Africcan Americans

The history of enslaved persons from the continent of Africa is one of the oldest and most prominent pieces of the fabric which goes to make up "American history."  This historical narrative, however, has long been obscured and denatured by the attempts of white politicians and not a few white  historians to minimalize and make insignificant the black presence in our society.  When I read "Huckelberry Finn" as a youngster I had no real sense of what a runaway slave was, what Nigger Jim was up against, and what Huck was getting himself involved with. The south first became concrete to me when I saw the film "Gone With The Wind" in 1939, where there was almost no hint of the folks whose life was one of involuntary servitude; even Scarlett's slapping Prissy across the face could be explained away as an adult's annoyance with a pesky child.  I was 9 then, and nothing was said about slavery or Reconstruction or what today we call "the black experience."  And I was not about to learn anything from talking with blacks; I lived in a university town with very few black residents.  What we were coping with in those long ago days were the arrival of European Jews into the university faculty, bringing with them tales of horror, acts of hideous violence done by Christians, no less.  So by my mid teens I understood roundups, forced marches, trains to camps, gassing, crematoria.  But I never knew anything about shackles, lashings, forced marches, the mid passage, lynchings, being sold down river.  That came to me later when I discovered a book of reminiscences of enslaved persons still alive in the 1930's to tell their story; it's called "Bullwhip Days, and was an eye opener to me.  Saddest of all, I never learned nor studied about Reconstruction, a period of such cruel oppression of backs folks on the one hand, and the exercise of such communal cruelty by whites as to leave an entire culture deranged and perverted;  listen to Billie Holiday sing "Strange Fruit," and study the lyrics.  When I was sixteen I became friendly with a black 14 year old youngster, really the only one, in my high school with whom I had an intimacy for maybe eight years which extended from the sexual to philosophical conversations typical of teenagers. He was a big strong no nonsense athlete with a mother who was incredibly saavy about the social truth of whites and blacks who opened his eyes to the world in which he lived, popular as he was for being a football star but ostracized for being black. He was never invited to any of the parties of his high school, what can I call them? friends?, although in the locker room he was their best buddy.  Knowing him was a first for me, but ironically enough, he shunned me publicly since I was a pariah in our high school world, someone a big butch football star was not to know.  And then my sister began to date a black guy at the university--to everyone's consternation, and years later my oldest sister in an ironic twist met a black guy on a picket line back east, first time for him--a total Oreo--, she a longtime militant, and they became a couple no less for the remaining decade of his life. But when he died, his family came up from Philadelphia for the funeral, but no single black friend attended.  He had moved into a white world.  So many questions, on the tip of my tongue, never asked, so many observations attempted and stopped.  I hope this new Museum of the African American experience opening on the Mall on September 24 will finally bring out the answers.  At least for me.