We Need to Learn More About Our Colorful Past
The New York Times
Maurice A. Barboza and Gary B. Nash
July 31, 2004
Back in 1925, American society tended not to advise young white males about the consequences of intimacy with the black maid. Even if the 22-year-old Strom Thurmond considered himself a father, the standards of the time did not require him to give the daughter born of that intimacy any love, support or acceptance. He did, however, irretrievably give her his bloodline.
Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the offspring of Mr. Thurmond and his family’s black maid, 16-year-old Carrie Butler, recently announced that she intended to join the Daughters of the American Revolution based on her Thurmond bloodline. Reared apart from her father, Ms. Washington-Williams did not have the same privileges as Mr. Thurmond’s white children during his life, yet she is seeking the right to some of the privileges of her lineage.
She is not the first to do so. Ms. Washington-Williams said she was motivated by the battle of Lena Santos Ferguson to join a Washington chapter of the organization and by Ms. Ferguson’s quest to honor black soldiers. Ms. Ferguson’s grandmother, a black Virginia woman, had married a white man from Maine whose ancestor, Jonah Gay, was a patriot. In the 1980’s, Ms. Ferguson fought a four-year legal battle for full membership and to enter her local chapter. It wasn’t until the organization was faced with the potential loss of its tax-exempt status in Washington that she was permitted to join.
I have no love for snobbish organizations like the DAR, but aren’t Barboza and Nash demanding too much? Do they want the DAR to track down every darker than average soldier in the Continental Army? Every white soldier with some black ancestry? They argue for a definition of “black” that is TOO BROAD. What is the standard that defines a “black,” anyway? There is no agreement on it and no logical criteria. The search for more “glory” to pad the black racial resume encourages the “one drop” myth because there are never enough blacks to satisfy the psychological need. The temptation is to make more of them via extreme hypodescent.
It never ceases to amaze me how ignorance can see only one side of things it fears. If Padpowell is trying to hide his “one drop” of
black blood, no one really cares today, except his own conscience.
I don’t think there’s a single black person that wants to claim him
as their own or add him proudly to “our” family tree. However, had
he been alive among the population of 1776, every wild eyed, greedy
white slave holder would have coveted that “one drop” of black blood
because it would have justified Padpowell’s enslavement. And it’s
not as if every white person is competing with a black one to burn
up microfilm trying to trace their roots so they can claim their
drop of black blood and their ancestor’s stake in giving this nation
its principles. White people made America’s rules: if any human
being had a drop of black blood in 1776 or 1876, that person was
black in America and subject to chattel slavery, or second class
citizenship, for his or her entire life on earth and for eternity
thereafter in the unmarked, untended, and segregated grave to which
they were committed. That person would have been barred, or
hindered by law and custom, from buying property or creating a
destiny for their own children and passing on the wealth they
accumulated in a lifetime to the next generation. But today,
Padpowell, like the DAR, wants to make them white and deny them the
chance to tell their story of struggle and the deprivation of
liberty and justice that molded their descendants and promoted the
concepts of the Declaration of Independence we all enjoy today.
Padpowell, you could have figured this out for yourself, if only you
had given it just a bit more thought. Maurice Barboza and Gary Nash
are absolutely correct. America needs to know the struggle of mixed-
race people – after-all nobody is pure black. Why should an
enslaved person, or one treated like a slave their entire life, be
relegated to obscurity when it comes time to honor the struggle they
waged and is now comprehended as something deserving of reverence.
Now, that’s cruelty, ignorance, selfishness, and evil. It’s time to
build a memorial to those black patriots, no matter how many, or how
few, drops of African blood that may have run through their veins.
Padpowell, be a credit to your race, whatever it may be. In the
current condition of your mind, no one wants to claim you. And if
you should discover when those black patriots receive the accolades
they deserve that one of them was your ancestor, keep your mouth
shut. Don’t spoil it for the rest of us.
Maurice A. Barboza
cascade@comcast.net
1/16/2005 10:18