Searching for an Answer

1908-1926

This is a story about Sam, my poppa, and how I remembered himwho also was called by different names because of the roles heplayed in life. But his wife (our momma) called him Sam whilehis children called him Poppa. The blacks who knew him called himReverend Gathing. Most whites called him nigger or boy. And how Iremembered him—this includes some of the experiences he shared withme and with his other children also—was as a strong, intelligent manthat was a leader and a preacher in the community in which we livedand his leadership through his ministers of several churches spreadthroughout surrounding communities. However, under Jim Crow, hewas forced to play the subservient role of a boy.

His childhood was no different from those of other blacks innorthern Mississippi who worked the land as poor farmers—framedhouse, wood-burning stove, with no electricity, no indoor plumbing.

When the fire from the cast-iron heater burned out during thenight, the handmade quilts that Momma, her girls, and sometimesneighborhood women who lived up the hill or across the pasture hadassisted her in making from old tattered clothing from her family thathad been used and reused by older children and passed down to youngerchildren would keep the family warm. The tattered rags were thrown inthe recycle bin to be reused for these beautiful hands to make into quiltsto keep her family warm.

I was an early riser like Poppa and Momma, and as I was lying inour double bed that I shared with my two sisters Alberta and Shug underseveral layer of quilts, I would smell coffee. The strong coffee's aromatold me that Poppa and Momma were up. It was still dark outside. Nosounds in the early morning. The familiar sounds of the crickets andthe occasional hoots of the Mississippi owls were silent. It seemed thatbetween dawn and before sunrise there is complete silence, a stillnessand peace on the farm that could not be found anywhere else. Evenbefore the break of day, the ancient sound of the rooster, a friend tohumans, would awaken me and my family to the sound of its cock-a-doodle-doo—asound that has been around since the beginning of time.For millennium, before the clocks or radios woke up man and beast,the rooster would usually perch on a high place, protecting the henyard that he thinks belongs to him with his head lifted up to heaven.Its mouth wide open, it would sing cock-a-doodle-doo as though heis trying to wake the whole universe, that it's time to rise and shine.When the rooster crowed, every animal and man seemed to respond tothis sound. From the barnyard, the cows would start to moo, and thecalves would respond. The horses would neigh, the pigs would snort.The whole family knows it's time to rise and awaken from the night ofsleep and slumber.

Although the rooster hadn't crowed, Poppa and Momma were up,preparing for the long workday ahead. I eased out of bed between mytwo sisters, trying not to wake them and thinking that I could have a fewmoments alone with Poppa while my siblings are still sleeping. I knewtoo how Poppa loves to talk to his children, giving the dos and don'tsabout life, trying like most other parents to protect their children andtry to stop his children from going in the wrong direction by explainingto them some of his own life's experiences: "Save for a rainy day that'ssure to come. You will reap what you sow."

As I entered the living room, Poppa was sitting in his green reclinerreading his Bible. The living room felt warm and comfortable from thefire he has made in the cast-iron heater with the long pipe extendingthrough the ceiling to the chimney, emitting smoke outside from thewood that one of his boys had brought into the house that they had cutfrom the woodpile out back.

Poppa looked up from his Bible when I said, "Morning, Poppa."

Upon seeing me, his face became warm, glad to see me. "Morning,girl. You are up early, aren't you?" More a statement than a question, Ireplied, "Yes, sir."

Poppa said, "I was just thinking about my poppa. He was born in1882. Remember, he died in 1957. I dreamt about him last night."

"What was it about?" I asked.

"I've had this dream before. I see in this dream my birth mother iswalking away from my poppa as he's holding another woman's hand. Inever see my mother's face, only her back."

"Oh, Poppa, that's a sad dream," I said.

Poppa continued, "My poppa, John Wesley, was a small dark manwho seems to be always working from sunrise to sunset on his five-acrefarm and demanded the same from his five children. My onlysister Mary were the firstborn from my mother Cynthia, and I was thesecond child. You know I was six months old when she died. Roberta, Iwill tell you something about men. Most don't want to be alone. Don'twant to raise children without a woman. That's just the way most menare. Now when my mother died in 1908, she was a young woman, onlytwenty-four years old."

As Poppa was telling me this, a thin veil of sadness just for a momentcovered his face. If I hadn't been paying attention, I would have missedhis brief moment of sadness. Poppa continued. "During this time, itwasn't unusual for complications to occur during childbirth. Womengave birth at home with the presence of a midwife. I was told that's whathappened to my mother. Historically, many died in childbirth. Theirhusbands remarried. My mother didn't die right away from my birth,however she never did recover."

"No one can replace your mother."

"I grew up with two different stepmothers. My sister Mary and Icalled her Momma. Millie was her name, and we knew that she wasn'treally our mother, that she was that woman who slept with our poppa. Idon't remember much about her, though. After giving birth to two of myhalf brothers—Emerson in 1911 and Booker T. in 1912—she also diedyoung like my mother. My brother Emerson was a hard worker like ourpoppa, was a drinker of alcohol, but not a heavy drinker like our brotherBooker T. Booker T. was nothing but trouble. He fell into the bondageof alcohol. Couldn't stop drinking, drunk himself to death.

"My poppa's last wife was Etta, had a plump, full figure. Dippedsnuff loved flowers. Enjoyed working in her flower garden. A good cook,too. Momma Etta and my poppa had one child. A baby girl, a prettylittle girl, they named her Iola. I saw the way Momma Etta loved Iola thetender care she gave Iola. I never felt what I saw; I would watch MommaEtta whole her. Nurse her. This made me miss my own mother more.Roberta, I have never told anyone else this. This was so very hard forme I was only six or seven at the time. I used to go behind this big oaktree on my poppa's farm and sit on the ground under this old tree andcry. I had a deep aching longing in my spirit for my mother. Still do."

As Poppa continued to talk about his early life, I smelled the biscuitbaking that Momma had made from scratch and the homemade sausagesthat she had preserved for a time like this.

Poppa talked often about his life. He would tell his children howhe and our mother met and how they grew up together. His family wasclose to Beatrice's family. There was not a time when he didn't knowher, and he and our momma played together as children. "Your motherwas a pretty little girl. She would laugh a lot. Still do."

"So Momma have always been that way, Poppa?" I asked.

"Yeah. People don't change much, Roberta. It just seemed that shewas meant to be my wife. Consequently, when I finished my eighth-gradeeducation from the one-room school house for Negro in 1923 inMarshall County, Mississippi, I wrote to my uncle Luscher (my poppa'sbrother) and asked him if I could come to Madison, Illinois, to livewith him?

Poppa left Mississippi when he was eighteen years old to find workin Madison, Illinois. While living with his uncle Luscher, Poppa foundemployment in a steel mill. The young man saved every penny thathe could because he had made up his mind that he would return toMississippi when he had enough money saved to marry his childhoodsweetheart, Beatrice. December 22, 1929, in the state of Mississippi,Desoto County, Sam and Beatrice became husband and wife.

For a wedding gift, Poppa's father gave him a mule named "Rock"and a big red cow. Poppa bred this red cow, and over the years, heroffspring produced over seventy-five cattle and calves.

The World Our PoppaWas Born Into

Poppa, like other people of his era, has seen triumphs and tragedies.He has witnessed wars, revolutions, and social upheavals.

The year 1908 when our poppa was born, one hundred Negromen were lynched by the Ku Klux Klan, a legalized white terroristgroup of white men that had its beginnings in 1867. This was the mostruthless political terrorist group in American history.

World War I began in 1914 when Poppa was seven years old.Germans unleashed a horrific new agent of poison gas and attackeda British liner that went down in 1915 with 128 Americans aboard.Congress declared war in April 1917. By 1918, 4 million fresh U.S.troops were over there. The Depression came in 1929; Roosevelt tookoffice amid the Depression.

Hitler's Nazi Germany in 1930-1940 exterminated over 6 millionJews and no whites in the Holocaust gas chambers. Our poppa wastwenty-two at the beginning of this horror.

Poppa said that the news that had seeped through the BBC (BritishBroadcasting) on the horror of Adolf Hitler's Germany and the killingof millions and millions of Jews by putting them in gas chambers—andeven 15 million civilians were killed by this murderous and racist regime,including Germans of African descent—were forcibly sterilized.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower was the army general during theHitler regime from 1930-1940. When he and his army landed on thebeach of Normandy, this was the beginning of the end of Hitler's regime.The American soldiers had arrived.

It is written that when General Eisenhower first saw the heaps andheaps of charred skeleton remains, it was so overwhelmingly shockingthat the stench could be smelled at a great distance. The depth of it wasbeyond any earthly imagination. The general gave orders for picturesto be taken of the ghastly manner of death of these people. Eisenhowerwas being quoted as saying, "If I told the public, they wouldn't believeit. We have to take pictures; they have to see for themselves."

Poppa said that tension and fear gripped his stomach when he sawthese horrible shocking heaps of skeleton images in the newspaper. Hefeared the horror would come upon them and that the lynching of ourpeople may not be the end for us. Hitler's gas chambers maybe next.We feared copycats of the gas chambers would be used by the KKK.

"I have seen charred bodies," Poppa continued. "Sometimes afterlynching, the KKK would burn their victim's bodies." He probablycouldn't imagine anything worse until now. Poppa saw a direct linkbetween lynching and the gas chamber—they both were fueled byhatred. Poppa reasoned, "If a white man can do these horrible crimesagainst a people that have white skin and straight silky hair like himself,what on earth is he capable of doing to a man he thinks is subhuman?"

Hitler writes in Mein Kampf: "It is criminal lunacy to keep ondrilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyerout of him, while millions of member of the highest culture—racemust remain in entirely unworthy position; that it is a sin against thewill of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundredsand hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the presentproletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained forintellectual profession. For this is training exactly like that of a poodle."

At the war's end in 1941, Hitler committed suicide, leaving a massof rubble and millions upon millions dead, maimed, homeless, andwithout food or shelter.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

In August 1945, the United States dropped bombs on Hiroshimaand Nagasaki.

The tragedies of living under the dark cloud of fear of breakingone of the Jim Crow laws included being aware of it all the time thatblacks had no right and that a white had to be respected, including thewhite's women and children. Poppa learned early that whites expectedand demanded total obedience from Negroes as though the Negroeswere small children.

Our poppa's oldest teenage son was raped by some members of theKu Klux Klan (more about this in a later chapter).

Triumphs

As Poppa continued to grow and develop, taking an active role inthe southern Baptist Convention, they would meet in different Americancities, like Chicago, St. Louis, even as far west as California. Thisopened a door for our poppa craving for travel, perhaps to flee fromthe bondage of Jim Crow, although for just a little while. Maybe hefelt as though he was on vacation before returning back to the physicaland mental restraints that Mississippi held for their Negro citizens andhis family and his farm. Gradually through his leadership, he becamein 1950 the moderator of Sardis East Baptist Congress. As moderator,Poppa held the gavel, seeking ways to solve internal disputes thesechurches encountered.

Before 1954, there were no public schools for blacks in Mississippithat went beyond the eighth grade. Poppa played a major role in thebuilding of black schools and churches by organizing committees andsupport group through his pastoral platform, appealing to large groupsof people for financial support.

In 1952, he bought his own hundred and fifty acres of farmland innorthern Mississippi. This blessing freed him from leasing land fromsometimes racist whites.

In the 1930s, Poppa and Momma were forced to move several timesas their young family grew. Sometimes these leases would last for fouryears. Often as soon as the lease was up, our poppa wouldn't renewhis lease because the whites would change what was written on thelease. White men had total control of the laws with the controllingpower to change laws that enforced their desires and wishes—laws thatwere against the interest of the blacks. These racist men belong to the"white man only" club. Blacks, when leasing their land, were forcedto shop in the landowner's store. And in these stores, the merchandise,food, clothing, etc., had high markup. These store owners used abusivebusiness practices. Many tenants never got out of debt. Blacks knewwhites were cheating them, and the whites knew that they knew.However, whites knew that there was nothing the black could do aboutit because there were no laws that would protect them. Subsequently,Poppa and Momma had to tolerate racist landowners to lease their land.

These conditions placed in Poppa a far-reaching in sight that nomatter what, by any means necessary, he had to own his own land.Poppa was from a family of landowners. No way could he and his familycontinue to live under these injustices. Saving money for that great dayof landowner ship became his top priority.

Reconstruction

Poppa told his children that he was standing on the shoulder,proverbially speaking, of two generations of landowners. Hisgrandpa Bill Gathing, born in 1828 into slavery, bought landduring the Reconstruction. His own poppa bought five acres of land inthe early 1900s in Byhalia, Mississippi.

Poppa said that after the four bloody long years of civil war wasover, there was a period what was known as the Reconstruction (18651877).President Abraham Lincoln tried making amends to some of thehorrible effects of hundreds of years of slavery, even giving ex-slavesland in South Carolina. Blacks all through the South started buying landleft and right. This made the Southern white very nervous, especiallyhere in Mississippi.

"Girl," Poppa continued, "whites knew the power in landownership,wars are fought over land. During this time, Negro didn't have the rightto vote. Roberta, it would be almost a hundred years after the civil war,in 1965, when the voting rights act was passed during the Johnsonadministration before the blacks had that right."

"You must be kidding! That long?" I stated in amazement.

"That's true. It's in the books. You can read about it."

Consequently, whites started passing laws that would increase theblack's land taxes beyond what they could possible pay. The clock isturned back after Reconstruction. All rights for blacks were undonethrough one means or another. And economic progress was thwarted.Life grew increasingly more difficult in the South. Subsequently, manyblacks started losing their land, especially here in the Mississippi.

These men of color knew where their hope was sealed. It had tobe in God, for they had experienced disappointment, counterfeit hopebefore and during the Reconstruction in 1867-77. W. E. B. DuBois callthem the "mystic years." Ten years of freedom before the white existingpower structure changed their minds and reversed the freedom theyhad given the Negroes after the civil war. For ten years, the UnitedStates establishment accepted and fulfilled the constitution of the UnitedStates. Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1787, "We hold these truths to beself—evident, that all men are created equal."