True Grit: A Rare Quailty
This week I had an humbling conversation with my 82-year-old father. The year was 1958, according to him. That’s when he left rural North Carolina and made a life for himself in New Jersey at the age of 16. It wasn’t just him, but he had 19 other siblings. The older siblings had already migrated north and left the younger siblings behind. None of them graduated high school. At best my aunts and uncles had a fifth-grade education and my grandparents, a third-grade education.
Why was their education incomplete?
They rose early in the morning to walk 30 miles to school. If they were lucky enough to come upon 25 cents, then the white postman would give them a ride to the main road. As they trudged along the dusty roads, white children shuttled by school buses spit at them, yelled, and called them NIGGER. Before the school day ended, their white sharecrop employer demanded they come to work in the field. Not only suffering previous generations of broken families and poverty, but enduring the sting of a incomplete education, my father still provided the absolute best for all of his children.
My grandparents, aunts, and uncles harvested primarily cotton and cured tobacco. From sunup to sundown, in the blazing heat, the relentless downpour of rain, they never stopped working until lighting struck. All this toiling for $2 per day. I couldn’t imagine making $40 per month in 1958, nor 2024. Before 1865 and during the reconstruction my ancestors didn’t make a dime, but were expected to pull themselves up and start from scratch. The majority of Blacks stayed in the south after 1865. Where were they suppose to start a life at with no money in their pockets and tattered clothes on their backs? Perhaps they could move up north without an education, money, or profession. Meanwhile the majority of white America benefited from the labor of African ancestors and easily completed grade school education with the advantage of attending college. White America today is not to blame for the atrocities birthed from their white ancestors, but when slavery reparations is proposed there should not be any pushback.
How was $2 per day going to support a family with 20 children?
My father said the white sharecropper asked my grandfather, “Ey boy, you didn’t pay your debts this year. You wanna work with me another year?” And just like that they toiled another year and another year and another year until they died. Where was my grandfather going to take his huge family for a better life? He literally had no money and was working just to live. Every penny he received from his employer, he gave it right back to him for food and shelter. They were living on the same land their enslaved ancestors built and cultivated.
So when did slavery actually end?
America was never established with descendants of African slaves in mind, nor the indigenous. Although the indigenous and Africans were here before Columbus. We were only good enough to build this country, not to live fruitful and productive lives. This is why the 45th President of the Unites States wishes to “make America great again”. Making this land great again means reverting back to the 1950s, possibly before 1865. After slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow era, the civil rights period, Reagan war on drugs—released drugs into Black communities, and the destruction of Black Wall Street and so much more, it’s seems like all the value has been sucked out of people of color generation after generation. Nevertheless, we are still here.
Their ability to rise above every obstacle with renewed strength and perseverance is inspiring. It is this true grit that I hope to teach my children about one day, such that they are able to rise above any and every obstacle, knowing that they aren’t doing it for themselves, but they are pushing towards their goals even in the face of adversity for those coming after them.
