for some partners. With so many little ones, a widower’s impulse to find another wife was imperative. Here potential mates seem to be in the area of Barrio Naranjo, where farms and plantations of relatives and associates were nearby. Most people were born at home, and infant mortality was high. These births were not for the most part, attended by doctors but comadronas or midwives, used their knowledge to bring the next generation into the world. By the 1930s, comadronas (midwives) had formal training, although the knowledge of delivering babies was known among women long before. The difference was a decline in the number of mothers lost to infeccion puerperal – puerperal fever.

For his first marriage to Petronila Pascasia Babilonia Quinones (1846-bef 1886), my research revealed there was at least one additional child. Petronila, as she mostly appears in documents, was the daughter of Francisco Babilonia Acevedo & Maria Bibiana Quinones Vives, owners of Sitio de la Ranchera during the time of her birth.

Multiple connections emerge from these marriages and children. His siblings also tended to have large families, without additional marriages. HIs older sister, Evangelista Caban Nieves (1818-1916), who married Jose Soto (ca 1813-1906) and had 15 children with him. His brothers Marcelino (1833-1914) and Manuel de Jesus Caban Nieves (1846-1886) married two sisters, the daughters of d. Antonio Perez Gerena and da. Manuela Babilonia Lorenzo de Acevedo. Marcelino married Cirila Isidra Babilonia Perez ( 1834-1911) with whom he had 11 children. Manuel de Jesus married Damiana Babilonia Perez (ca 1835-1888) they had 6 known children.

If you’re related to them, you’re related to me via Manuela Babilonia Acevedo, my GGG aunt and her parents. There are probably additional links via the Caban and the Nieves lines, as well, however that connection remains to be determined, partially caught in gap of missing records for first decade of the early nineteenth century. Going beyond the transcriptions in search results can definitely offer a researcher advantages.

References

Centro Geográfico del Ejército, Itinerario de Moca a Añasco, 1893. Archivo Digital National de Puerto Rico, https://archivonacional.com/PL/1/1/1385

“Puerto Rico, Registro Civil, 1805-2001,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVJD-F8D7 : 17 July 2017), Pascasia Babilonia in entry for José Antonio Caban Y Nieves, 27 Jan 1904; citing Moca, Puerto Rico, oficinas del ciudad, Puerto Rico (city offices, Puerto Rico).

Ellen Fernandez-Sacco, “Don Miguel Babilonia (1743-1823) and his Descendants: From Mallorca, Spain to Moca, Puerto Rico.” Hereditas, 16:1, 2015, 6-47; 35-36. https://bit.ly/2Y31yiT

A Bonilla Family Tree: Context, Resistance & Reading Indigeneity

Barrios of Yauco: Red indicates Barrios where Bonillas were based

My latest blog post, is a Guest Post: A Bonilla Family Tree, is about the reading the larger context of Juan Eusebio Bonilla Salcedo’s life and family. This is one of my prima Teresa Vega’s ancestors, who was lynched in Yauco in 1890. Radiant Roots Boricua Branches is her blog. Appreciate this opportunity to delve into her Boricua branches!

Please read both posts at: Decolonizing My Family Tree: Revisting Juan Eusebio Bonilla Salcedo

A Constant Threat of Erasure Pt 3: Claude Neal & the Rippling Out of the Civil War, Jackson County Florida

Black ProGen Live, Episode 83b: Stories from the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

As part of Black ProGen Live’s project, Ep. 83b Stories from the National Institute for Peace and Justice,  I’m researching the family history of Claude Neal (1911-1934), who died barbarically at the hands of a white lynch mob in Marianna, Florida in October 1934. Retaliation did not end there, as the event was also an excuse to burn down the homes in the black section of town. The goal here is not to revisit how Mr. Neal left this earth, but to help find his ancestors and extend the path back in time.  

There are studies of the events that surrounded his torture and murder, but what I am trying to do here is to place his family against this larger, deeper history of Jackson County to make clear the outlines of the weight of living the transition from enslavement to a relative freedom. It was their labor that made places like the grand estates of Marianna and its wealth possible. My condolences to the family, as they have had to bear so much, without seeing justice, as the FBI closed the case in 2013, thanks to decade long silences among the perpetrators and their descendants. 

If you do not know who Claude Neal was, Professor Carol Anderson of Emory University provides an overview of that tragedy, called ‘the last spectacle lynching’ in America. 

Dr. Carol Anderson, The Spectacle Lynching of Claude Neal. Emory University

This blog post is focused on building a context and tracing the lines further back. Part of this work benefitted from the work of descendants with family trees on Ancestry.com, such as Orlando Williams and others, whose efforts to illuminate what happened to his uncle continues.  To them I give thanks. 

A backdrop for racial terror

Understanding the context of Claude Neal’s family history is to engage the history of post-Civil War Jackson County in the Florida Panhandle, so one can also honor the resilience necessary to pass through these experiences. Florida, as recent research clearly shows, ranks fifth among the states with the highest rate and largest number of terror lynchings.  Part of healing from these crimes is to call their names across time and space. 

 And this too is the history of the state I presently call home. By the time of Claude Neal’s murder, 1934, Jim Crow laws, eugenic ideals, an  unacknowledged history of enslavement, intensive cotton cultivation with extractive sharecropping arrangements, shaped the state’s legal contours, honed further still by blind followers of the ‘Lost Cause’. In 1834 Andrew Jackson authorized the displacement of the Five Slaveholding Tribes, with the Seminole concentrated in the region. Despite the evacuation of many Native people, not everyone went to Oklahoma, and some managed to remain in the area.  Within the decade, white planters moved thousands into the Florida panhandle and into the peninsula.

Section of settlement map; marks indicate “plantations using 30 slaves or more developed by 1840.” Red circle indicates Jackson County.

T. Thomas Fortune’s autobiographical newspaper series, “After War Times: A Boy’s Life in Reconstruction Days” published in the Philadelphia Tribune in 1927 speaks of his childhood in Marianna. The complexity of the family history he relates defies the binary categories of black and white, and points to deeper tri-racial ancestries that also resulted within Marianna, shoehorned and hidden under the designations of ‘W’ or ‘B’ or ‘M’:

Fortune’s female ancestor, Sarah Jane was sold south from Virginia, and “Emanuel, who begat us, was never a father but always a friend and companion. He was an extraordinary man, and played a conspicuous part in the Reconstruction politics of Florida. He served as a member of the Constitutional Convention and the first four sessions of the legislature. He was born of an Indian  mother and an Irish father. His mother was the wife of Osceola, who was stolen from Micanopy and taken to West Florida by Thomas Fortune… after his mysterious death she was taken as a wife by John Pope, who was also of mixed Seminole blood…. The family picture I have drawn is a familiar one produced out of the  loose morality of the system of slavery. In my family there was the African, the Indian and the Jewish women and the Irish and half breed Indian men, with the Jewish father guilty of selling his daughter by a black woman into slavery in the same village where he was a judge… [1]

“The people responsible for the cross of the black, white and red races in this country are in very interesting and questionable business when they draw the color line on the sisters and brothers whom their fathers and brothers mulattoized…” – T. Thomas Fortune, “After War Times”, 1927

Post-Reconstruction violence: a resistance to change

 “Satan has his seat; he reigns in Jackson County.”

— Senator Rev. Charles H. Pearce,  Founder of the AME church in Florida, testifying on the KKK in Florida [2]

The events of the Jackson County War (1869-1871)  is a history untold until the 1960s, nearly a century after the events of the late 1860s. From early 1869 to the end of 1871, some one hundred to an estimated two hundred persons were killed, making Jackson County, Florida’s most violent county under Reconstruction. What was at stake was power, and the 1867 Florida Constitution aimed to repress African Americans with the Black Codes built into the document, which Congress rejected. They declared  Florida had no government until they adopted the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to conform to the Constitution.[3] 

Jackson County was the second most populated county in the state, with some ten thousand inhabitants from 1851 to 1868. As the average rate of murder was two yearly, the sudden fifty-fold rise over three years meant much organizing work was needed to stem the violence. [4] The KKK rode hard in Florida in an attempt to maintain the old social order through racial terror after the Civil War. Even after Reconstruction, those who rallied behind the Myth of the Lost Cause were willing to do anything, including annihilating people in politics and in the field, destroying their homes and businesses in order for the defenders of the ‘Old South’ to maintain power. 

In the early twentieth century, historians that retold the history of the Jackson County War diminished the focus on African American struggles by  inventing details and dramatizing events that practically absolved the white conservatives who perpetrated the atmosphere of violence that permeated Reconstruction Florida. One study written from this perspective remained the authoritative text on this period for over fifty years. 

By 1960s, historians finally delved into resources like the Freedmen’s Bureau Florida records, and by the 1970s a clearer picture of violence and mayhem “arising from organized white resistance determined to drive out black and white Republican leadership” finally came into view. [5]   By the early 2000s, the role of the Klan, violence, intimidation and resistance were on the table. Curiously, a number of the books that focus on this history are not available within the Hillsborough County Library system today, but because of Henry Louis Gates’ recent documentary Reconstruction: America After the Civil War, a number of related titles are available.  The Florida Freedmen’s Bureau records however, are in need of a transcription project as some 26 reels of microfilm hold the details for many families across the state before the bureau’s bank failed in 1873. 

Reconstruction

There’s a tight relationship between this past and its connections to the present- I want to bring attention to the issue of social control via voter suppression and the older history of disenfranchisement post Reconstruction.  The Sentencing Project’s 2010 report noted that, “more people were disenfranchised in Florida than in any other state. All of the six states with the most disenfranchised felons are southern states with large black populations.  There is a distinct relationship between race and voter disenfranchisement.” On 1 September 2016, The Miami Herald’s headline pointed to this longer history: “Florida has a History of Making it Harder for Black Citizens to Vote.”The poll tax has returned in another guise, and it’s pertinent that historically, Florida was the first state to adopt a $2 poll tax for voting in 1885 (legal until 1937) and by 1940, only 6% of blacks in Florida were registered to vote.. [6]

A Panhandle County

Colson’s 1862 Map of Georgia, Florida and Alabama. Jackson County lies right by the ‘L’ in Florida. Screenshot from Florida Memory.

Jackson County lies near the borders of Alabama and Georgia on the panhandle, and its economy was based on short staple cotton, grown to the exclusion of other crops, worked by gangs of enslaved laborers. Before the Civil War, slaveowners comprised 38% of Jackson County households, and 16% held as many as ten enslaved people.  

Non-slaveholding farmers arrived from South Carolina and Georgia and worked small pieces of land barely adequate for sustenance. Prosperous planters owned stately homes that lined the main street of Marianna and nearby Greenwood. Yet, transportation was the main disadvantage, as the county’s location on the Chipola River was unnavigable for the huge volume of cotton to transport, compounded by the lack of a railroad, which terminated a county away.  This remoteness added to the difficulty of attempts by those in bondage to emancipate themselves. 

Effects of the Recent War, 1863-1865

During the Civil war, many local white men served in the Confederacy, and late in the war, Jackson County was a breadbasket for the south, the Confederacy ruthlessly requisitioning livestock and crops for the war. By 1863 a military hospital opened and the following year, a Confederate military post with training grounds, storehouses and stables was established at Marianna.  A blockade by the Union Navy prevented the transport of valuable cotton to European markets; Confederate troops from the area went to armies fighting in Virginia, leaving citizens at the mercy of deserters and guerrillas who preyed on the countryside. By the fall, war arrived as a column of 700 Union soldiers left Pensacola to march across the Panhandle. [7] 

Union troops fought local men (old men and young boys) with fragments of Confederate units at Marianna, overwhelming them and suffering unexpected casualties. Before retreating to Pensacola, Union troops laid waste to the town, looting stores and setting fires, carrying off  commissary and quartermaster stores and cattle. Locals blamed acts of violence on the USCT:  “[u]nsubstantiated rumors spread of black soldiers from US Colored Troops units committing atrocities on Confederates found in the churchyard.”  The raid also liberated some four hundred enslaved African Americans who accompanied the Union troops on their march west. Ninety-six prisoners that included 47 men and boys from Jackson County were sent north, most winding up in an infamous prison camp in Elmira, New York. [8]  

With the announcement of the end of the war in April 1864, the Confederate supporting governor, John Milton, shot himself in the head on his Jackson County estate, and in May, came the formal surrender of all Confederate forces in Florida and the emancipation of the enslaved. Union troops were in the South, such as the fifty soldiers of the 161st NY Volunteers that occupied Marianna in July 1865. The captain of the New Yorkers, John F Little, found favor with residents of Marianna; they also established the first school for African American children in Jackson county.  The Jackson County slaves that joined the Union army were in the Eighty-Second and Eighty-Sixth US Colored Troops regimen. Some departed with the withdrawing column.  So far, I haven’t found a connection to the extended Neal families, however descendants may want to explore this further. 

This commitment to the pursuit of rights continued after the war, with the establishment of the AME Church during the Reconstruction period, beginning in 1866. This consisted of multiple meetings to set up a constellation of parishes across the Florida panhandle. Churches were the engine of development for Black Floridians, making it possible to channel educational, political and spiritual opportunity in a community. [9]  All of these factors- political, social and spiritual- shaped the lives of the Neals, Dickson, White and Pittman families.  

Into this landscape, Claude Neal’s grandparents and great grandparents were brought as enslaved labor by planter families from Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. As the war ended and with Reconstruction, we can see through documents how the older men gained  suffrage and registered their marriages. The end of the war, and the arrival of troops that enforced Reconstruction brought a moment of possibility for the Neals and their collateral lines in Marianna, Florida.

Ancestors: Towards a History of the Neal Family

Paternal Ancestor:  York Neal

York Neel [Neal], Return of Qualified Voters, Precinct 9, 21st Election District, Sumter, AL, 15 July 1867. FS.org

Just weeks or months after the passage of the Reconstruction act of 23 March 1867, all male citizens age 21 or older. They had to swear a loyalty oath,  “stating that he had never supported or participated in a rebellion against the United States government, that he had never committed a felony offense, that he had never served as an elected or appointed official of the United States and supported or participated in a rebellion against the United States government, and that he would remain loyal to the government of the United States (Ala. Code, [1867] 83-84)”[10] Just as with the history of the Varner family in Wilcox, Alabama, after Reconstruction, newly free men went to register to vote to assert their belonging as citizens, a situation also made possible by the presence of Federal troops. . 

York Neal, Claude Neal’s paternal grandfather, was born in 1830 in Alabama, as were some of other family members. In 1867 Neal registered to vote in Sumter, Alabama’s Election District 21, and part of his oath included a twelve month residency window; he was about 37 years old, This may be a clue to where he was before emancipation. [11]  His voter registration is the earliest document for him as a free man. 

The 1880 census offers more details for the life of York Neal. Precisely when he gets to Florida isn’t clear, but  the census is a start. By the time he was 40 years of age, he was living in Jackson County, Florida by 1870; by 1880, now 50, he worked as a laborer in Bascom, Jackson County, and was a widower.  Among the alternative spellings of his surname in records are  Neal, Neel or Neele.[12]  

York Neel & Penny Bowls. Marriage Certificate, 23 Oct 1880, Jackson County, FL. FS.org

On 25 October 1880, Penny Bowls Dickson  married York Neal  in Jackson, Florida. [13]  At 25 she was half his age, and boarded in Neal’s home along with her three young children, Lizzie 8, Ned 6 and Mattie Bowls, age 2. She worked as a servant. Earlier that year, on 15 June 1880, Jeff Neal was the first child born to York Neal and Penny Bowls and they married four months later. [ 14]  Jeff Neal was Claude Neal’s father. Households combined and recombined in effort to maintain stability, with relationships extending beyond simple categories of a nuclear family. 

Maternal Ancestor: Washington Dickson (bca.1815/17- aft 1885)

Descendants of Washington Dickson. Chart by Ellen Fernandez-Sacco, April 2019. Given the gap in years between Jennie and Charity, there may be more siblings to be located. .

York Neal’s wife, Penny Bowls Dickson was the daughter of Willis Dickson (b. 1829, NC) and Caroline Barnes Dickson (b.1833); she was the first of seven children born to the couple between 1850 and 1864. 

Willis and Caroline married 19 Aug 1866 in Jackson, Florida. [14]  Willis Dickson was one of three known children of Washington Dickson (bca. 1815 North Carolina) and two unknown wives: Willis b. 1829, Jennie Dickson (b. Dec 1834) in North Carolina. Jennie Dickson married Anthony Barnes in 1856. Barnes  (b.Sep 1834) was also from North Carolina, and their three daughters lived in Marianna County, Florida. [15]  Charity Dickson b. 1873, was a late baby for Washington and his second partner. She married Jonas White (b. 1868) on 26 Oct 1892 in Jackson County, and the couple had a daughter, Emma. [16]  I’ll return to Jonas White’s father in 1870, after discussing Washington Dickson’s time in bondage.

Before the Civil War: The Estate of James M. Long, 1858

Washington Dickson’s long life spanned pre Civil War to post-Reconstruction in Marianna; the last document he appears on is the 1885 Florida State Census. He is the individual mentioned in the estate division of planter James Madison Long of 2 January 1858. [7]. No other Washington came up in search results and the additional 55 names included in the estate have other potential family members listed.  

The slaveowners were members of the James M. Long family, who moved their business from Alabama to Washington County (also in Florida) and then to the outskirts of Marianna in Jackson County, Florida.  Long, born in 1810, died in 1857 and was buried in Riverside Cemetery in Marianna. [  Briefly, Long was married twice (M1 Elizabeth Ann Russ of NC & M2 Harriet Rebecca Long) and had six children with Russ, who are named in the will. In between the lines of the will are judgements about values and subdivision of humans that denies familial ties and focuses instead on fractions of a dollar.  For example, Matilda was valued at 950.50;  the notation ‘Pays Oliver’ appears for three siblings, who paid their brother Oliver Long $100 on a share of a person, along with other amounts, $62.50, $37.50. Down to the half dollar. 

The probate index for  the Jackson County Courthouse on FamilySearch lists several entries for various family members involved in the subdivision of the property, human and material. The work of cotton production depended on a brutal enforced labor system, and Jackson County was among “the heaviest concentrations of plantations, slave populations and cotton production centered in Jackson, Gadsden, Leon and Jefferson and Madison counties” in the Panhandle. [14]  This development of Florida’s own Black Belt for cotton cultivation began intensifying almost two decades earlier, in the 1840s. Long and his family was already in the area by 1850, as shown by the US Federal Census.

Apparently, Long did not die insolvent, as everyone they owned apparently were subdivided among the children rather than sold at market. Still, what this future meant for the persons in the document after January 1858 is unclear without additional details— at the moment the age of the Long children, from ages 20-9, and their  locations in the census, show that they remained in Marianna, and while an overseer continued to manage the plantation in Jackson County. 

Subdividing people in Marianna, January 1858

A summary of the petition appears in the Race and Slavery Petitions Project, transcribed in 1996 from documents in the  Jackson County Courthouse, Marianna, Florida, Book D Record of Estates. [10] The abstract reads: 

John P. Lockey, guardian of the children of James M. Long, deceased, asks the court to appoint commissioners to divide the slaves of the estate equally among the heirs. The plaintiff states that the deceased, during his lifetime, deeded his slaves and land to his children, reserving “the right of possession & enjoyment” but desired upon his death to have his estate “equally divided between his children share & share alike.”

The Estate of James M. Long. Note the mention of Washington under Lot Six. Florida Probate Records, 1784-1990 Jackson County Florida, Estates 1857-1860. Vol D, F71
The Estate of James M. Long. Note the mention of Washington under Lot Six. Florida Probate Records, 1784-1990 Jackson County Florida, Estates 1857-1860. Vol D, F71-72.

I’ve transcribed the estate subdivision in full below: 

To the Honorable Robert S Dickson Judge of Probate of Jackson County 

The undersigned commissioner appointed to divide certain slaves between the children of James M Long by leave to expert That they appraised said slaves & having ascertained what each child was entitled, they placed them in lots which were Drawn with the following result 

Lot one by Edwin Long, the following slaves viz Sara 600.00, William 800.00, Walter 675.00, London 625.00, Letitia 375, Daniel 325.00  [F72] Emily 200.00, Matilda 950.50 & pays Oliver 139.50 

Lot two by Oscar Long the following slaves viz Letty 225.00, Louisa 850.00,  Ben 700.00, Amanda 325.00 Susan & child Peter 950.00, Annette 325.00, Prince 200.00, Oscar 1000.00, Pays Oliver 100.00 & Laura 62.50 

Lot three by Mary Long the following slaves viz Polly 350.00, Lewis 475.00, Mahala 300.00, Walker 225.00, Eliza & child Patsey 1100.00, Solomon 400.00 Josephine 250.00, Sally & child Palmyra 1050.00, Pays Oliver 100.00 & John 37.50 

Lot four by John Long the following slaves viz Robin 500.00, Binkey 375.00, Charlotte 950.00, George 700.00, Harriet 375.00, Madison 500.00, Isaac 550.00, Rinah 200.00, Receives of Mary 37.50 

Lot five by Laura Long the following slaves viz Argent & child June 1000.00, Vandy 225.00, Warren 500.00, Redding 1000.00, Levi 675.00 & Julia 950.00, and Receives of Oscar 62.50 

Lot Six by Oliver Long the following slaves viz Washington 350.00, Mary Ann & child Beckey 850.00, William 900.00, Amy 550.00, Frank 375.00, Charity 300.00, Rose 250.00, Levi 675.00, Receives of Edwin 137.50, of Oscar 100.00 and of Mary 100.00 

Respectfully submitted Jan’y 2/58 

Jos B Roulhac 

Wm Powers 

Isaac Widgen 

Florida Probate Records, 1784-1990 Jackson County Florida, Estates 1857-1860. 

Pondering Valuations

The total value of human beings was $26,025. The total comparative value of 26,025 has a relative value today of $819,000.00. In terms of a relative wage or income, an equivalent in unskilled wage is 5.840,000 or in terms of Production Worker Compensation, the number jumps to $11,100,000.00. [20] This one number for this group of people should give pause when considering the transformation of blood and sweat into the wealth of planters; it is the fulcrum of inequality in this country.

The three men who provided the values in 1858 listed above, later appear as agents of the Confederate Army.  Isaac Widgeon served as the commissary Agent for the District of Florida, with Joseph Roulhac and John J White as sub-agents working for Widgeon. [21] At least one of the Long sons served in the Confederate Army. 

Long’s second wife, Harriet R. Long eventually left Marianna and moved to Atlanta; her ancestry was registered with the DAR. Researching the group of people they sold to each other however, is not revealed so easily.  From 1858 to the 1870s, we see the Dicksons, Pittmans, Whites and Barnes live in proximity as they go from numeric counts under enslavement in 1860 to named farmers and farm laborers in 1870 and after. Yet their value tied to their labor sits like a rock in my craw. One son, John Long, for instance, holds some $6,000 in Personal Estate, while the head of household has over $16K listed.  To what can we ascribe the increase in value from $4150 to $6000? Compare this to Jonas White, who had a mere $50 in Personal Estate in 1870; we can’t find him before that because he himself was property.

1860 US Federal Census, wine 27: John CL Long, 22, Personal Estate, $6,000.

A cursory look at the census shows that two years after the estate division in 1860, each of the Long siblings are living in different households, apart from their stepmother. Precisely how the arrangements impacted the families involved is unclear; Washington Dickson for example, who was in the lot assigned to Oliver Long, did not live in close proximity to the family by 1870. More questions remain.

The AME Church: a different space of possibility

“Map 9. The heartland of African Methodism in post–Civil War FL.” from Rivers & Brown, Laborers in the Vineyard of the Lord: The Expansion of the AME Church in Florida.

The years after the war saw the expansion of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Florida Panhandle, with the establishment of the Marianna Station giving a foothold in the new political environment. This was a move towards self determination, as the church became a guiding force for civil rights and political activity in the state.  Unlike the Methodist Church, the AME church offered opportunities unbridled by white control, along with the opportunity for education and literacy.

This excerpt from Jerold Shofner’s Jackson County Florida — A History offers a view of what the African Americans had to contend with to practice religion in nearby Greenwood. The church was itself a staging ground for various punishments. This was no space of refuge for Black people:

          “The records of the Union Academy Church, which became Greenwood Baptist in 1855, have frequent references to its black membership, including punishments meted out for misbehavior on the plantation. Blacks were admitted to membership as soon as the church was organized in 1845. Winnie, belonging to Richard Long was the first slave to join the church. During the next nine years, however, at least 22 other blacks became members. Typical of them were Mary, the servant of Elijah Bryan, Charles, the servant of Nicholas Long, Austin, servant of Martha Pittman, and Sarah, the servant of Ethelred Philips, all of whom were “received by experience.” Apparently the blacks simply joined the whites in their Sunday worship until July, 1854. Then, M.T. Embry, “with as many white males as present, was authorized to hold conferences regularly for the benefit of the black members.” The blacks had church on the third Sunday of each month after that. Whether they were still allowed to attend other services is not clear, but the third Sundays were reserved for them with the supervision of Embry and the other “white males.”…. [ 21] 

Line 39: White, James (Jonas), 34, A.M.E. Preacher. 1870 US Federal Census, Marianna, Jackson County, FL. Ancestry.com

Jonas White, (Charity Dickson’s father in law) appears as James White in the 1870 census, with the occupation of AME Preacher. This meant White was a regarded member of the community, someone who was an important resource in the area. By the time of the next census however, times had become more difficult. In 1873, the Freedmen’s Bank failed, and by 1880, Jonas White Sr.’s occupation is listed as Laborer. Note that White’s value of his Personal Estate is only $50. Still, the occupation represents a link to many people and possibly the rise of black fraternal organizations in the region that would support local efforts.

Perhaps more light can be shed on the networks of connections across community that made survival possible. Despite the constant threat of erasure, family members knew that even though faced with threats and the need to suddenly flee their homes, they too seek justice. Neal’s death was not in vain, as the NAACP deployed his image as a fundamental moral and political question about the right to live in America, versus the postcards of his lynching sold in Greenwood & Marianna as a souvenir for 50 cents apiece.

In 1939, John and Ruby Lomax traveled the South recording songs and folklore. Tt the Women’s Dormitory of Raiford, Florida, Gussie Slater and Clifford Reed sang ‘Trouble is Hard.’ Listen to the unspoken pain that slips between words, a creation that comes from love, pain and survival of so many troubled times, that can lead to a way out of no way .

Performance Note: “Trouble is Hard” performed by Gussie Slater and Clifford Reed (vocals) at State Farm, Women’s Dormitory, Raiford, Florida, on June 4, 1939. John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip (AFC 1939/001)

On 4 August 2014, The Tampa Bay Times noted the FBI’s closing of the Neal case, as family members gathered for a reunion. As Gussie Slater sang in 1939, Trouble is Hard.

The struggle for equality continues. Listen to Bryan Stevenson’s observations on identity and the implications of a society with mass incarceration and its connection to the past. As he has said, “the opposite of poverty is justice.” May this country keep walking ahead towards this goal. Speak their names.

References

[1] T Thomas Fortune, After War Times: A Boy’s Life in Reconstruction Days. Philadelphia Tribune, 14 Jul 1927, 9. ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Black Newspaper Collection. 

[2] Jackson County, Florida, Explained: Jackson County War” https://everything.explained.today/Jackson_County%2c_Florida/“ Accessed 13 Apr 2019. 

[3] Seth Weitz. “Defending the Old South: The Myth of the Lost Cause and Political Immorality in Florida, 1885-1968,” In The Historian, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Spring 2009), pg. 83. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1540-6563.2008.00232.x

[4] Daniel R. Weinfeld, The Jackson County War: Reconstruction and Resistance in Post-Civil War Florida. University of Alabama Press, 2012.

[5] Seth Weitz. “Defending the Old South: The Myth of the Lost Cause and Political Immorality in Florida, 1885-1968,” 82-83.

[6] The recent changes to Amendment 4 is considered a modern version of the poll tax as a result of  the Florida Senate’s changes to Amendment 4, in which Floridians voted to restore voting rights to 1.4 million felons, a group disproportionately POC.  “Florida has a history of making it harder for black citizens to vote” Miami Herald, 1 Sept 2016.  https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/election/article95105602.html

[7] Weinfeld, The Jackson County War. 

[8] Weinfeld, The Jackson County War. 

[9] Larry E Rivers and Canter Brown, Jr., Introduction, Laborers in the Vineyards of the Lord: The Beginnings of the AME Church in Florida, 1865-1895. University of Florida Press, 2001

[10] Alabama Secretary of State, Loyalty oaths, 1867-1868. https://www.worldcat.org/title/loyalty-oaths-1867-1868/oclc/145409972 Apparently only Autauga County and Baine County are extant. 

[11] York Neal. Ancestry.com. Alabama, Voter Registration, 1867 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015. Original data: Alabama 1867 Voter Registration Records Database. Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama. 

[12] York Neal. Ancestry.com. 1880 US Federal Census, Jackson, FL.

[13] Ancestry.com. Florida, County Marriage Records, 1823-1982 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016. 

[14] “Florida Marriages, 1830-1993,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:23H6-3SG : 7 December 2017), Willis Dickson and Caroline Barnes, 19 Aug 1866; citing Marriage, Jackson, Florida, United States, Liberty County Clerk of Courts, Florida; FHL microfilm 931,954.;  “Florida Marriages, 1837-1974,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:V5CB-591 : 10 February 2018), Willis Dickson and Caroline Barnes, 19 Aug 1866; citing Jackson,Florida; FHL microfilm 0931954 V. A-C. 

[15]  Ancestry.com. Florida, County Marriage Records, 1823-1982 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.  Original data: Marriage Records. Florida Marriages. Various Florida County Courthouses and State Archive, Tallahassee, Florida.

[16] Year: 1900; Census Place: Precinct 13, Jackson, Florida; Page: 2; Enumeration District: 0060; FHL microfilm: 1240171 Source Information Ancestry.com. 1900 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004. Ancestry.com. Florida, County Marriage Records, 1823-1982 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.  Original data: Marriage Records. Florida Marriages. Various Florida County Courthouses and State Archive, Tallahassee, Florida.

[17]  James M Long, 6 Oct 1810-16 Feb 1857. Ancestry.com. U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.  According to the 1891 Atlanta City Directory, his widow was living on 57 Marietta Street, Atlanta. 

[18] Julia Floyd Smith, Slavery and Plantation Growth in Antebellum Florida. University of Florida Press, 2017, 10-11.

[19]Race and Slavery Petitions Project, Petition 20585816, Jackson County Florida, 2 Jan 1858.http://library.uncg.edu/slavery/petitions/details.aspx?pid=4719

[20]  Calculator, Measuring Worth, Relative Value of US Dollar.  https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/uscompare/relativevalue.php

[21] War of the Rebellion: Serial 129 Page 0019 Confederate Authorities. https://ehistory.osu.edu/books/official-records/129/0019

[22] Potential connections may exist via the Long, and Pittmans mentioned and those researched.  Quoted in  Claude Reese, “Antebellum Greenwood – The Baptist Church” Jackson County Times, Sunday, 10 March 2013.    http://www.jacksoncountytimes.net/jackson-county-history/greenwood-history/item/3077-antebellum-greenwood-the-baptist-church.html

[23]

A Constant Threat of Erasure: Pt. 2: Towards a History of the Varner Family

 “All that I know of my ancestors was told to me by my people.“

The words of William J. Edwards, educator and founder of the Snow Hill Normal and Industrial Institute in Wilcox Alabama, are from his autobiography, Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt (1919). The book both explains how he received knowledge of his ancestors, and shows what they, and by extension, the Varner and McDuffie families were up against in the nineteenth to twentieth century. 

Born in 1869, Edwards was born on the cusp of Reconstruction, and his perspective is firmly turned towards a brighter future of uplift. Given the centrality of oral history to this experience, it is worth reading the opening pages of Chapter 1. Childhood Days, as the Varners and McDuffies shared a similar history:

All that I know of my ancestors was told to me by my people. I learned from my grandfather on my mother’s side that the family came to Alabama from South Carolina. He told me that his mother was owned by the Wrumphs who lived in South Carolina, but his father belonged to another family. For some cause, the Wrumphs decided to move from South Carolina to Alabama; this caused his mother and father to be separated, as his father remained in South Carolina. The new home was near the village of Snow Hill. This must have been in the Thirties when my grandfather was quite a little child. He had no hope of ever seeing his father again, but his father worked at nights and in that way earned enough money to purchase his freedom from his master. So after four or five years he succeeded in buying his own freedom from his master and started out for Alabama. When he arrived at Snow Hill, he found his family, and Mr. Wrumphs at once hired him as a driver. He remained with his family until his death, which occurred during the war. At his death one of his sons, George, was appointed to take his place as driver

As I now remember, my grandfather told me that his mother’s name was Phoebe and that she lived until the close of the war. My grandfather married a woman by the name of Rachael and she belonged to a family by the name of Sigh. His wife’s mother came directly from Africa and spoke the African language. It is said that when she became angry no one could understand what she said. Her owner allowed her to do much as she pleased.

My grandfather had ten children, my mother being the oldest girl. She married my father during the war and, as nearly as I can remember, he told me that it was in 1864. Three children were born to them and I was the youngest; there was a girl and another boy.

I know little of my father’s people, excepting that he repeatedly told me that they came from South Carolina. So it is, that while I can trace my ancestry back to my great-grandparents on my mother’s side, I can learn nothing beyond my grandparents on my father’s side. My grandfather was a local preacher and could read quite well. Just how he obtained this knowledge, I have never been able to learn. He had the confidence and respect of the best white and colored people in the community and sometimes he would journey eight or ten miles to preach. Many times at these meetings there were nearly as many whites as colored people in the audience. He was indeed a grand old man. His name was James and his father’s name was Michael. So after freedom he took the name of James Carmichael.

One of the saddest things about slavery was the separation of families. Very often I come across men who tell me that they were sold from Virginia, South Carolina or North Carolina, and that they had large families in those states. Since their emancipation, many of these have returned to their former states in search of their families, and while some have succeeded in finding them, there are those who have not been able to find any trace of their families and have come back again to die. [1]

Edward’s account traces the movement of families, their sale and separation across states, the role of faith that was a path for his grandfather becaming a preacher, those who heard the voice of his African great grandmother who spoke an African language and through these traces, he makes the outlines of his community visible. All of these details were handed down via oral history, and made a document through the pages of his 1919 book.

Uncle Charles Lee and his home in the Black Belt. Edwards, Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt.

The photo of Uncle Charles Lee standing before his home, supported by two canes,  begins to tell of the conditions that Edwards sought to address after attending Tuskeegee and returning to Snow Hill to establish the first institute for Black education in Wilcox. The powers that be had little interest in seeing those who labored in bondage literate, educated and successful. And when they did gain it, threats intensified.

Violence &The Social Landscape of Wilcox County

Workers, possibly enslaved, picking cotton near Montgomery, Alabama, Library of Congress.

A barometer of the low regard that people of African descent were held in is evident in this article “Extension of Slavery” from the 1862 issue of The Southern Cultivator, originally published in the Wilmington Journal. It evinces a line of white supremacist readership stretching from the middle to southern states, and the intent to keep the enslaved as a permanent unfree eternally laboring underclass.

What is telling is the absence of a name for the author, which speaks to fears about the power and potential of those fighting for their freedom from bondage. It is also an example of a proto-eugenic logic of an inherent, biological inferiority circulated via print media by the descendants of enslavers and their cohorts that later blossomed in the early twentieth century as eugenics. This reductionism still circulates in the present, as we struggle with 21st century issues of prison abolition and the returning semblance of debt peonage.

Extension of Slavery, The Southern Cultivator. 1862. Internet Archive.

In case you can’t read the image:

A correspondent of the Wilmington Journal makes the following prediction: “I am not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet, but I now predict that one of the consequences of this war will be, that in three years from the end thereof there will not be a free negro in America; that our institution of slavery will be established on a more firm basis than ever; that the Northern States Rights party will get into power as soon as the elections roll round; the abolitionists will be hunted down like mad dogs, and the whole civilized world will become satisfied the our slaves are in the very condition for which nature designed them. Mark the prediction.”

In 1860, Wilcox County held only 26 ‘free colored’ and 17,797 enslaved people, with 6,795 whites, proportions that cast light on the nature of social and political life before the Civil War. By 1870, the ‘colored’ population increased to 21,610, a 21% increase, yet the white population remained at 6.795. [2]

Benson Seller’s Slavery in Alabama (1950) while remaining the main study of enslavement in that state, never addresses the humanity or “soul value” of Blacks held in bondage. Instead, the emphasis reflects the concerns with production, so that there are entries such as the following regarding planter James Asbury Tait’s management of overseers and their counsel to them. Violence and terror are the means of control, yet the text is in denial; we know that details of mangled, murdered and lynched bodies are omitted from this volume, instead we hear about ‘efficiency’: 

First glimpse: 1866 Alabama State Census of Colored People

Only three generations back, the story of the Varner family that Della McDuffie Varner descends from has its first outlines in the documents issued during Reconstruction. On the Alabama Black Belt, Wilcox County borders Marengo County, and it is there in the 1866 Alabama State Colored Census for Marengo County that three Varners appear: King Varner, Matilde Varner, Haig Varner.  

1866 Alabama State Census for Colored Population showing King Varner, Matilde Varner and Hays (Haig) Varner. Note the lack of notation for the county on the page.

Making it official: Haig Varner & Fannie Varner

Haig Varner (b.ca 1820) and Fannie Varner (b.ca 1825) are Della Varner McDuffie’s great grandparents, the furthest back in the tree we can go at present. What we can’t tell from the data in the 1866 AL state census is how close these Varner families lived, and whether they were family or kin, as this is not spelled out. What is evident is that one to three generations lived across these households, and as this remains stubbornly opaque when  compared to later census, now further documentation is needed to flesh out the details as to where exactly they lived in Marengo, who they were enslaved by, and how long they were in Alabama. Information from later census can vary as to origins of parents noted across the Federal census.

The Civil War ended, and the passage of The Civil Rights Bill of 1866 and the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments offered up citizenship and the start of Reconstruction offered hope for change. Alabama Voter Registration records were created as a result of the Reconstruction Act passed  on 23 March 1867. [3]

Hague Varner, Returns of Qualified Voters, Marengo County, AL, 1866. Ancestry.com

Just months later, as a free man, Haig Varner registered to vote in Marengo County in 1867, an arrangement made possible by the presence of Federal troops; King Varner also appears in Volume 13.   Other Varners appear in another volume of Alabama voter registrations, with Henry Varner in Volume 11, Alfred Varner and Anthony Varner in Volume 7 .[4]

Beyond the census, the total search results yield 16 Varners in Marengo County Alabama for the 1866 AL Register of Voters on Ancestry.com. The results are actually 8, as the page was shot twice on the microfilm:

Varner, Voter Register results, Ancestry.com

Haig and Fannie Varner’s son, Richard ‘Dick’ Varner (1847-1920) took the opportunity to officiate his marriage vows, and have them recognized by the state on 25 March 1867. That they could marry and have their union officially recognized was also made possible by the Federal, rather than state government.

Richard Varner + Lucy Varner, Marriage Certificate, 29 March 1872.

The Will of Samuel Varner, Marengo County, 1848

The names of some of these head of households—, Matilda Varner, Benton Varner also appear in the  1848 will of Samuel Varner, which I transcribed below. 22 enslaved people are listed. I found no appraisal documents online to determine age, but perhaps this post can help descendants locate further information. Another earlier will for John Varner contains the names of a smaller number of those he enslaved. Tharin’s Marengo County Directory for 1861 has three white Varner men living on M’Kinley: Benton Varner, mechanic, Ransom Varner, planter and James Varner “(deaf and dumb)” planter.[4]

Note how the young girl Emely is selected to be an enslaved assistant for Varner’s mute children, so disability is yet another permanently assigned duty. Or were there additional services intended, given Varner’s words at the end of his will: “Should there be an increase in property before my death…”?

, Will of Samuel Varner, 25 July 1848, Marengo County, AL. FS.org

Will Record A, F291 Will of Samuel Varner [1848]

Marengo County 

Will of Samuel Varner, Decd  

In the name of God [   ] I Samuel Varner of the county of Cahaba and the State of Mississippi, considering the certainly of life yet  being of sound and perfect mind and memory do make and  publish this my last will and testament making all others heretofore made no manner  and form following (that is today). First I do give and bequeath  to my two daughters  Sara Bevel formerly Sarah Varner and Martha Lassater formerly Martha Varner  the Sum of $2 each — Second I do give and bequeath to my Sons  Joseph Varner, James Varner, John Varner also my said daughter Mahala Varner and  Minerva Jane Whitley formerly Minerva Jane Varner the following  and all  Estate to wit one tract of land [Selnato?] lying and being in the County of Marengo in the  State of Alabama, Consisting of one hundred and twenty acres, to wit — adjoining the now named Bevel tract of land which Said land the [Datoso?] road sent through the  East corner of the same Also twenty two negroes to wit four negro men  Nat. Ransom, Dave and Alfred  & the following negro women and children, Emily and her six children to wit:  Candis, Caroline,  Norton, Emeline, Adaline and Mary Frances Courtney. Matilda and her two children,  Levi and an infant girl[;] Fanny and her four children: Allen, Fairchild and Mariah and an infant and Mary and her child Spenser together with all my stock of every manner and description whatsoever with all my farming tools waggons carts plows and every manner of implement or thing needful and necessary for the carrying on the same and all my household and kitchen furniture Saving the beds and furniture with all  monies, debts due to me owning in any manner or description whatsoever to have  and to hold to my Said Children of the Second Bequest mention to them and  items forever Subject to the following hereafter restrictions. I desire that when I  depart this life that my remains be buried in a decent and Christian like manner  and that all my just debts be paid before a division of my estate, and it is my  desire that at my death the negro girl Emely shall belong to my daughter Mahala  at her appraised value and shall answer So much to her portions of Said Estate in a final division, and it is my desire ^that Mahala have one bed and furniture and also James and  Minerva Jane Whitely take the Same as Specific legacies and not come with a  general division— and as my Sons Joseph Varner, James Varner, Mahala Varner  are unfortunate being deaf and dumb and it being somewhat doubtful that no law  whether they can take by the will. I do hereby constitute, nominate and  appoint my son John Varner and my son in law Decator Whitely trustees for them and  on their behalf to receive their intended portions of my estate for them & their use and benefit and in case one or both of said trustees should die or refuse to act then it wish that a proper count should be applied to competent to protect them and their property. – It is further my will and request that often deducting Specific Legacies and paying off funeral expenses & debts on a division of said Estate. Should any one depart this life without heirs the portions of said child it is my will should lapse in common to the equally divided will  contained in the Second – bequest and it is further my will and request Should my life be Spared by providence and should there be an increase of  property before my death, My desire is that it lapse in common to the equally divided with those  contained in the Second bequest and in case of one’s death his share to his or her children — And I do lastly appoint John Varner and Decator Whitely Executors of my Estate in this my last will and Testament. Witness my hand and seal the 18 day of July 1848 

Signed Samuel (his X) Varner, Seal, Signed Sealed and delivered  

The Estate of James Varner, 1827

The earlier 1827 subdivision of “The Estate of James Varner” includes mention of a son also named Benton Varner and several minors. There was a writ for Letters of Administration and Lorian Tibbs, Elizabeth Moon with Wright Moor and Matilda Varner appear as heirs; Martha Lindsay was named as James Varner’s wife.

Four persons enslaved by this Varner family were:

Nancy 

Ben 

Isom 

Peter 

.”.that there are slaves name by Nancy, Ben, Isom and Peter cannot legally be divided and on motion of the Administration it is therefore ordered, by the Court that an order of sale do to sell” [5]

Potential Resources

As additional papers were not included in the court records, and as it is a collection which is not complete, additional documents may exist, dispersed across the Special Collections of colleges and universities.  There are two collections that feature Varner family papers, one at James Madison University, and the other, Campbell and Varner family papers at  Virginia Military Institute .  From the overview and information provided here, perhaps an interested descendant can take it back further through a combination of research and DNA testing.

A call to the libraries can confirm if there is relevant material. For the Varners of VA, while it is said there was no ownership of enslaved people at Stony Man Creek, unlike the remaining areas of the district in 1860. Robert H Moore’s post “Page County’s Appleberry/ Applebury men in the USCT.” notes some 30 men who served in the United States Colored Troops were born in Page County. [8]

Click on the bold link to see the Finding Aids for each collection:

Varner Family Papers -1774-1933 SC 0129 – Page County, VA  James Madison University:

“The Varner family of Page County, Virginia was of German descent, and their name appears as early as 1801 on records of the Antioch Christian Church near Stony Man Creek, Virginia… Despite wide-spread anti-liquor sentiment in the Shenandoah Valley in the nineteenth century, the Varners operated a distillery.”

Campbell and Varner Family papers MS-0282 – Lexington, VA Virginia Military Institute [9]

“Robert Henry Campbell of Lexington, VA; shoemaker; served with Rockbridge Rifles during Civil War (1861 only); discharged due to illness (tuberculosis); Clerk, Quartermaster and Treasurer at the Virginia Military Institute, 1864-1870; d. 1870, age 28, Lexington, VA.

Charles Van Buren Varner, b. Lexington, VA. 1838; served with Rockbridge Rifles during Civil War; cabinetmaker; carpenter at VMI; d. 1907, Lexington.

The families were related through the marriage of R. Henry’s sister, Augusta, to Charles V. Varner.”

Emanuel Montee McDuffie: from AL to NC

Mrs Della McDuffie’s husband, William ‘Snowball’ McDuffie’s uncle– Emanuel Montee McDuffie — was among the people that left Snow Hill, precisely because of the efforts of William J. Edwards. After graduating from Snow Hill Normal and Industrial Institute, like his mentor, he became Principal of the Normal and Industrial Institute in Laurinberg, North Carolina, where he lived the rest of his life, until his death in 1953. This is not to say he escaped experiencing or knowing the potential violence of Jim Crow. His photo is on the upper left of the group, and appears in William J. Edwards’ Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt. (1919)

A Change is Gonna Come

I can think of no better way to end than to leave you with Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna Come. These posts were written to honor the resilience and the survival of these ancestors, and to help write them back into history. “The arc of history is long but it bends towards justice.”

“…There been times that I thought I couldn’t last for long
But now I think I’m able to carry on

It’s been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gon’ come, oh yes it will”

QEPD

References

  1. William J. Edwards. Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt. Electronic Edition, Documenting the American South.
  2. “History”. Alabama 1867 Voter Registration Records Database. http://archives.alabama.gov/voterreg/index.cfm
  3.  Index, Alabama 1867 Voter Registration Records Database, http://www.archives.alabama.gov/voterreg/results.cfm
  4. Richard Varner and Lucy Varner marriage certificate. Ancestry.com. Alabama, County Marriage Records, 1805-1967[database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.
  5. Tharin’s Marengo County Directory for 1860-61. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~almareng/marengodirectory.htm
  6.  Will of Samuel Varner, 18 July 1848. Film: Alabama County Marriages, 1809-1950, 005330947, item 2 image number 305. FamilySearch.org
    https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-L15D-8DN?i=304&cc=1743384&cat=211258
  7. The Estate of James Varner, 1827. Alabama County Marriages, 1809-1950 Film #005330947 image number 189. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-G15D-PCW?i=188&cc=1743384&cat=211258
  8. “Remaining property of said estates” https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-G15D-P4K?i=190&cc=1743384&cat=211258
  9. ”District #3, Stoney Man – There were no (0) slave-owners and no (0) slaves” Where Were the Slaves in Page County in 1860?  http://www.geocities.ws/cenantuaheight/WhereWereSlavesPage1860.html
  10.  Robert H Moore “Page County’s Appleberry/ Applebury men in the USCT.” https://toolongforgotten.wordpress.com
  11. Note collection is on deposit from the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society.

A Constant Threat of Erasure: Racial Terror, Civil Rights and Family Histories – Pt. 1: Della McDuffie

Sitting with the Legacy of Jim Crow

Ep 83a: Stories from the National Memorial for Peace & Justice pt. 1

These last eight weeks, Black ProGen Live panelists are researching the genealogies of people who died by lynching. Among the cases  is that of Mrs Della McDuffie, who died almost 66 years to the day on 23 April 1953. Witnesses state that this resulted after being beaten to death with a length of industrial hose by Sheriff Percy Columbus ‘Lummie’ Jenkins and his staff during a raid of the small cafe she owned with her husband William McDuffie in Wilcox County, Alabama.[1]  She died within the hour. The supposed crime was playing music after midnight on the Sabbath.[2]

The Trouble I’ve Seen

The Trouble I’ve Seen is a film produced at Northeastern University that includes interviews on three cold cases, the first, being that of Mrs. Della McDuffie.

In the film, Mrs. McDuffie’s nephew,  JC Varner’s gives an account of the event:

“J.C. VARNER, Nephew: So he walked in and hit her told her get up old lady, go to bed. So she told him she couldn’t get up so he hit her across her arm on her knees, then he hit her on the head. And he shot down by her feet a couple of times, at her feet.

“WILLIAM MCDUFFIE: Doctor seen him striking at one person and another with a hose-like weapon. I saw a number hit with the weapon in Sheriff Jenkins hand.
BOND: But Dr. Robert E. Dixon’s statement reads…
DR. DIXON: I can definitely state that the cause of death was not brought on by any injury to the head, such as a blow.
FIDDIMAN: This case essentially was a cover up and it never went to court.
BOND: A year into the investigation, her husband William was found dead by his 2 grandchildren. WILLIAMS: I found my grandfather and it had appeared that he had been killed by way of drowning. They killed him because of the intensity of this investigation. They tried to get him to change his mind and change his statements like everyone else did. He refused to do that. And they took care of it. “[3]T

The High Cost of Inequality

Sharecropping Family on the Pettway Plantation, Gee’s Bend, AL. Arthur Rothstein, WPA photograph

Wilcox County is one of the poorest counties in the country, beset by  “high unemployment, poor access to education and medical care, substandard housing and high rates of crime.” [1] Despite a population comprised of African Americans in the majority, voter suppression tactics facilitated a continued disenfranchisement. That is not to say there is no strength and beauty in the resilient lives there. The spaces for these ancestors opens as their stories are written back into history.

Location of Wilcox County, AL. Encyclopedia of Alabama.

It’s a largely rural county, with cotton farming shaping its history within the state’s Black Belt. Rather than state or interstate highways, a network of county roads connect the county to  other areas.  You may have heard of Wilcox County, as it’s also home to Gee’s Bend, home of the women’s quilting collective. [3] Its legacy of slavery, sharecropping and tenant farming is a testament to extractive economies that leaves next to nothing for the majority of the population that made its fortunes. That same dynamic bleeds into the present.

Today, Alabama’s Black Belt is home to toxic landfill sites that dot these predominantly African American counties,  continuing the disregard for the descendants of those who tilled that land in cotton cultivation before and after the Civil War. 

RW Harrison, Six Generations of Women, Alabama. LOC.

The Why: Restorative Justice

Beyond the civil rights stolen from Mrs. McDuffie, there is a need to see more than this moment, and so we bring our skills to expand their family trees and tell other stories about those who came before them. I’ll bring together some of what I learned about her ancestors, before turning to contemporary issues involving the threat of erasure.

An issue with lynching is the potential for the carnage to occlude recognition of this violence as not only systemic, but ingrained into a community’s institutions. Is there a recognition that there’s a parallel between this past and the people who were accounted for under Congress’ Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013? [4]

Is there a recognition of the parallels between now and Reconstruction in the sweeping attempts at voter suppression across several states? Can laws that disproportionately affect those living in poverty help rather than set people up for prison in a system that is the 21st century version of a debt peonage system? How do we heal from this— on a familial, interpersonal, social and institutional levels? With 2.4 million prisoners in the US means a high chance this is part of your family history too. These accounts are part of the process of restorative justice.

 Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project

One important way to do this work is through newspaper research, seeking coverage that can supply details for the initial steps of genealogical records search. Thankfully, there are the case files by Northeastern University School of Law’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project  led by Professor Margaret Durham.  The video, The Trouble I’ve Seen, includes the law student, Bayliss Fiddiman, who worked on the McDuffie case and family members speaking to their experiences. 

These cases, available on the Northeastern University website, are basically the cold case files that law students research and compile to begin a process of restoration and recognition. Through them, the families are contacted, files requested from Federal and state agencies and a review of the material conducted towards a process of restorative justice.  How this outcome manifests depends on the community’s needs and resources marshaled for address and memorialization. 

Ultimately this recognition serves to confirm and establish the events of racial terror that happened, a counter to the silence and denial that surrounds acts of lynching.  What happened to the McDuffie family happened to almost five thousand people in this country who died at the hands of white lynch mobs. 

The denial of events was buttressed by the denial of civil rights and the ability to vote.  A decade after Mrs. McDuffie’s death in 1953, not a single African American was registered to vote in Wilcox County Alabama, despite being in the majority of the population there. When Civil Rights groups peacefully marched over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Sheriff Lummie Jenkins was there to turn the marchers back as police attacked with dogs, tear gas and smoke bombs. [5]

An Active Erasure: 1953-2019

“FBI Probe Murder of Ala. Woman.” The New York Age, 25 Jul 1953.

A search on Newspapers .com gives 184 results for Sheriff or PC Lummie Jenkins, yet there are no search results for Mrs. Della McDuffie, the woman he allegedly beat to death in 1953, or her husband, William McDuffie. According to the article’s prominent headline in The New York Age, the FBI was investigating the case.  

Yet the divide that splits into acknowledgement and disregard during those years also has its resonance in the failure to index her name into their database.  Perhaps this is most starkly illustrated by screenshots of the article shown here. 

Search Results: 1 of 2 for “Lummie Jenkins”. The New York Age, 25 Jul 1953. Note the location of names highlighted and a line below.

The results are starkly different when searching for “Della McDuffie”:

Search Results: 0 for “Della McDuffie”. The New York Age, 25 Jul 1953.

In these articles, the Sheriff’s name appears just one line above hers, yet there is not a single search result for Della McDuffie- despite the headline “FBI Probe Murder of Ala. Woman” — which specifically references McDuffie’s murder.  As these two images show, a page search brings up one name, yet not the other.  A year later, her husband was drowned and left lying across the doorway of their home, having refused to change his story about how his wife died from the beating given during the raid.  The indignity is compounded by their death certificates, which read that they died from cerebral hemorrhage. 

How exactly are newspapers indexed? Is this an algorithm, and if so, what are the parameters?

If we have ancestors who suffered injustice, how then, is one supposed to find that information on this site? 

 It seems much like the US itself,  Newspapers.com is in need of revisiting such events and address how they are indexed, especially as we are tasked to find and write our ancestors and families back into history. 

Continued: A Certain Threat of Erasure, Pt 2: Towards a History of the Varner Family

References

  1. Sheriff Jenkins has a long history in Wilcox County, serving as Sheriff from 1939-1971, using racial terror as power. One memory of Jenkins suggests what kind of person he was: “When I ask Lola Pettway, 77, if she remembers Lummie Jenkins, she recoils and shudders. She shares a memory of Sheriff Lummie standing at the edge of a field, watching her family pick cotton. Nancy Pettway, 83, tells me about how, just before she was married, her fiancé shot a dog that had attacked him. Mr. Lummie, she said, came to the Bend, arrested her fiancé, and threw him in jail for killing the dog….he was not an anomaly in the Jim Crow South, where sheriffs were considered more powerful than the American president. ” See Alexandra Marvar’s “The Two Faces of Lummie Jenkins”. Topic Magazinehttps://www.topic.com/the-two-faces-of-lummie-jenkins
  2. “The Trouble I’ve Seen” Campus Perspectives, New York, NY: NBC Universal, 01/22/2013. Accessed Sat May 30 2015 from NBC Learn: https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse/?cuecard=65676 
  3. For a brief history of Wilcox County, see Donna J. Siebenthaler, Auburn University “Wilcox County.”, Encyclopedia of Alabama: http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1294 ; Wilcox County Map, http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/m-6162
  4. “Public Law 113-242, Dec 14, 2014. The Death in Custody Reporting Act ” https://www.congress.gov/113/plaws/publ242/PLAW-113publ242.pdf  Also see Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_in_Custody_Reporting_Act_of_2013; The Counted. “Killings by US police logged at previous rate under new federal system.” The Guardian, 15 Dec 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/15/us-police-killings-department-of-justice-program
  5. “Gee’s Bend residents also remember Dr. King’s visits in 1965, the rallies in Camden, and the march on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. They remember marching to Camden as children and teenagers, being blockaded by Lummie and Mayor F. R. Albritton at the town’s edge, being pummeled with tear gas and smoke bombs, getting arrested, reaching the courthouse, kneeling in the street, and refusing to leave. They remember the songs they sang. Some remember what happened to David Colston, what happened to Della McDuffie. Some would rather not remember that time at all.” Marvar, “The Two Faces of Lummie Jenkins.” Topic Magazine, https://www.topic.com/the-two-faces-of-lummie-jenkins

African Ancestors in San German: Juan Tomas Gandulla and his Family

The first church was built in 1688, and rebuilt several times as a result of earthquakes; its likely the Gandulla, Malave and Rivera families attended San German de Auxerre at some point in their lives. . Church of San German de Auxerre, By San Juan: F. Liebig, 1914. University of Puerto Rico

Recently, my cousin Maara asked me to explore her great grandmother’s line, Maria Monserrate Malave Ayala, and that of her first cousin, Maria Angela Malave Vazquez and her husband, based in Barrio Rosario, San German. Among them is an African ancestor, Juan Tomas Gandulla, who lived nearly 90 years and built a foundation for his family.  My hope is that further information will come to light concerning his African origins whether through documents, or via the DNA of his descendants- please feel free to reach out. 

Most of Tomas Gandulla’s life took place within the boundaries of the municipality of San German, in the southwest of Puerto Rico.

Location of San German, Puerto Rico Wikimedia.org By Based on File:USA Puerto Rico location map.svg made by NordNordWest, highlighted by Dr. Blofeld – Based on File:USA Puerto Rico location map.svg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10946858

The Landscape of San German

Barrios of San German, Rosario Penon highlighted.

In the nineteenth-early twentieth century, some Gandulla families lived in San German; that of Juan Tomas Gandulla lived in Barrio Rosario Penon, on a peak north of the Pueblo close to the southern wards. Thanks to its elevation, coffee was the crop that dominated the plantations in the area of the time.

Separated by two peaks, and further defined by rivers, both the church and the municipality attempted to provide a separate set of services to those in Rosario Penon, in order to bridge the distance. 

1888 Mapa Militar , Archivo Digital Nacional de Puerto Rico

This 1888 map from the Archivo Digital Nacional de Puerto Rico, created by the Spanish military, illustrates the difficulties of traveling between the barrios of El Rosario on the left and Pueblo de San German on the right.  The distance from the town center meant additional services needed to be provided. For convenience, i rotated the map’s orientation almost 90 degrees (E-W than N-S) to make it easier to read. One can note the roads and rivers that cross its areas, and Rosario Bajo on the northwest corner of San German.

Unlike the previous map of San German’s wards, this military map provides a sense of the distances involved and the difficulties of getting through the region quickly before the arrival of the automobile decades later. In this sense the map is also political, given its creation in a period after the Grito de Lares and the Spanish American War, a promise of how far government intervention can reach after the repression ofEl Componte. The costs were high, and my cousin Teresa Vega has written about the death of her grandfather by lynching during the 1880s.

The ward is adjacent to Mayaguez’s barrios of Limón and Montoso, both areas where descendants of collateral family eventually lived.  Below, the Google satellite map of the ward gives an idea of the hills that cross through the landscape

Barrio Rosario Penon, San German [red outline] Google Maps April 2019.

As the local population needed a place to worship, the church of Nuestra Señora del Rosario was established along with a Chapel near the center of the ward, with services scheduled to a designated priest’s travel there.. After 1885, once the Registro Civil began, the municipal administration used designated persons to bring the information for vital records from barrio El Rosario to barrio Pueblo to the south of San German.

Tomas Gandulla (1809-1887), natural de Africa

“Tomas Liberto de Gandulla, natural de Africa, de ochenta anos de edad, agricultor, domiciliado en dicho Barrio, falleció a las tres de la manana, del día de ayer en su domicilio a consecuencia de “vejez”.” 

Juan Tomás Gandulla, Acta de Defunción, 20 Dec 1887; San Germán, Puerto Rico, oficinas del ciudad, Puerto Rico (city offices, Puerto Rico

Juan Tomas or more frequently, Tomas Gandulla, was born in Africa about 1809, taken in slavery and brought to Puerto Rico sometime in the first few decades of the nineteenth century.  His status as a freedman was writ large on the title of his death certificate as “Tomas Liberto de Gandulla” on the upper left of the document.

Note that the Secretario’s name 4 lines above is Don Juan Antonio Gandulla, which may account for why Tomas’ name appears as Liberto de Gandulla. His surname points to a Gandulla owner sometime before the 1870s.

His son Basilio Antonio Gandulla served as the informant. Now married, Basilio was a farmer living in Barrio Rosario, and stated his father’s parentage and situation: “Ignorando sus padres. Que no otorgo una memoria extrajudicial, a los mismo declaro manifestando no saber firmar.” “Parents unknown. Declared that he did not execute a will, and that he did not know how to sign his name.”  Regardless of this status, it did not stop Tomas Gandulla from being involved with farming on his own account and having a family. [1]  Neither Tomas, his sons or his first wife appear in the Registro de Esclavos de 1872, so that any record of their freedom predates these forms. An additional search of parish records may yield such information as the Tomas Gandulla’s age at baptism and perhaps additional details regarding his origin. As a farmer or laborer before 1887, he may have owned or rented his land, so there may be deeds or contracts mentioning him in municipal records or within the series of notarial documents at the Archivo General de Puerto Rico

Maria Josefa Rivera: first wife

“During the nineteenth century, the genealogy of people of color often comprises a lineage from single mothers, free and unfree.”

 Tomas Gandulla was married twice, first to Maria Josefa Rivera and then to Maria Angela Malave Vazquez. With Maria Josefa, he had two sons, Basilio Antonio Gandulla Rivera (b. 1853), who married Mercedes Velez Candelario and Jose Cecilio Gandulla Rivera (b. 1854) who married Juana Maria Candelaria. Both couples had large families, Basilio and Mercedes had at least 7 children, while his brother Jose Cecilio with his wife Juana Maria Candelaria had some 10 children between the 1870s-1900s. Although Tomas and Maria Josefa did not live to see their 17 grandchildren, most of them survived to adulthood.

So far, no additional information on Maria Josefa Rivera was found; she was probably born in the 1830s. Given the mention of ‘Liberto‘ on one of Basilio Gandulla Rivera’s documents, indicates he was born into slavery, which means that at birth according to law, his status followed that of his mother, Maria Josefa Rivera. She too was enslaved. Yet both sons and their families are listed as ‘Mu’ (Mulato) in the 1910 census. She could be of African or Afro-Indigenous or of other admixture descent, born on the island or brought there for sale. Perhaps parish documents hold some clues, if not answers.

Family of Juan Tomas Gandulla and Maria Josefa Rivera, San German. Chart by EFS, 2018.

Maria Angela Malave Vazquez: 2nd wife, May-December marriage

Maria Angela Malave Vazquez (bca 1862) became Tomas Gandulla’s partner sometime mid-decade in Barrio Rosario Bajo and likely, lived in Barrio Rosario Penon, San German in the early 1880s.  This was a December-May relationship, as Tomas was 40 years older than Maria Angela.  Given that this marriage took place sometime in the 1880s, opens the possibility of yet another wife, given that Tomas’ previous marriage was two decades earlier. Tomas Gandulla and Maria Angela Malave had two children, Juan Tomas Gandulla Malave (b. 1887) and Maria Monserrate Gandulla Malave (b. 1889) who lived to age 44 and died of tuberculosis in August 1933. She was married to Juan Alicea.

Maria Angela Malave died of Cloro-anemia, a form of iron deficiency anemia in 1902 at the age of 40, some three years after the death of her husband Tomas Gandulla in 1889.

Family of Juan Tomas Gandulla and Maria Angela Malave Vazquez. Chart by EFS, 2018

La Mancha del Platano: regard & disregard

Questions remain about the relationship between Tomas Gandulla and Maria Josefa Rivera, how they met and what their lives were like building a family during a time of great transition for POC in Puerto Rico. Despite their freedom, traces of resistant attitudes to emancipation can be found within documents.

Acta de nacimiento, Maria del Carmen Gandulla Velez, San German, Puerto Rico. “Puerto Rico, Registro Civil, 1805-2001,” database with images, FamilySearch. https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV1Y-T78F

The birth certificate for Tomas and Josefa’s granddaughter Maria del Carmen Gandulla Velez contains small details that may reflect the microaggressions endured in daily life by the Gandullas because of their ancestry and class. Does even the documentation bear this kind of disregard?  Torn and water stained pages full of insect holes pit the tropical environment against paper, weighted by records for a diverse rural population. Advancing the frames of the microfilm shows that the form beneath this page was not filmed, and the start of the document is covered by the stitched slip, “Nacimientos de 1890, Leg. 31 Exp. 81e” from the Archivo Municipal de San German.  it is still remarkable that it survived all this time.

For Basilio and Mercedes’ daughter, Maria del Carmen Gandulla Velez, their child’s name may simply appear as Carmen on the left hand margin, despite her full name appearing in the document, a level of care more often taken with people considered blancos of higher status. In his post for the municipality of San German, Juan Antonio Gandulla— “D. Juan A. Gandulla, Secretario”, was tied to the family who once owned Basilio’s father, and insured that there was no mistake between their lines, so that some social divisions continued. Yet additional documentation may reveal the complexity of relationships and networks that sustained families in Barrio Penon and beyond.

The statement that D. JA Gandulla, recording the birth wrote near the bottom, highlighted in a detail from the birth certificate below was: “Que es prieta por linea paterna de Tomas Liberto de Gandulla y Ma. Jose Rivera.“ “She is black via the paternal line of Tomas Gandulla’s Freedman and Maria Jose Rivera”   As secretary, D. Juan A. Gandulla made sure to record the girl’s paternal lineage as black. Yet this identity was far more flexible than the secretary could have imagined, for in the coming decades, the racial identity of the Gandulla grandchildren is recorded as white.

“Que es prieta por linea paterna de Tomas Liberto de Gandulla y Ma. Jose Rivera.”

Maria del Carmen Gandulla Candelario

Tomas Gandulla’s son,, Jose Cecilio Gandulla Rivera and his wife Juana Ramona Candelario also had a daughter, Maria del Carmen Gandulla Candelario, born in February 1890. In this record, Jose Cecilio appears as Jose Cecilio Liberto de Gandulla, and he reported both the birth and the death of his daughter, who only lived for one day.

“Jose Cecilio Liberto de Gandula. detail, Acta Nacimiento Maria del Carmen Candelario, 14 Feb 1890.

Again the same Secretario, Juan A. Gandulla inscribed the information for the municipal series Nacimientos de Barrio Rosario de Penon that year. As Jose Cecilio Gandulla and Juana Ramona Candelario were not yet married, the secretary notes the details of their single status. During the nineteenth century, the genealogy of people of color often comprises a lineage from single mothers, free and unfree:  

..comparecio Jose Cecilio Liberto de Gandulla, natural de este poblado, mayor de edad, soltero, labrador y vecino de Barrio Ros.o de Penon de S. German, presentando con objeto como padre ilegitimo declaro que se inscriba que era hija natural de Juana Ramona Candelario, natural de San German de 22 anos de edad, soltera, domestica y avecinada en dicho barrio. Que era nieta por linea materna de Ma de la Cruz, natural de San German ya difunta. y a dicha niña ha puesto el nombre de Ma del Carmen…

So, despite Juan Cecilio’s accounting for his identity as father of Maria del Carmen in person, her surname is listed as Candelario, not Gandulla.  By 1909 the law was changed to include details concerning paternity, and many women took advantage of this opportunity to amend the birth records to identify the father of a child born out of wedlock.  Still, in other municipalities, a father’s willingness to identify his paternity could be followed by the use of his surname for births out of wedlock.

These details suggests that Maria Josefa/Jose Rivera married her husband while they were both enslaved, because their son, Jose Cecilio Gandulla Rivera appears as ‘Liberto’ — freedman— in the 1890 record for their granddaughter, Maria del Carmen Candelario.  As this happens in 1890, not 1870, why was it necessary to continue mentioning the status? Was there a Jose Cecilio Gandulla blanco? or was it simply pulling rank in the rural society of San German?

While no additional information has turned up on his first marriage to Maria Rivera, it is possible that despite enslavement, they married and had a family before 1873-1876. Maria Rivera was alive at least until 1854, when her second son, Jose Cecilio was born. 

After 1890

In the 1910 census, both Jose Cecilio and his brother Basilio Gandulla’s families were working on a coffee plantation, in Barrio Rosario Penon, on the “Camino de San German a Rosario, sendero del Penon, Rio Abajo” (Road from San German to Rosario, path of Penon, Lower River). Their sons are listed as laborers.  Jose Cecilio Gandulla’s death certificate of 1926 lists his occupation as “Agricultor— finca de su padre”, which tells us he worked his father’s farm as a farmer, and likely inherited the farm.  Over the course of his lifetime across various census records makes visible the change in economies a decade after the Spanish American War.

Basilio Gandulla Rivera and Cecilio Gandulla Rivera, 1910 census Bo. Rosario Penon, San German

By 1930, only Basilio Antonio Gandulla remained, and labor there was now devoted to a different crop, sugar. 

During the mid-nineteenth century, the area of San German had the major plantation crops of coffee, sugar along with minor crops that fed the population. Without additional documentation, it is difficult to say what other crops the Gandulla grew besides coffee, or what kinds of situations and arrangements they navigated. By the early twentieth century, social conditions and status changed, and these branches of the Gandulla family continued to grow. 

Whether family members worked in the fields, or in the home that served as its administrative center, or labored as service people within the town, the cycles of sowing, tending and harvesting, overlaid by the Catholic calendar structured their lives . As the details across documents show, family histories were determined by shifting conditions of freedom, enslavement and class. In 1910, six grandsons of Tomas Gandulla worked as farm laborers, four granddaughters as domestics, a generation born on the cusp of emancipation.

References

Writing Juan Tomas Gandulla back into history was part of a larger research project for Maara Vazquez., “Finding Maria Monserrate Malave.” March 2018.

A great place to begin understanding what’s at stake with writing the Gandulla back into history is Milagros Denis, review article, “The Problem of Slavery in the Puerto Rican Societ: , Reseña de “Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth Century Puerto Rico” de Luis Figueroa, “La esclavitud menor: la esclavitud en los municipios del interior de Puerto Rico en el siglo XIX” de Mariano Negrón Portillo and Raúl Mayo Santana y “Slave Revolts in Puerto Rico” de Guillermo Baralt. Centro Journal [en linea] 2009, XXI (Sin mes) : [Fecha de consulta: 2 de abril de 2019] Disponible en:<http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=37721248012> ISSN 1538-6279

Centro Geográfico del Ejército, Itinerario de San German a El Rosario por la altura (1888). Archivo Digital Nacional de Puerto Ricohttps://archivonacional.com/PL/1/1/1290

“Puerto Rico, Registro Civil, 1805-2001,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVJ7-VWTG : 17 July 2017), Juan Tomás Gandulla in entry for Juan Tomás Gandulla, 20 Dec 1887; citing San Germán, Puerto Rico, oficinas del ciudad, Puerto Rico (city offices, Puerto Rico).

“Puerto Rico, Registro Civil, 1805-2001,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV1Y-RP5L : 17 July 2017), José Cecilio Liberto Gandulla in entry for María del Carmen Candelario, ; citing San Germán, Puerto Rico, oficinas del ciudad, Puerto Rico (city offices, Puerto Rico).

“Puerto Rico, Registro Civil, 1805-2001,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVJZ-PMJ6 : 17 July 2017), Maria del Rosario Varquez Y Acosta in entry for Maria Malavé Y Varquez, 19 May 1902; citing San Germán, Puerto Rico, oficinas del ciudad, Puerto Rico (city offices, Puerto Rico).

“Puerto Rico, Registro Civil, 1805-2001,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVJ7-V8M3 : 17 July 2017), María Malavé in entry for María Monserrate Gandulla Y Malavé, 19 Jan 1889; citing San Germán, Puerto Rico, oficinas del ciudad, Puerto Rico (city offices, Puerto Rico).

“Puerto Rico, Registro Civil, 1805-2001,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVJX-82XH : 16 July 2017), Jose Cecilio Gandulla Rivera, 25 Nov 1926; citing San Germán, Puerto Rico, oficinas del ciudad, Puerto Rico (city offices, Puerto Rico).

La última parada (The last stop): A photo from 1929

Coffin for the father of Balbino Gonzalez, Moca, September 1929

While in Puerto Rico over a decade ago, I bought copies of old photographs at Tienda Cesto in Aguadilla. Part of the store was given over to tables with sets of binders, each containing photographs from different municipalities. There were a small number of images of Moca that I bought.  Looking for items for the next Black ProGen Live (Ep.72 – join us!),  I pulled my small binder of photographs as I remembered an image with a coffin. As I’d soon learn, my connections were closer than I could’ve imagined. 

 Near the end of September 1929, a group of men and children stood in the midday sun before a coffin for a photographer, in Moca. According to the notation on the photograph, it was Balbino Gonzalez’ father and the location was in Barrio Plata, a rural location some 5 miles away from the center of town.. Recently finished, the shiny coffin, painted a dark enamel color and embellished with stamped metal decorations sat on a frame that was to shortly transport Gonzalez to his final resting place in the Viejo Cementerio Municipal de Moca in what was popularly known as Calle Salsipuedes . Given that the son’s name appeared with a date, I used that as a guideline to find Balbino Gonzalez’s father in the Registro Civil. The death actually occurred ten days later. 

Acta de defuncion: 29 September 1929

Balbino Gonzalez Jimenez was one of five children of Jose Manuel Gonzalez Perez (1863-1929) and Juana Bautista Jimenez Soto (1868-1926). He is the young man in the suit at the center of the photograph.  He was single at the time of his father’s death on 27 September 1929. He came from Santurce where he was a teacher, to report his father’s death to the Registro Demográfico. His suit, tie and hair speak to fashion in the metropolis of the San Juan metropolitan area, a self awareness already honed by his profession. The other men in the photo  wear looser fitting shirts, and the straw boatera hat is a respectful nod to artesanos and locals that decades later became part of the dress of Los Enchaquetaos, a fraternal group founded by Pedro Mendez Valentin. Here the stiff hat functions much like the formal top hats used by funeral staff. 

Jose Manuel Gonzalez Perez, Acta de Defuncion, 29 Sept 1929, FS. Screenshot: EFS

Jose Manuel Gonzalez Perez, was an 82 year old widower, who worked as a professor. He lived on Calle Nemesio Gonzalez, and died the morning of 27 September 1929 of cardiac insufficiency. It’s likely that as his condition worsened, family was contacted as his time neared.  His son Balbino Gonzalez Jimenez was summoned home, and he was the informant for his father’s death record above. While he was unable to report the names of his father’s paternal and maternal grandparents, he gave the names of Jose Manuel’s parents: Jose M. Gonzalez (ca 1814-bef 1899)  and Juana Perez Guevara (1819-1899)  [1]  Jose Manuel was one of three siblings from Barrio Plata, a long narrow municipality that borders San Sebastián on its eastern border.[2] 

La ultima parada: from workshop to cemetery

A  1947 map of Moca shows the former location of the cemetery at the end of the street that leads from the Plaza in front of the church to the Cementerio Municipal.  

Among the group standing in the photograph on the right, is a tall pale man, who may in fact be Alicides Babilonia Talavera, my great grandfather.  Later, his son, Alcides Babilonia López also made coffins in a nearby workshop. 

1947 Map of Moca, Puerto Rico. Juan Manuel Gonzalez Perez lived on Calle Nemesio Gonzalez; Alcides Babilonia Talavera lived on Calle Juan B Huyke. The procession to the Cementerio Municipal may have passed the former home of the deceased.  

Calle Nemesio González in Moca ran through Barrio Pueblo, and this is the street that Jose Manuel Gonzalez Perez lived on;  my great-grandfather Alcides Babilonia Talavera and grandfather Alcides ‘Alcidito’ Babilonia Lopez lived in homes next door to each other on Calle Juan B. Huyke. This is the backdrop of the 1929 photograph.  As this was before the establishment of a funeral home, many people had a wake at home, and the Gonzalez family probably did the same. Given the heat, it lasted a day, with ice piled beneath the coffin and a plate piled  with salt placed on the chest of the deceased. The lid may or may not have a glass window, so that the case can stay closed and the deceased could still be seen.

The man on the far right

Among the group standing in the photograph there on the right, is a tall pale man, who may in fact be Alicides Babilonia Talavera, my great grandfather.  Later, his son, Alcides Babilonia López also made coffins in a nearby workshop. 

Antonio Gonzalez Perez, Lorenzo Caban’s son & Alcides Babilonia Talavera, Barrio Pueblo, Moca, 1929. Screenshot: EFS

According to my cousin Diany, Alcides was known for his coffins. When he was younger, he had a room with samples where people could choose fabrics for the inside of their coffins. There were always stories with a touch of the supernatural about them. He had an order from a man who needed a coffin, and worked on making it with a hammer. after midnight, he couldn’t find the coffin. Another coffin was tossed through the window, so he picked it up and finished the job. 

Finish & detail: 1929

‘Descanse en Paz’ , metal stars and cherubs decorate the enameled surface of the coffin. Screenshot: EFS

The details in the photo give an idea of decorative funerary practices in rural areas, which ran from the simplest unadorned box to a highly finished coffin with stamped metal cherubs holding a garland inscribed with ‘Que en paz descanse’. Clearly then, this was top of the line and the maker stands at the head, arms folded behind him, separating him from the family next to him. 

Center Left: identifying Lorenzo Caban Lopez, Sepulturero de Moca

L- R, Felicano ‘Chano’ Caban Alonso, Lorenzo Caban Lopez & Balbino Gonzalez Perez
Screenshot: EFS

 

The identity of the man in the flat top hat is Lorenzo Caban Lopez, who was married to Lucia Alonso Font (1874-1956). [3]  In 1901 he was appointed by the municipal government as a Sepulturero y conservador (Gravedigger and caretaker) and as a Celador (Maker of grave markers and crypts) for the old Cementerio Municipal, which he did for 23 years until August 1936.[4] after his death, his son Feliciano ‘Chano’ Caban, who stands to the left, became Sepulturero. [5]  He and his family lived on the edge of Barrio Pueblo, on Calle de la habana.  As it happens, I share many connections with this Caban line.

Lorenzo was the father of Domitila Caban Lopez (1902-1982), my grandfather’s last partner before his death in 1948. She was a tejedora, a lacemaker and I exhibited some of her lace work at UPR Mayaguez along with that by other tejedoras, some who are no longer with us. Like lace, weaving these details together give us a recognizable pattern as we work through the questions.

By the 1940s

In the 1940 census, Alcides Babilonia Talavera was a divorced widower, and it is not until then that his occupation is listed as a maker of coffins. in the 1910-1930 census his occupation is  Agricultor- finca de cafe (Farmer- coffee farm). By 1920, his ex-wife, Concepcion Lopez Ramirez (1863-1925) lived next door to him and had a business as a ‘modista’ a dressmaker, living with several of her children while Alicides lived next door with children as well. In January 1925, Concepcion died suddenly.  His reaction was to call a photographer for one last image, altered to evoke the life of a portrait. It merely succeeded at lending an uncanny gaze emanating from her painted in eyes. I am not sure how much this experience shaped his funeral avocation, but he was likely well acquainted with the steps of caring for the dead, as people still arrived and departed from their homes. 

My grandfather, also named Alcides, made coffins, and in 1940 appears as a “ carpintero – propio taller” a carpenter with his own workshop. It was the year he married my grandmother Felicita, who later died that year of tuberculosis, which took many family members. By 1948, knowing he was going to die, he made a simple pine box for himself, but that’s another story.  He worked making coffins with his friend Rito Vargas, husband of Maria Lassalle, the lacemaker of Moca. Out of death comes a refashioning of self,  family and the ways we decide (and are able to) to honor their lives.

Unexpectedly, a photograph brings me closer to the past and to even more relatives, as I learn more about the work of Lorenzo Caban Lopez and Alcides Babilonia Talavera.  QEPD.

References

[1]Acta Defunción,  “Puerto Rico, Registro Civil, 1805-2001,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVJD-J3PV : 17 July 2017), Jose Manuel Gonzalez Y Pérez, 26 Sep 1929; citing Moca, Puerto Rico, oficinas del ciudad, Puerto Rico (city offices, Puerto Rico).

[2] Acta Defunción, “Puerto Rico, Registro Civil, 1805-2001,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVJD-FTL3 : 17 July 2017), Juana Perez Guebara, 17 Oct 1899; citing Moca, Puerto Rico, oficinas del ciudad, Puerto Rico (city offices, Puerto Rico).

[3] Lorenzo Caban Lopez’ death certificate lists his occupation: Celador- cementerio, Gob Municipal hasta Ago 1936, 23 anos; Acta Defunción “Puerto Rico, Registro Civil, 1805-2001,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVJD-NJMT : 17 July 2017), Lorenzo Caban Lopez, 14 Nov 1936; citing Moca, Puerto Rico, oficinas del ciudad, Puerto Rico (city offices, Puerto Rico).

[4] Antonio Nieves Mendez, Historia de un pueblo: Moca . Lulu.com 2008, 49.

[5] Victor Gonzalez, “Los Cuentos de Chano Caban” Mi niñez Mocana y algo más…. Segundo edición, Impresos Ideales, 1990, 19-21.

On the Other Side: Loreta Janeta Velazquez (1842 -1897)

“Harry T. Buford 1st Lt Indpt Scouts C.S.A” Civil War Veteran, Confidence Woman or both?

My career has differed materially from that of most women; and some things that I have done have shocked persons for whom I have every respect, however much my ideas of propriety may differ from theirs.    Loreta Janeta Velazquez, (1876)  The Woman in Battle. 

On our recent Black ProGen episode on Civil War Pension files had me wondering about Caribbean ties to the Civil War.  As I learned, there were some 3500 soldiers and officers in the Civil War who were Latino, 2500 of them served the Union, while 1000 served the Confederacy with the number rising to 10,000 by war’s end.  

I  came across a Puerto Rican born Union officer, and a Cuban born woman with a remarkable story… and a mustache and goatee.

My aim here is not to do a Civil War blow by blow of her military service, but to weigh in on genealogical details concerning her identity based on what I could find in various archival databases.  I also want to express my thanks to Nicka Smith, Bernice Bennett, Shelley Murphy and Teresa Vega for discussions about the Civil War, pension files and the great city of New Orleans. This is excerpted from a longer work.

Loreta Janeta Velazquez published her exploits in her 1876 memoir, The Woman in Battle. She was known for crossing many lines, ultimately serving the Confederacy as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford. The book’s title page and frontispiece are designed to first assure the reader that the author is indeed a female, while luring the reader with the excitement and experiences reserved for white men across the country and two continents. There is innuendo, as suggested by where she lived and who she loved by the end of the 118 word title. It has everything packed into it for 1876- spying, violence, money, and sex.  

Title page, The Woman In Battle (1876)

The full title reads like a film summary: 

THE WOMAN IN BATTLE: A NARRATIVE OF THE Exploits, Adventures, and Travels OF MADAME LORETA JANETA VELAZQUEZ, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS  LIEUTENANT HARRY T. BUFORD, CONFEDERATE STATES ARMY. IN WHICH IS GIVEN Full Descriptions of the numerous Battles in which she participated as a Confederate Officer; of her Perilous Performances as a Spy, as a Bearer of Despatches, as a Secret-Service Agent, and as a Blockade-Runner; of her Adventures Behind the Scenes at Washington, including the Bond Swindle; of her Career as a Bounty and Substitute Broker in New York; of her Travels in Europe and South America; her Mining Adventures on the Pacific Slope; her Residence among the Mormons; her Love Affairs, Courtships, Marriages, &c., &c. 

EDITED BY

C. J. WORTHINGTON,

The dedication lets you know right away what side she was rooting for: 

TO MY 

Comrades of the Confederate Armies, 

WHO, ALTHOUGH THEY FOUGHT IN A LOSING CAUSE, 

SUCCEEDED BY THEIR VALOR IN WINNING 

THE ADMIRATION OF THE WORLD, 

THIS NARRATIVE

OF MY ADVENTURES AS A SOLDIER, A SPY, 

AND A SECRET-SERVICE AGENT, 

Is Dedicated,  

WITH ALL HONOR, RESPECT, AND GOOD WILL.

Madame Velazquez in Female Attire. Frontispiece, The Woman in Battle

Velazquez is very much the rolling stone, moving from one location to another across the United States, Caribbean and Europe between the time she was born throughout her adulthood. I’m working on a longer version of this essay, and wanted to share some of the aspects of her story that go well beyond oral histories and memoir.  What’s also fascinating is that she is a self made woman who basically studied men;  whose genealogical presence failed to produce a tree with descendants, but instead gives us an opportunity to weigh what it means to tell and retell her story in different contexts.

Narrative, genealogy and hidden stories

Reading this text as a genealogist, there’s a big red flag at the outset of Velazquez’ memoirs— the loss of notes paired with a pressing need for income (emphasis added) for a book 376 pages long:

“… The loss of my notes has compelled me to rely entirely upon my memory; and memory is apt to be very treacherous, especially when, after a number of years, one endeavors to relate in their proper sequence a long series of complicated transactions. Besides, I have been compelled to write hurriedly, and in the intervals of pressing business, the necessities I have been under of earning my daily bread being such as could not be disregarded, even for the purpose of winning the laurels of authorship. To speak plainly, however, I care little for laurels of any kind just now, and am much more anxious for the money that I hope this book will bring in to me than I am for the praises of either critics or public. The money I want badly, while praise, although it will not be ungratifying, I am sufficiently philosophical to get along very comfortably without.” [WIB 6]

She worked with an editor, CJ Worthington,, a Naval veteran, who ‘although during the war was on the other side… has shown a remarkable skill in detecting and correcting errors into which I had inadvertently fallen.”

For Worthington, however, the importance of the book is not her gender crossing but spy craft:

In the opinion of the editor, however, the most important part of the book is that in which a revelation is made, now for the first time, of the exact manner in which the Confederate secret-service system at the North was managed. There is no feature of the civil war that more needs to have light thrown on it than this; and, as the story which the heroine of the adventures herein set down recites, is an exceedingly curious one, it is deserving of the special consideration of the public, both North and South.

The South was mistaken, but one couldn’t ‘doubt their sincerity or honesty of purpose.’ [10] He calls Velazquez ‘a typical Southern woman of the war period’. Oh, right.

Worthington says of the manuscript (emphasis added):

 “The manuscript, when it was placed in his hands, was found to be very minute and particular in some places, and rather meagre in others, where particularity seemed desirable. Having undertaken to get this material into proper shape, correspondence was opened with Madame Velazquez, and a number of interviews with her were had. A general plan having been agreed upon, it was left entirely to the judgment of the editor what to omit or what to insert,–Madame Velazquez agreeing to supply such information as was needed to make the story complete, in a style suitable for publication. From her correspondence, and from notes of her conversations, a variety of very interesting details, not in the original manuscript, were obtained and incorporated in the narrative. The editor, also, in several places has corrected palpable errors of time and place, and has added a few facts not supplied by the author.” [11]

“Owing to the loss of her diary, Madame Velazquez was compelled to write her narrative entirely from memory, which will account for the errors to which allusion has been made. Indeed, considering the multiplicity of events, it is very remarkable that she has been able to relate her story with any degree of accuracy. It is possible that, despite the pains that have been taken to make the narrative exact in every particular with regard to its facts, a few errors may have been permitted to remain uncorrected. These errors, however, are not material, and do not in any way impair the interest of the story.” [12]

Velazquez herself admits to generating ‘alternative facts’ as needed, which was frequent while she served as a spy or officer in drag and for excuses to the young ladies who find themselves drawn to the ambiguously gendered officer: [111] “… I made up a story that I thought was suited to the occasion and the auditor; and, among other things, told her that I was the son of a millionnaire, that I had joined the army for the fun of the thing, and that I was paying my own expenses.”

Later in the book she takes on blockade running, purchasing supplies, donating money and scamming funds for the Confederate cause during and after the  Civil War. Still, her argument for the national fight is the win, not the economic structure that locked so many in, and built the structure of inequality based on race. One could argue that she is an example of working with family histories that present a particular point of view that can bring into question ideas of self fashioning with a basis in forms of systemic inequality. It is the polar opposite of Abolitionist writings.

Velazquez’ family

Velazquez’ book begins with two genealogies— one of women in war that culminates in her being the ideological heir of Joan of Arc, the other, is of a nobility clawed out of the Caribbean, belied by newspaper articles of mid-1863 that spoke of her exploits in the service.

According to her, she was born on 26th of June, 1842, the last of six children on Calle Vellagas, just outside the walls of Havana, Cuba, Loreta Janeta Velazquez states that her father was a Spanish Ambassador born in Cartagena, (implied) Spain, of noble descent.  Her mother  was from France, daughter of a French naval officer and an American heiress. Her mother’s only brother resided on St. Lucia, but this is not explained in more detail until much later in the book.

Her parents had three sons and two daughters born in Madrid before her birth in Cuba, but in between the time of his appointment to the time of her birth in 1842, the family moved across continents and oceans. Her father is an aristocrat, a learned ambassador who spoke at least three languages, and ultimately supported the Southern cause. The weight of his experience and wealth serve to anchor any charge regarding class in terms of Loreta’s social standing and wobbly gender identification in her memoir. She mentions her brother Josea and a family reunion in St Louis, but is careful not to name her parents in any detail beyond that of moral standing until 1891, when a New York newspaper article quotes her saying that father’s name is Joaquin Velazquez.

Diego Velazquez de Cuellar By Unknown – John Carter Brown Library, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4865322

For her ancestral lineage, she invokes a conquistador of the New World, Diego Velazquez de Cuellar, (1465-d. 1524, Santiago de Cuba), an interesting choice: Velazquez led the conquest of Cuba with 300 men in 1511, noted for being a particularly brutal episode. Just as with Columbus, those Indigenous people that resisted, if not killed or maimed, were sold into slavery across the Atlantic and to Mexico, Central and South America to work the mines. It did not go as planned, so he authorized the importation of enslaved Africans in 1513, and an expedition to the Yucatan. He lost his governorship in 1521 for the misuse of indigenous labor, facts that never ruffle the lineage.

Maybe it was the mustache?   Self portrait By Diego Velázquez – [2], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1963704
The other Velazquez claimed as a great grandfather is Diego Velazquez, leading artist in the court of Philip IV, whose full name was Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez (1599-1660) born to Portuguese parents in Seville. Velazquez went to Madrid in 1622 and became the court painter. He had two daughters, one who survived to adulthood and married a painter. She married Juan Bautista Martinez de Mazo, and their children bore the Martinez surname.

As mentioned, she describes visiting various Caribbean islands, and at Saint Lucia, states that this is where her mother was born:

Velazquez, My Childhood Home, WIB

The connection to Saint Lucia, with its family cemetery and vault, a stone cottage that she describes, now owned by her cousin.  The house itself, like the family, is a hybrid site, ‘a stone house built in the English fashion’ with ‘ancient furniture of Spanish make.’ Both her unseen  sister and brother are entombed in the family burying-ground, together with other relatives in St. Lucia. No further details regarding which port she entered, what parish the family once lived in, is given for locations she mentions before 1868.  [WIB 566]

The Many Names of Lorena Janeta Velazquez 

Another flag in the text and in newspaper accounts are the various aliases she used over four decades (if not longer). It’s an unusually long and overlapping set of identifiers:

Loreta Janeta Velazquez

Mrs. Alice Williams

Mrs. Alice Tennent

Mrs. ST Williams

Mrs Major De Caulp

Mrs Loretta De Caulp

Mrs DeCaulp Buford

Mrs Loretta J. Beard

Mrs Sue Battle

Lieutenant Roach

Lieutenant Bensford

Lieutenant HT Buford

She was married to:

ST Williams, army officer, 

Major Jeruth DeCaulp 

Major Wasson, confederate officer, married in New Orleans

‘Col.’ W Beard

Perhaps the person that can be confirmed in her account is DeCaulp.  ‘Major’ Jeruth DeCaulp was born in Edinborough, arrived in 1857 with his brother, and they traveled the US until 1859, and signed up for the confederacy when the war broke out.  “His father was of French descent, and his mother was a Derbyshirewoman. “He was very highly educated, having studied in England and France with the intention of becoming a physician. His fondness for roaming, however, induced him to abandon this design.. He was tall in stature, with a very imposing presence. His hair was auburn, and he had a large, full, dark, hazel eye.”  It is unclear whether that referred to a pair, or the result of wartime injury. 

His brother held the rank of Captain and died in Nashville at the close of the war; his wife died in New York.  Despite the call to his standing, DeCaulp’s extant letters are full of spelling errors such as ‘cince’ for since, details that cast doubt on his education.  Velazquez has elaborate backgrounds for her husbands and her parents, and if its too good to be true, it probably is.

Reviving Loreta Velazquez

Running into a historical figure like Velazquez is both exhilarating and troubling. There’s the fact of her intense, incredulous story that she tells and then there’s the reality of locating information. At first, I came across the image of the goateed Velazquez, and a broader history of the involvement of women in the military. Next, there is the documentary, Maria Angui Carter’s Rebel (2013) which establishes Velazquez’ existence, but does not really suss all the details regarding her ancestry. Instead, it’s presented as fact, because it was published, which has a circular, closed kind of reasoning. There’s no argument that Velazquez worked to further the aims of the Lost Cause. Then there is historian William C Davis’s book, Inventing Loreta Velasquez: Confederate Soldier impersonator, Media Celebrity and Con Artist. (SIU: 2016).  Davis strains through newspaper accounts and establishes that it is likely you couldn’t trust what Velazquez has to say about family, lineage or history.

Whose side are you on?

One of the things I found disturbing was no real engagement with what it meant to identify with a supposedly light skinned Latina who fought for the Confederacy, without really unpacking the weight of that affiliation. What Loreta discovered was that her ‘possessive investment in whiteness’ had a pay off. People could deal with a Cuban better than say, a mixed race child from New Orleans or Mississippi, instead a Cuban with alleged ties to minor nobility and foreign governments was much more appealing. Ultimately, nostalgia is what Velazquez supplies, full of the dream of the South’s ‘hotel civilization’, where dirt, mess and disorder were disavowed and left for the enslaved help to deal with. What of 18 year old Bob, the young man she bought and enslaved to serve her in the field, who ultimately ran off to the North to claim his freedom? Why the silence on the enslaved help who would have served her family?

This newspaper featured an article on Velazquez, and note the date: 1875. The masthead is rather telling, and perhaps a little startling given where the US is today:

Masthead, Tarborough Southerner, NC, Friday Aug. 27, 1875

But look more closely at the central image:

The image reads: “White Men Must Rule America: The Constitution of Our Fathers”  Ultimately, this image of white femininity upholding white masculinity as the ultimate arbiter of order in the world is what Velazquez puts her faith in. Regardless of her crossing gender, her allegedly West Indian origins, to not acknowledge the fundamental bias at the heart of her project is to ignore the weight and moral failing of justifying enslavement.

She either died in Austin, Nevada in 1897, her grave conveniently destroyed by development, if it ever existed, or, according to Davis, the author of Inventing Loreta Velazquez, she died in 1923 in an insane asylum in Washington DC.

A reference

In case you’re wondering about ‘hotel civilization’: It’s a great term that Cornell West coined in the 1990s.  “We live in a hotel civilization,” said West. “A hotel civilization is a civilization in which people are obsessed with comfort, contentment, and convenience, where the lights are always on. [We] don’t have time for questions. We don’t have time for such interrogations.”

Frankly, America always has been a hotel civilization. This is no joke. West continues: “To escape the pull of the American culture of denial, West urged individuals to examine and question America’s “night-side” – the dark under-belly of society. He added that part of this process of enlightenment is acknowledging real death and violence and also experiencing metaphorical death.

“We must come to terms with the forms of death in the midst of the American past and present. Education itself is a learning how to die. Every time you give up an assumption. it’s a form of death so you can mature,” said West.

http://www.studlife.com/archives/News/2006/02/03/CornelWestdeliversinspiringlecture/