Where irony approaches guile, the twisting of Kipling’s grotesque phrase to dismiss demands for justice and equality ranks among the vilest sins that comprise the "white man’s burden."
My shame for evil deeds my ancestors may have committed is severely diluted. My great-great-grandparents were 16 in number. The genetic legacy of my slaver past equals my Native American ancestry, and besides, one generation further back, an even more direct ancestor is thanked for his heroic efforts---by name---in Frederick Douglass’s epic Narrative.
But my connection to this particular pair of great-great-grands is pretty immediate. My parents were struggling students when I was born, soon my mother got pregnant again, and before I was a year old my grandmother took over my raising. By the time I reunited with my family, my grandmother had taught me how to wash my privates, eat with silverware and read.
My grandmother’s parents died before she was two. The people who taught her how to wash her privates, eat with a fork and read were her grandparents---Berrian and Sarah by name, former slave owners.
My grandmother was a big-boned six-footer, an extreme oddity in her day. They schooled her to be a teacher because, they told her, she would never find a husband. It was a modest exhibition of their wealth, and it’s how she came to teach me to read.
Berrian was Confederate Army veteran. He enlisted on his 15th birthday and fought in two battles. At 17 he returned home a hero, as much for his youth as his deeds, and the fact that he and his father were three of seven kin who came back alive.
Berrian’s father deeded him a 500-acre farm. He wed the beauty next door on her 14th birthday.
Berrian’s grandmother had deeded him two slaves, Abbot and Metty, when he was six. Berrian’s father held possession of those souls until Emancipation elieved him of the 'burden.'
Apologists tell us that Reconstruction was a miserable experience in southwest Georgia, but Berrian did okay. By the time he reached his prime, he owned the local grist mill, the sawmill, three large farms and a prosperous whiskey still in Mitchell County, Georgia, near Camilla.
By the time he died in 1932, the Depression had taken everything save his original inheritance, divided among 12 children. I remember visiting the old stone farm house, high on a bluff over the Flint River, about 1960. Berrian’s musket hung over the fireplace with a sword my family claimed was his (but probably wasn’t, he was a grunt).
The Camilla Massacre
South Carolina claims to be the hotbed of the Confederacy, but southwest Georgia ranks as one of the wickedest regions of the south in postbellum period.
Abolitionists and Republicans were busy recruiting new voters enfranchised by the 19th Amendment. These so-called "carpetbaggers" established political party organizations loosely around state legislative districts and delegates.
Not all the Emancipators were carpetbaggers. Some---real heroes are always too few---were local farmers and business people who had always known slavery to be an abomination. A very few of them were Democrats, and many of their descendants, including me, still are.
But most locals---including Berrian---were adamantly opposed to "Radical" Reconstruction and did everything they could to thwart its goals.
By July, 1868, the Georgia legislature had met the terms of Reconstruction and enfranchised people---men, that is---of color. The U.S. Army ended its occupation of the Georgia ‘districts.’ Thirty-two black men---most of them former slaves, all of them Republicans---were elected to the Georgia legislature.
On opening day the legislature---mostly white Democrats---expelled all 32 delegates, including Mitchell County delegate Philip Joiner.
On Sept. 19, 1868, Rep. Joiner, Francis F. Putney and William P. Pierce---white "carpetbaggers"---led several dozen brave souls and a six-piece brass band on a twenty-five-mile march from Albany to the Mitchell County seat in Camilla to hold a political rally in the public square.
Along the way, the marchers picked up company.
A mile outside Camilla, the Mitchell County sheriff intercepted the troupe and ordered them to turn around. The marchers---by now several hundred strong---refused. Some of them were armed, or so the sheriff claimed later.
The marchers camped at a farm house. Bright and early the next morning they continued into Camilla, trumpets blaring, drums pounding, cymbals clashing.
As they approached the town square, a few of them probably wondered why the place was deserted. A few of them might have noticed grim-faced white men lurking in doorways and alleys and peering from over rooftops and under porches.
As they entered the square, the first shots rang out, then a barrage of musket and pistol fire. Gunsmoke billowed. A dozen marchers were killed in the initial volley, twice that many were wounded. Their screams were punctuated by the blood lust melody of war whoops---the infamous "Rebel yell" of brave men crouched behind doorways and rooftops.
The marchers panicked, bolted and never regrouped. In small bands of two and three, they made their way back down the road to Albany as best they could. Some hid until dark.
For two days and nights, brave Mitchell County vigilantes---likely including Berrian and his kin---spurred their horses and mules up and down the road all the way back to Albany, shooting, stabbing and beating any people of color they came across.
The testimony of one 12-year old farm girl, a local who hadn’t taken part in the march because she feared the consequences, is the most chilling for me. They cut her throat and left her for dead in a ditch.
She managed to survive long enough to describe her assault and name her assailant. There is no record he was ever arrested.
There is no evidence any of my ancestors were involved in the Camilla Massacre, but Berrian was a wealthy pillar of Camilla society, a war hero, a whiskey maker. Probably he was one of the shooters. Likely he was one of the instigators.
Thomas Nast, the cartoonist who invented Uncle Sam, the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey, immortalized the incident with the picture above---and it was published worldwide.
The New Georgia Encyclopedia carries a brief narrative account of the incident---the first major racial atrocity to occur after the Civil War and the start of a long string of barbarous acts that continued well into the 1920’s and still erupt---in more devious yet all the more monstrous ways---when politicians dismiss political candidates by way of the color of their skin.
News of the Camilla Massacre flashed over telegraph wires, and newspapers across the nation reported it. Republicans and Democrats used the massacre to fortify their positions on Reconstruction in the 1868 presidential campaign. The violence at Camilla intimidated some African Americans, who stayed home on election day. In other places, like Albany, white leaders committed fraud at the polls, deliberately misplacing many black votes or changing them to Democratic ones. White Democrats, then the racial minority in southwest Georgia, carried the election.
Republican members of Congress were appalled at the violence and fraud and required Georgia to once more undergo military rule and Radical Reconstruction. The Camilla Massacre remained part of southwest Georgia's hidden past until 1998, when Camilla residents publicly acknowledged the massacre for the first time and commemorated its victims.
My grandmother, a magnificent woman whom I still idealize, lived to be 93 years old, and she was sharp as a tack and just as cynical until her death in the early 90’s. She taught me about black people, about injustices they have borne, about the debt we owe them for clearing the fields, plowing the corn rows and building the roads we drive on. She also taught me that things will get better.
Two years later, when others in my family began my ‘instruction’ as a white southern male, I knew it was falsehood. The innate corruption of their ministry---and my awareness of it, thanks to my grandmother---has colored my relationship with my family, my religion and my government ever since.
I was seven years old when Meteor Blades took part in the Mississippi Freedom Rides. Reading his account filled me with pride. Watching one of the videos posted in comments made me cry.
I clearly remember reading about the Freedom Rides in the Orlando Evening Star---thanks to my remarkable grandmother---and I remember just as clearly feeling a burst of pride---a confidence that the world would indeed be a better place by the time I reached adulthood.
For me personally, Barack Obama represents the fulfillment of that promise, not because he is black, but because he is the first U.S. presidential candidate of any race or gender I have ever known who speaks for the people, not the powers. He is the first candidate that my grandmother would have truly loved.
Roosevelt was a great man, and Kennedy, and Johnson, despite his tragic flaws, but I think the stage Barack Obama is setting and the participation he encourages can truly change the world.
My ancestors probably played a leading role in one of the first and worst racist atrocities in history. I still benefit materially from the wealth they accumulated. Their photographs, more than a century old, hang in my foyer. My ancestors were slave owners.
Permalink | 9 comments