I’ve done a lot of soul searching since the pandemic when the world seemed to be turned upside down. In May 2021, my own neighborhood was invaded by The Black Lives Matter organization which was resisting police order. My neighbor was part of the police organization. It was disturbing and thought provoking. I spent time wondering what I have missed and how maybe my own perspective is distorted. Then I found an article written from an interview with Annette Gordon-Reed. Annette is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer. This article was about her book The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. I think she covers it quite nicely.
As a child Annette loved to read, more specifically biographies.
She read about George Washington Carver, George Washinton, Thomas Jefferson,
Dolley Madison, etc. Jefferson was the most interesting to her because he loved
to read, and he wrote the Declaration of Independence…but he was a slave owner.
Sally Hemings’ children were fathered by Jefferson. Annette says that though
they were enslaved people, bound by the institution of slavery, they were also
mothers, fathers, sisters, aunts, friends, etc. They had different personalities,
different ways of going through the world. Their opportunities were severely
circumscribed because of slavery but she wants to view them as individual human
beings.
She understands why people would not want to name something
after Jefferson, but “we have to grapple with him, because he embodies the
contradictions of this country, the good things and the bad things.” Members of
the founding generation of our nation must be a part of the conversation. The
statues and things named for them present an opportunity to talk about the way
this country was born. Annette believes that we can’t take out those parts of history
because they are less favorable; they make us who we are today.
Annette is optimistic about the young people today because
they have grown up thinking there is a problem, and it’s a problem we must deal
with. She believes that some don’t want to talk about history, and she thinks
young people are resisting that. She plans to write more books about the Black
progress that has been made.
In 1964, Annette Gordon-Reed was a child growing up in Conroe, Texas. She was part of the generation, just as I was, that lived during the integration of schools. It was intense because it was a big deal for a Black child to go to a white school. We lived during a time where we had separate waiting rooms at the doctor’s office and Blacks were seated in the balcony at theaters. We were part of breaking those barriers.
Today, we name things for ALL people who have made a difference in communities, state, and nation. There are no barriers. The walls have crumbled, and we must be aware how much we have grown as a nation. A new school in Conroe was recently named Annette Gordon-Reed Elementary School. Let’s celebrate our successes and stop moaning about the history which led us to this place today.
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