Part 3: THE INVISIBLE WORLD OF RURAL BLACK AMERICANA
For reasons still in dispute, we veered off course just outside Austin, Texas. Instead of heading north on interstate 35, we found ourselves traveling south toward San Antonio. I mentioned to my father, who was driving the car, that our surroundings looked more rural than urban. He shrugged off my concern, stubbornly insisting we were headed in the right direction. I waited a few more minutes and said, once again, " Daddy, I think we've driven far enough down the interstate that we should see signs of metropolitan Austin by now." I suggested we call my younger sister to verify the directions to her house, which is where we planned to spend the night.
My father finally acquiesced and I called my sister Nedrea. She was in a panic. We were overdue and she thought we might have had an accident;. When she couldn't reach us on our mobile phones, (we were out of signal range), it seemed her worst fears had been confirmed. Relieved we were still alive, my sister helped my father figure out that we were going in the wrong direction and gave him the correct route to take to her house. Once back on course, in no time we arrived at our destination, a fast food restaurant near my sister's house,
Delighted to see us, my sister gave hugs-all-around then asked,"How did you guys end up getting lost?"
My father and my uncle pointed fingers at each other, each placing the blame on the other. My father claimed my uncle missed the turn-off to Interstate-35 while my uncle claimed it was my father, who confused by the road signs, took the wrong entrance to the interstate. My sister had an alternative explanation for what happened.
"Dad you and Uncle Bennie are just too old to be driving long distances. I saw how slow your drive. You're lucky you didn't cause an accident. If you ask me, this road trip was a bad idea," she said.
My sister tried her best to persuade my father and uncle to allow a younger, more able-bodied family member to do the driving for them but they refused. Once it became clear our two old guys were determined to see this trip through to the end, my sister gave up and morphed into a gracious, southern hostess. We all sat down to a delicious Texas barbecue feast then laughed and talked late into the night. The next morning we awoke well-rested and eager to get on the road again. My sister said her goodbyes and headed off to work. The three of us enjoyed a filling breakfast then re- loaded the car and got back on Interstate-35 driving east toward Henderson, Texas, our final destination.
We arrived in Henderson mid-day. Our first order of business was to find a hotel we could stay in a few days. We found one not far off the highway that runs through Henderson. My two old guys unloaded the car, taking pleasure in giving me a hard time about the weight of my overstuffed suitcase, and carted everything to our rooms.
My overstuffed suitcase was the brunt of a lot of jokes.
We decided to eat lunch and make a "to do" list of tasks to complete while in Henderson. We walked to a nearby restaurant (interestingly called the "Cotton Patch") and ate a delicious southern meal while making an itinerary for the rest of our road trip.
After lunch we drove to the county recorder's office so I could do research on my grandfather's landholdings in the area. It felt like I was looking for a needle in a haystack because most of the information I needed to locate family records in the county archives was buried in the fog of poor people's history. Record keeping was a tool used by landed, privileged people to keep track of their assets. Poor, uneducated black men like my grandfather did not rely on written documentation to establish ownership of land. Payment , followed by possession of a particular tract of land would have been sufficient proof of ownership for my grandfather. As long as the land continued to be worked and occupied by family members, others within the community would have recognized the family's ownership claim. Moreover, given the racial climate in east Texas 60 years ago, a black man trying to avail himself of the legal protections given to white property owners, might also incur the wrath of bigoted members of the larger community.
My father told me when my grandfather opened his first savings account at an east Texas bank, the landowner who employed him received complaints from other whites who said if my grandfather could save money, he was being overpaid. This is how Jim Crow operated--policing was done on both sides of the color line.
After spending a few hours leafing through old land title books, my two old guys suggested we take a break, it was nearly closing time anyway.. They were feeling nostalgic and wanted me to see the place where they spent a good part of their childhood,. New Summerfield.
NEW SUMMERFIELD
About an hour outside of Henderson, just off Interstate 79, is the city of New Summerfield. My father and uncle spent part of their childhood there. Tucked behind a wide swatch of piney woods, down a series of narrow dirt roads, are the bones of a once vibrant black community. As we drove around the remnants of this dying community my father and uncle brought the people and place alive, once again, through their stories.
My father and uncle said most of the blacks who lived in their community were landowners not sharecroppers like my grandfather. It was a community with a wonderful blend of occupations and professions. Teachers, farmers, masons, carpenters, mechanics and maids all lived in close proximity to one another. Unlike many modern, urban black neighborhoods, where working families have been supplanted by large numbers of female headed households, the rural communities of my father and uncle's generation were two parent households. The absence of a social safety net for the poor also made family and community ties paramount during hard times.
"If you got sick, you used home cures made from roots and plants. You didn't go to the doctor," my father said, " If a farmer got sick, each of his neighbors would donate a day's free labor until he got back on his feet."
I remember meeting a black mid-wife on a similar road-trip with my father nearly twenty years earlier. We had stopped by a house in Troupe, Texas to visit a family acquaintance when an elderly woman approached my father. She recognized him from the past (my father's nickname is "Spots" because he's covered in freckles). The woman told him she helped deliver one of my two younger uncles. She asked us to wait while she went back to her house because there was something she wanted him to see. When she returned a few minutes later, she was carrying two cast iron skillets my grandfather gave her as payment .
As we drove through New Summerfield, my father said, "We weren't poor, we was 'po'!"
"But so was everyone else, " added Uncle Bennie.
My father and uncle wanted to visit my great-grandmother's family farm so we headed to another section of New Summerfield. The Chandlers had once owned a 100 acre farm in the area but the land had been sold off, bit by bit, over the years. On the day we visited the property, we met a Hispanic teenager who lived with his family in a modest trailer on a half of acre of the old Chandler farm land. He said they were renters.
..
My father looking out at his grandmother's family farm..
Standing outside his grandmother's farm, my father recalled the happy times he spent there .
"When I was in school I was a member of the Future Farmers of America ( the black segregated version of the 4H Club). I got a $40 loan from the bank for an agricultural project. I planted an acre of sweet potatoes on my grandmother's farm but I got sick. I couldn't tend to my crop but it grew anyway. My father dug up the sweet potatoes and took them to town. He sold enough of them to pay back the loan. We stored the rest in a kiln made from corn stalks. Boy, we ate sweet potatoes for awhile," he said proudly.
We pressed on, cruising down back roads that took us past abandoned farm houses overgrown with trees and vegetation.
"Mr. such and such lived there," Uncle Bennie would say or "The such and such family lived there," my father would say, conjuring up phantoms from the past I couldn't see.
"Everyone knew everyone else around here. We were po' but we worked together and helped one another. if someone butchered a hog, we all got meat from it," my father said.
We crossed the interstate in search of the primary school my father and uncle attended. Unable to locate the school along the road familiar to them, my father pulled over to ask a local if he knew what happened to it. A disabled man was walking to his mailbox across from where our car was parked. My father climbed out of the car and walked over to speak to him. When he returned, he turned the car around and headed back down the road.
"The man said we passed it already. It's on the left side of the road going this direction," he said to my uncle.
"Brother, do you see how rundown things look around here?" my uncle asked
"Sure do," my father replied, "And that crippled guy I spoke too wasn't very friendly."
They both seemed troubled by the area's decline but said nothing more about it.
"There it is!" my father said excitedly.
He pulled into the driveway of their former school. It was now a church.
My father's and uncle's primary school has been converted into a church.
School had been an important part of life in New Summerfield's black community.
"We wouldn't be able to attend school until half-way through the semester most times because we'd have to help Daddy pick cotton," my father said, "But we went whenever we could."
The State of Texas employed three teachers and a principal at the segregated Pinehill School. Titles, however, had little to do with work assignments. The principal worked as an administrator and taught school. The math teacher also doubled as the school bus driver. The dedicated staff taught grades 1-8 using cast off equipment and books from area white schools. My uncle and father insisted that while the school building, books and equipment might have been second rate, the teachers gave them a decent education under the circumstances.
"The teachers were strict. They expected us to do our best and we did." my father said.
"I remember when school let out for the summer, we'd take off our shoes and walk around barefoot all summer long," he said, "We saved the wear and tear on them. Clothes were expensive so you'd patch them up and pass them on down."
My uncle said he had a reputation among their classmates for being a good fighter.
"I didn't care how big you were, if you started a fight with me, I was going to finish it." he said, "It got to a point where people knew to leave me alone."
In fact, it was my Uncle Bennie who did most of the fighting for his siblings when they were growing up.
"Bubba, here, was too sensitive, He didn't like to fight," my uncle said.
The "protectiveness" my uncle felt toward my father when they were children is still evident in the special bond they share even today. Their"bromance" runs deeps and, after spending days in their company, I found it surprisingly endearing.
The sun was about to set when we made a final stop at a local cemetery. A segregated cemetery where former and current residents of New Summerfield's black community are laid to rest. My father and uncle wondered among the graves, calling out the names of the deceased, remembering their exploits. My two old guys searched for their cousin Lily's grave but instead discovered their Uncle Arthur's and Aunt Ernestine's-- buried side by side. My two old guys paid their final respects to their family and friends ( a few of those moments are captured on the video clips below) then we drove back to the hotel.
My father and uncle talked about going back to New Summerfield to take more pictures and visit other places but we ran out of time. Now back home in Arizona, I think about the incredible journey we shared on our road trip to East Texas. Their stories and memories enabled me to rediscover a part of my history: rural Black Americana; a strong, resourceful, vibrant community of black people who, against the odds, laid a solid foundation for the future. They may have been invisible to the outside world but they weren't invisible to each other. The proof of their existence lives on in the memories of their children and grandchildren; and, in some small way, perhaps the memory of the people who read this article.