50
Years of Progress Since Brown
in the Southern Virginia Rural Town
of My Youth
By Rudolph Lewis
May 17, 1954 (the
Brown Case decision) signaled no special hope in my family
history. Married in 1926, Daddy then (48) and Mama (42) had been
sharecroppers for two decades for the Creath family. In 1948,
year of my birth, they purchased ten acres ($100 a acre) from
Jerusalem Church. Like pioneers, they cleared the trees and the
brush (with crosscut saw, ax, grubbing hoe, mule and wagon), dug
a well (Mama pulling up the clay and mud). Then Daddy built his
wife a house, four rooms on the first level and a livable
upstairs.
That house burned down in 1954. We, the four
of us, then lived in a one-room cinderblock building that Daddy
had built for a store and a juke joint. We waited impatiently for
Daddy to gather the resources to complete the new eight-room house with a livable
upstairs. I was five and my sister (aunt) Annie was fourteen. That fall
I began first grade at Creath, No. 5, a two-room school for
colored children, grades 1 through 7. Annie in the 10th
grade attended Waverly Training School (for the colored)
by bus, forty miles away at the other end of Sussex County.
At five years old in May 1954 I knew nothing of race,
and the Supreme Court decision was not a pertinent topic of
discussion in our household. Mama and Daddy were not readers of
the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspapers and we wouldn’t
get a television until August of 1958. Mama left Creath in her
third year and Daddy boasted he only attended one day.
Both however could read and write, probably
at about a sixth grade level. Daddy was a biblical authority.
Mama was then working as a cook at Jarratt Motel (since 1948),
kept a garden, canned food and helped Daddy farm the land in
back of the house. He also worked at John Smith’s sawmill, did
odd jobs, and built houses when the opportunity presented
itself. He was a Jack-of-all-Trades. There was nothing he
didn’t know and couldn’t do. At least, that was my
estimation of him, then.
We lived about four miles off Route 301, then
the thoroughfare, north and south, on a dirt road in the
midst of woods, swamps, and small fields. Where the road ended
was our home and
Jerusalem Baptist Church (founded 1870) and its new cemetery
(founded 1948), at the intersection of another dirt road that
led to another section of 301, about three and half miles away.
So visually the area was in a V-shape, more
precisely, a Y-shape, for if you turned right, the Jerusalem
Church Road would take you through more woods across railroad
tracks to Gray, a train stop and a granary. As students, we
turned left for Creath, a white clapboard school partially
founded about 1910 by the leaders of Jerusalem. Land for the
school was donated by Luther Creath, a large white landowner in
the area.
September 1954, I began Creath. It had one
teacher Miss Margaret Trisvan, who would later teach me French
and history in high school. She taught all seven grades. To get
to Creath was a two-mile walk from Jerusalem, crossing Sansee
Swamp. Some students like the Stiths and the Massenbergs, who
lived on the other side of 301, walked about five miles to
Creath. Though Creath had two rooms, we only used one-room. We
were then only about fifty students in seven grades.
Hardly, anyone knew and certainly none in our
little village had running water and an indoor toilets, neither
did the school, which was heated by a cast iron stove that
burned coal and sat in a sandbox in the middle of the floor with
a long extended tin pipe that ran across the room to a chimney.
In winter, the older students were responsible for making the
fire and we all joined in in cleaning the floors with motor oil
in order to keep down the dust. Out back and down the hill at
opposite ends of a make-shift baseball field near the woods were
the two outhouses, for boys and girls. We knew nothing of basketball then, a sport
made popular by television.
Of course, we lived quite isolated lives then,
the church the center of social and religious life. None had a
telephone, though we had electricity and a radio. Yet there were
still those then who used kerosene lamps. I rarely had any
contact with whites, unless Daddy drove his truck up to Jarratt
Town or to Emporia. But for me, such trips were infrequent.
Petersburg was thirty-five miles away and Richmond, fifty-five
– then that was a major trip, almost like being 400 miles
away. So I had no personal contacts with whites until I was
about twenty years old, though I had my first white teachers
(including Thomas Cripps) at Morgan State College in the late
60s.
I first began to notice whites as different
and special
in our walk back home from Creath. White elementary students
rode the bus and we walked. The older Creath students schooled
us younger ones to get way off the road when the yellow
bus came rumbling by. The students on the bus would toss
missiles out the window and yell all kind of profanities. But
that was only a momentary static, like waiting for a poisonous
snake to cross the road.
Unlike Prince Edward, Sussex County did not
close its schools in response to the Supreme Court order to
desegregate with "all deliberate speed." The County
accommodated the Negroes. That manifested itself in the County
building a new high school in 1959 for its Negro citizens. Generations
before mine had to travel to the other end of the county for
high school instruction. So after I finished Creath's seventh
grade, I traveled only twenty miles to Central High, the most
modern high school building in the county.
Up in Jarratt, four miles away, there was a
high school for whites only. As a child, I don’t recall anyone
complaining about this situation. The new high school provided
jobs for many women who were members of Jerusalem. The school
needed cooks, janitors, as well as bus drivers. Women who only
had opportunities to work in the hot fields for, at most, six
dollars a day, could make at least $40 a week nine months of the
year.
When I graduated in 1965, Central High was
still an all-black school. Of the two hundred eight-graders that
began in 1960, only about 85 graduated on time. Some joined the
military and went to Vietnam, and if they survived returned to
Sussex and often married their high school sweethearts. Many
joined those who obtained jobs at Johns Mansville (a wood
processing plant) in Jarratt or
at chemical plants in Hopewell. A few like me left Sussex for
the North – Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Jersey,
or New York – seeking a broader range of opportunities.
Central High “integrated” probably in the
early 1970s. Private white schools developed, so only a few
working class
white students attended and, of course, the staff became
integrated. All the one and two room clapboard schools, like Creath, were torn down
or turned into houses like Rivers Mill, and centralized modern elementary
schools were built. They too created employment for local
blacks. Many believe the school instruction deteriorated once
“integration” was established.
Though Sussex County overwhelmingly has a
black majority (since the mid-19th century), the
county continues to be ruled by a white minority of large
landholders or businessmen. Big machinery and chemicals have
eliminated the need for massive numbers of black field hands.
The mules of my youth have disappeared. The County still
provides few opportunities for its graduates so the county
continues to maintain a population of about 15,000.
With the addition of a new prison within the last
ten years and the need for a staff of guards, janitors, and
cooks, the population of Jarratt has begun to move toward a
1,000 with an influx from North Carolina of blacks and
Hispanics. The new state prison made it possible for the town to
develop public utilities, sewage and running water. Thus a
housing project has sprung up and the building of homes has
increased.
Jarratt has become primarily a bedroom community,
with whites moving into what had been all-black areas, and
blacks having to go outside the town and the county to obtain
high-paying employment. Though majority black, Jarratt has a
white mayor, a Owen, a descendant of one of the large white
landowners on whose farm my family worked before and while I was
a kid.
Of course, with Interstate 95, a superhighway (65
mph) and the new inexpensive technologies of telephones, VCRs,
satellite dishes, computers, Jarratt has connected itself
integrally to the vices of the large cities. Those who
left forty or fifty years ago for the big cities and decent
wages have returned in their retirement to build homes and live
out their final days. In general the population is getting older
as families become smaller and smaller.
As elsewhere, Jarratt suffers from low wages,
increasing crime, and drug addiction. In the town of my youth,
fifty-years of progress have not change the basic power
relationships, significantly.
posted May 2004
* * *
* *
The Education of Black Folks in the South: 1860-1935
Cornel West: An Editorial
Pass the Mic
Kam Williams Interviews Cornel
West
Responses to Pass the Mic
The Tavis Smiley
Presidential Forum The
State of the Black Union 2009 Smiley
vs. Sharpton
* * *
* *
Marketing Ghana as a Mecca for the African-American Tourist—The
Afro-American tourist market constitutes an important niche
market. At the moment, the U.S.A is Ghana's second highest
tourist generating market with the U.K being the first. In 2003,
some 27,000 tourists arrived in Ghana from the Americas.
Approximately 10,000 were African-Americans. Also, about a
thousand are living and working in Accra. The African-American
tourist market is Ghana's niche market because it has the
greatest growth potential in terms of arrivals and receipts.
This is because the African-American tourist of today is more
interested in exploring his/her cultural and historical
heritage; the very products that Ghana offers. Also, they have a
$300 billion spending power and spend 98% of their household
income. The total income of this segment of the American
population is the largest of all the ethnic groups at $485 and
projected to reach $1.01 trillion by 2010. In a 2000 Gallup poll
commissioned by the National Summit on Africa, 73% of
African-Americans were interested in learning more about Africa.— ModernGhana
*
* * * *
Strange Fruit Lynching Report
/
Anniversary of a Lynching
Willie
McGhee Lynching /
My Grandfather's Execution
Dr. Robert Lee Interview /
African American dentist in Ghana
*
* * * *
Bob Marley—
Exodus
Bob Marley was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was
the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist for the ska,
rocksteady and reggae bands The Wailers (19641974) and Bob
Marley & the Wailers (19741981). Marley remains the most widely
known and revered performer of reggae music, and is credited for
helping spread both Jamaican music and the Rastafari movement
(of which he was a committed member), to a worldwide audience.
|
Exodus
Exodus:
movement of jah people! oh-oh-oh, yea-eah!
Men and people will fight ya down (tell me why!)
When ya see jah light. (ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!)
Let me tell you if youre not wrong; (then, why? )
Everything is all right.
So we gonna walk - all right! - through de roads of
creation:
We the generation (tell me why!)
(trod through great tribulation) trod through great
tribulation.
Exodus, all right! movement of jah people!
Oh, yeah! o-oo, yeah! all right!
Exodus: movement of jah people! oh, yeah!
Yeah-yeah-yeah, well!
Uh! open your eyes and look within:
Are you satisfied (with the life youre living)? uh!
We know where were going, uh!
We know where were from.
Were leaving babylon,
Were going to our father land.
2, 3, 4: exodus: movement of jah people! oh, yeah!
(movement of jah people!) send us another brother
moses!
(movement of jah people!) from across the red sea!
(movement of jah people!) send us another brother
moses!
(movement of jah people!) from across the red sea!
Movement of jah people!
Exodus, all right! oo-oo-ooh! oo-ooh!
Movement of jah people! oh, yeah!
Exodus!
Exodus! all right!
Exodus! now, now, now, now!
Exodus!
Exodus! oh, yea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-eah!
Exodus!
Exodus! all right!
Exodus! uh-uh-uh-uh!
Move! move! move! move! move! move!
Open your eyes and look within:
Are you satisfied with the life youre living?
We know where were going;
We know where were from.
Were leaving babylon, yall!
Were going to our fathers land.
Exodus, all right! movement of jah people!
Exodus: movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Move! move! move! move! move! move! move!
Jah come to break downpression,
Rule equality,
Wipe away transgression,
Set the captives free.
Exodus, all right, all right!
Movement of jah people! oh, yeah!
Exodus: movement of jah people! oh, now, now, now,
now!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Move! move! move! move! move! move! uh-uh-uh-uh!
Move(ment of jah people)!
Move(ment of jah people)!
Move(ment of jah people)!
Move(ment of jah people)! movement of jah people!
Move(ment of jah people)!
Move(ment of jah people)!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
|
*
* * * *
Relations
Between Africans and African Americans: Misconceptions, Myths
and Realities
By
Godfrey Mwakikagile
(Grand
Rapids, Michigan: National Academic Press, 2005) 302 pages
Chapter Four: The Attitude of Africans Towards African Americans
Chapter Six: Misconceptions About Each Other
* * *
* *
Chiefs in Cape
Coast, Ghana /
Grand Durbar Parade
* * *
* *
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Dentist Dr. Robert Lee
Championed African-American Community in
Ghana
In the
mid-1950s, Dr. Robert Lee, a dentist from
South Carolina, moved to Ghana to escape
racism in the south. Over the next half
century, Lee became a fixture in the
African-American community in the West
African country. Dr. Lee died on Monday,
July 5th at the age of 90. But few here in
his home state, or in the States at all,
knew of his work. But in Ghana, he made a
name for himself. Dr. Robert Lee, trained as
a dentist, moved to Accra in the mid-1950s.
Over the past half century, Lee became a
fixture in the black American ex-patriot
community in Ghana.
NPR
Host Michel Martin talks to NPR West African
correspondent Ofeibea Quist-Arcton about his
life and legacy.
Dr. Robert Lee NPR Interview
Dentist Championed
African-American Community In Ghana
Dr Robert Lee passes on
Dr. Robert Lee (right) in
2009 with Kwame Zulu Shabazz |
 |
*
* * * *
Basil Davidson's "Africa Series"
Different
But Equal /
Mastering A Continent /
Caravans
of Gold /
The King and the City /
The Bible and The Gun
West Africa Before the Colonial Era: A
History to 1850
By
Basil Davidson
* * *
* *
* *
* * *
|
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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* *
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 |
Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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1965
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Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
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update 21 May 2009
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