My mother’s parents were victims of the great depression...white farmers who were driven from farms to menial labor in Midwestern cities. My parents divorced when I was young so I was raised by a mother who dropped out of high school to work as a hotel maid. My father’s most rewarding job was as a line cook at a hospital. I am supposed to be one of those "white working class males" that are reluctant to vote for Obama. Indeed, I began this political season a supporter of John Edwards. When Edwards withdrew I knew what I had to do.
Deep in my father’s families heritage there is a family of freed slaves that migrated from North Carolina to Southern Ohio in the 1820s. For four generations the family migrated westward through Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska. As the family moved west; census records documented their changing racial identity. In Ohio all were labeled as "colored", while in Illinois and Iowa they were "mallattos" and then finally in far Western Iowa and Northeastern Nebraska they became "white." My grate-grandfather, who was buried in an unmarked grave in the colored cemetery in Monona County, Iowa, belonged to the last generation to acknowledge our African heritage and the slaves in our family history. My grandmother hid her signs of mixed blood by telling her me, her other grandchildren, and the world that her olive complexion and bristly hair come from "Spanish" or "Indian" roots in our distant family tree.
In 2005, after years of sleuthing I learned what my grandmother could never openly acknowledge. I revealed the secret that she took to her grave....one branch of my family tree began its American experience as slaves. Some in my family rejected our history while others embraced it. However, regardless of the reaction the fact remains...I’m not as white as I believed when growing up. It is my personal journey to awareness of my mixed blood compels my emotional reaction to fact that almost 90 years after Thomas Rickman lead his family from slavery to freedom, a mixed blood black man stands at the head of my political party and he is poised to become the President.
For nearly two decades, my grandmother proudly displayed on her living room wall a velvet mural of John and Robert Kennedy. She worked the cutting floors of Iowa Beef Processors plants in Iowa and Nebraska. She walked the violence plagued strike lines in support of the common needs her brothers and sisters bound by common interest as members of the UFCW. She worked hard and raised three sons. In her last years, she witnessed her grandson become the first college graduate in her family. I only wish my grandmother could have lived to experience this amazing day. In her memory and in celebration of the long struggle of our shared ancestors I am experiencing unbounded JOY...truly shedding tears of joy. Today is a great day in American history...and a fantastic day for my grandmother and my children.
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