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Cotton and Cool Water
Topics: Ancestry, Genealogy, Life, Racism, Black, White, Equality, Past, history, South
Anonymous user Wed May 7, 2008 11:48:10 PDT
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I'd lived in the west Texas region about 3 years when I was introduced to another person who had been born and raised in the same region as I. Cool! Another displaced Southerner, banished to the desert. Upon introduction, this stanger exclamed loudly "SOOOOOOO, You're a MUD-SUCKER?" 

What?????  

What exactly is a mud-sucker? Was it an insult?  I thought so and blasted back with the most embarassing proclamation one can make in regards to a stangers introduction into puberty. Not feeling very proud of myself at that moment, I decided that I would find out what a mud-sucker is.....  Apparently if you ask anyone from Alabama what they call people from Mississippi, that's what that say.

So now I'm a racist, prejudiced and suck mud? And all because I was born in Mississippi?  Wow.  Admittedly so, though, I will confess; many times I exclamed proudly, and sometimes sheepishly, "Don't blame me for where I was born, give me credit for leaving".  

But as I grew older I realized that my attitude about my own history was a huge downfall for me. I expected to be judged instantly and rediculed immediately for ancestoral mistakes and bad judgements and scoweled at in the public market for sins I, personally, had never committed. Sure we all find those things in the eyes of the person in the mirror that shame us in the light of day, or the presence of God; giving exception to people we've all met, some  ARE prejudiced and mean....usually I call those type persons 'air-thiefs', yet that too is a prejudice; isn't it? 

 

My grandmother is 90 years old now, and has many years of memories. She's the kind of woman who never carries her voice above a soft pitch, wears dresses and an apron even when she's not cooking, never cut her hair and has worn it in the same ball on the back of her head her entire life. She uses words like "flitter" and "poke"; one is a curse word, the other a grocery bag. And she sewed all her quilts from scrap material cut from clothes of family members using a Singer machine that had to be pumped by foot. It still works.

For anyone who has the blessed priviledge of having a nearly century-old grandparent, you notice that the older they get, the younger their memory becomes. As I sat with her and drank coffe from a cup pulled from a cob-webbed shelf, in a house older than my parents, I listened intently as she talked about the days in the cotton fields, and mid-wifing babies, and caring for injured workers on the farmland my grandfather leased. The truth began to unfold.

My grandfather had earned enough money to buy a small piece of land and find a business venture where he farmed the land for the farmer. But my grandfather was one man, he needed others to vest the interest and work with him. White folk thumbed their nose at such a small piece of farm, but black people understood the value of owning what you work and working what you own. So my grandfather partnered with 3 other men (all black). Together, they all found enough money to lease the equipment and buy the seed. They would have to work the land, and this included their wives and children. However, and sadly though, all of the official registration had to be put in my grandfathers name only, or all four families would have faced the consequence of horrible ignorance and blind racism.

We, my family, my ancestors were not slave owners.  My family was indeed both white and black. We hadn't actually been 'cross-bred', we were not blood related but we had been right there beside each other in the field. We had all been in the garden weeding the rows and  there on the back porch when the green beans and peas were harvested and jarred for the winter months. We sat at the same tables, we ate from the same plates and we prayed to the same Father.

It's true; the men were a mean lot. They dominated everything and everyone. (I'm so glad that men have changed). My grandfather and the three black men rode in the same wagon  and they all drank from the same dipper. They also drank homemade whiskey together, yelped together and passed out together. They all awoke to demand their breakfast and would smack any woman or kid who got in their way. Abuse?  No. It was the south, it was the 1930's and 40s. The back of a hand or  a leather stap WAS time out. (Again, I'm am so glad that changed).

The truth was that it was a simple, yet very hard life. Life didn't care about the color of skin. The sun burned the same and cool water tasted the same. Every dollar was worked for and every profit shared equally.

Never will I be caught saying that it was right. That the life lived then was right. But I have to face the fact that 30 year from now, even these times will be looked upon as the past and something to learn from. There were horrible people who were horribly mean to other people because of the color of their skin and there still are.

Yet, I will forever be grateful to have learned that for once in my life, being poor has brought more than just life lessons and street smarts; I now am proud to know and say that my family was too poor to own a slave, and in learning this I also learned what a mud-sucker is.

 

 

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