Michael Jackson died yesterday. I wish I could say this came as a shock. Though I didn’t know anything about his health or recent condition, somehow I just found myself unsurprised. And profoundly sad.

In deciding to write this, I went through many thoughts on why I feel able to be sad about Michael’s death and to even say positive things about him when I would not extend the same charity to other flawed artists. For example, when Ike Turner died I was unwilling to allow his talent to overshadow my feelings about his history as an abuser. And if R. Kelly were to die today I would think it was a shame, but I would not mourn. In the former case I don’t have much opinion on the talent of the individual; in the latter, I do feel that the man has a lot of talent, but I can’t separate that from the disgust I feel at his sexual adventures with underage girls.

So why don’t I feel the same about Michael?

I can’t give you a good answer. Perhaps because I feel like, whatever Michael is alleged to have done, I can see how the damage done to him in life could have led to it. Doesn’t excuse it, certainly. But it allows me to personally look past it to the good things about him: his music.

The first music video I ever saw was Thriller and I was around 3 years old. My aunt was excited to have me watch it, my mother thought it was too scary for me. But in the end my aunt won and I tried to match those dance moves all night. Michael’s music has been in my ear since before I was born. And before I was five I could sing all the lyrics from every song on Thriller and a bunch from his Jackson 5 days, too.

I was too young at the time to understand the implications behind Michael being the first black artist on MTV. As an adult I still feel a sense of incredulity when I think about that. In the 80s there was still a need for someone’s talent to transcend their race. But Michael did and music (and television) is all the better for it.

The first record I bought with my own money was Bad. Dangerous and HIStory were the first CDs I ripped to MP3. I know that in my music-listening life there has rarely been a month that’s gone by without my listening to some of his music. It seemed like everything he set himself to do he did really well. The singing, the dancing, even the acting.

The videos! Oh goddess, the man pioneered music videos as cinema. Thriller did us all in, but as I sit here searching YouTube I’m reminded of so many more. Remember the Time, Black or White, Smooth Criminal (the long cut), Bad, Jam…

I saw him in concert once when he was touring after Bad came out. It was… amazing. He was a machine. Dancing, singing, never stopping for hours. He gave the crowd everything and then he went on to do it every night for everyone else. It increased my love for him ten-fold.

I think I mourned the MJ I adored many years ago. I had no expectation that he’d make a satisfactory comeback, though I would have been happy to be surprised. It all ended sometime after HIStory for me. Invincible didn’t impress, Blood on the Dance Floor didn’t even register. I felt bad for that. But Michael changed, and not in the way he was able to change before to keep up and transcend.

Still, today I am sad. Because the image of him I have in my head is that amazing entrance to the stage for the Dangerous tour. He exploded out of the stage in a spray of fireworks and then just stood there, silent and still, for a full five minutes, with the bearing of a god. He knew he was good. He knew that, in those moments, he was a rock god. And then the music would start, and he would move, and the concert began, and everything else melted away.

Rest in Peace, Michael Jackson. You and James Brown can spend eternity trading moves. Maybe you’ll teach him to moonwalk.

Michael Jackson: Speak A Good Word -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

Today is Octavia E. Butler’s birthday.  If she were still alive, she’d be 62 and awesome.  She wrote science fiction and fantasy, and one of her aims was to change the world with it.  I think she did.  I think she still does.

I was privileged to be Octavia’s friend, to know her and hang with her during the last years of her life.  I went shopping with her, ate at (vegetarian) restaurants with her, attended stage performances with her, sat on author panels with her.  I got me a lot of Octavia E., though of course not enough to make up for her being gone now.

Octavia was pure-D gorgeous, beautiful in every way, inside and out.  “No, I wasn’t,” I can hear her saying in my head.  “You didn’t know!”  But I did know, and so did so many other people.   At the memorial service held for her in 2006, another science fiction author who had met her and been in her presence for only one short hour was in tears as he spoke about how deeply she had affected him.  Another man who knew her in connection with her video interviews there at the Science Fiction Museum walked up to the podium, looked out at the people gathered together, said “Thank you” in a trembling voice, and walked unsteadily back to his seat.

People often ask me how Octavia influenced me as a writer.  I tell them that aesthetically I’m much closer to Samuel R. Delany when it comes to what I try to do.  But Octavia did affect me in two ways.  First, she emphasized how important it is for writers to tell the truth.  To find it, figure it out, dig for it if you have to, climb for it, fly for it.  Go where it is and get it and bring it back whole for your readers.  Second, she gave me money.  Over $1000.  And if you don’t think that has something to do with what I write and what I’ve been able to get written, you are not an author or any kind of artist yourself.  And if you are an artist or author of  some kind, you understand the connection intimately.

At Octavia’s memorial service in Seattle in 2006, I lit a candle in her name and poured a libation for her spirit, as is traditional in my spiritual practice.  I brought out the Christmas cards she’d sent me: a mother tiger and two cubs in the snow; Mount Rainier towering above the clouds, just the way she did.  I spoke about her early membership in the Carl Brandon Society, a nonprofit organization that supports increased representation of people of color in the fantastic genres.  And I repeated her directive, what she’d told me about her membership: “Use me,” Octavia had said.  “Use my name.”

Soon after the memorial service,  some of the many people who she had affected put together a scholarship fund in her name and gave the fund’s administration to the Carl Brandon Society.  The Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund has just sent off its fifth full payment for a student of color to attend a Clarion or Clarion West Writers Workshop.  Five writers of color have been able to attend Clarion or Clarion West, the workshops where Octavia got her start as a professional science fiction author and where she taught several times.  She’s having an influence.  She’s changing the world, and I’m using her name, exactly the way she wanted me to.

If you loved Octavia, if you still love her, no matter how brief or distant your encounters with her, no matter if you knew her, rode the bus with her once, or only (”only!”) read her work, celebrate the passing of her birthday today with a smile of thanks.  And if you’re able to donate to her scholarship fund, either by sponsoring Tempest in the Clarion West Write-a-thon so that part of your contribution goes to Clarion West and part to the fund, or by donating directly via the Carl Brandon Society’s website at www.carlbrandon.org, well, so much the better.

If you haven’t read any Octavia E. Butler yet, now’s a good time to start.  Though she’s best remembered for her novels, I adore her short story collection, Bloodchild.  If you’d really prefer a novel, I recommend you start with the last one she finished.  That’s Fledgling.

Let me know what you think.

OEB Day! -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

Note from nojojojo: One of the reasons I write for ABW is to get in touch with my inner angry black woman. This is because I’m not very angry outwardly — having grown up mostly in the South and being naturally mild-mannered, it takes a lot to flip my switches. I’m more inclined to do the Southern thing of smiling in the face of someone who’s pissed me off, and wish them a pleasant day even though I really mean, “Go to hell.” (There’s an art to this; I am still but a student.)

Still, anger can be healthy and effective, and I regard its other expressions as art too. So I’ve been studying other angry black women in history and the present, and the ways in which their anger has gotten things done. From time to time I’ll share my study of these Original ABWs — these sistas who’ve wielded their fury like a surgeon’s scalpel or swung it harder than John Henry’s hammer, and caused society to change as a result. So this is the first of a series.

Pirate Jenny – Nina Simone

Still gives me chills. She means every word of it, too — you can hear that in her voice. The first time I listened to it, I thought, If I was white, I would sleep with one eye open. For the rest. Of. My. Life. Because it’s blatantly obvious from the barely-contained rage in this song that Simone is not singing about pirates, even though this song has relatively benign origins in the German musical The Threepenny Opera. Simone’s version has a whole other meaning when one considers the time in which she first sang it, as part of a series of concerts at Carnegie Hall in 1964. The year before, activist Medgar Evers had been assassinated and four little black girls were murdered in a terrorist bombing. Nina, like most black people of the time, was pissed off. In this context the metaphors of the song become clear: the narrator is not merely a pirate spy; she’s a black Everywoman, oppressed and resentful and ready to strike back against her oppressors. “The black freighter” is the revolution to come — and the revolution Simone has in mind will not be a bloodless one, oh no. “I ain’t ’bout to be non-violent, honey!” she says in one recorded concert — and the whole audience laughs and claps with her.

This was not the first time Simone had sung “protest music”, note. She was well known as a supporter of the Civil Rights Movement; at concerts she did shout-outs to the Freedom Riders, and she hung out with fellow protest artists like Lorraine Hansberry, the playwright of “A Raisin in the Sun”. Her songs were part of the inspirational canon for the SNCC and other young activists of the time. Music was as much a part of the Civil Rights Movement as marches and sit-ins; this much everybody knows. But Simone’s music was a whole other thing from the vague goals of gospel hymns like “We Shall Overcome.” Her message was a much more specific one: we shall kick your ass. In the same year as “Pirate Jenny,” Simone debuted her other big protest song, “Mississippi Goddamn”, in response to the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. “Mississippi Goddamn” is better known, in part because it got more attention — it was boycotted by radio stations all over the South ostensibly because of the profanity in its title, though the real reason was clear. In her autobiography Simone notes that one Southern dealer shipped back a whole crate of the singles with each copy snapped in half. (She thought this was hilarious.)

But what amazes me is that “Pirate Jenny”, a much more dangerous song, got no reaction. This woman is seriously advocating, albeit in metaphor, the wholesale slaughter of white people. That was the kind of thing that could get a black person lynched in those days — and yeah, black women got lynched too, usually with rape or some other form of sexual assault tossed in. The thing that saved her, I think, is that Simone didn’t perform the song often; she supposedly said that it took too much out of her, at one point joking that she had to recover for seven years after singing it. I know how hard it is to channel that much anger; I can totally imagine she might have needed some time afterwards to recharge. But I can’t help wondering if, in addition to recharge time, she was also motivated by a sense of self-preservation — if not her own, then fear for her daughter Lisa, a baby at the time.

Yet in this song Simone effectively captures the simmering rage of black America at that time, and she does it so powerfully that forty years later, we can understand what it was like to be there. We cannot help empathizing with the song’s narrator, nor sharing — maybe with a smidge of guilt, maybe not — her schadenfreude as the tables are turned on the oppressors. We, or at least I, hear this song and realize just how incredibly stupid it was for America to resist granting civil rights to blacks for as long as it did, because they were sitting on a fucking powder keg. It shifts my perspective on the events of the time from the benign, white-centered version taught to me in school; Kennedy was no visionary. He did nothing particularly brave. He was just yielding to the inevitable, hopefully before his country was torn to pieces by the kind of rage that Simone and millions of other blacks felt.

So I give props to you, Nina, for helping me understand.

Original ABWs: Nina Simone -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

To all the awesome mothers of color raising children of color (and every other mother, too!). I don’t celebrate Mother’s Day much since my mom died. But every now and then I do something to commemorate it.

This story is amongst those things. It is, for those of you keeping track, SF, with people of color, and, if I may say so myself, very good. And it’s about mothers and daughters and loss; three things I contemplate every year around this time.

Happy Mother’s Day -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

But listen, there’s still a lot to be done.

First and foremost, it should be stated that, although come January we will have a Black president, that does not mean that racism is “over”.  That having a black president does not end the dialogue we have on this blog, on other blogs, and in meatspace about race, prejudice, and the challenges people of color face in this country and the world.  Obama’s win only proves that he specifically had what it took to win this election.  It wasn’t that any black person could have won, just as not any random woman could have won.  McCain made the mistake of thinking that; of looking at people like labels.

So there’s still a lot of anti-racist work to be done.  Racism still needs to be eliminated.  And while I’m hopeful that having a black president is one major step in that direction, it can also cause a setback as people throw “But we have a black president!” in our faces every time we bring up the deep-seated problems in this country.  We can’t let that happen.

Another important thing to remember is that Obama is not perfect and he’s not supernatural.  While we can rejoice in his presidency, we can’t cut him any slack.  And I think we must be willing, as activists and as non-activists, to work hard for change.  He said as much in his speech last night, so let’s hold him to his word.  More than ever we need to hold a president to his word this time around.

Am I wrong to feel, to hope, that doing so will be easier?  That in 4 years I’m going to feel better about my country than I do today?  Obama has never shared all of my values, but I am overwhelmed right now with a good feeling.

It’s Morning In America -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

First thing, I want to thank all of the guest bloggers and essayists who contributed to ABW last month. Your contributions were everything I hoped for and more — you’re all amazing and talented folks.

On the guest blogger front, I’m happy to announce that Karynthia will be joining us as a regular political blogger. She’ll usually post on Mondays, though if this election continues to bring the crazy, you might see her even more. Nora will remain a contributor as well.

Due to the awesomeness of the author essays, I am going to make them a regular feature. I might use different themes each month or stick with the history thing, I’m not sure yet. Suggestions are welcome.

I must say, though last month was awesome, was also one of the busiest on this blog in a long time. I loved it, but I am ready for a break. So here are some links to tide you over this weekend:

If you’re interested in more discussion, debate, and musings from creators (not just of fiction, but of art, comics, television, movies, etc.) then I highly suggest you look over the Race Around the Net list compiled by digital_femme on LJ. It’s an excellent place to start if you’re looking to read and learn more.

You may have noticed links to Black News Junkie on some posts. BNJ is sort of like Digg for black blogs. It’s a good place to see what folks on blogs are talking about, you can vote on interesting stories, and you can submit your own blog posts to it. Right now it only drives a bit of traffic, but as more people use it, it will benefit both bloggers and readers more. Go make an account!

For those of you interested in children’s literature written by and about black folks, check out the festivities over at The Brown Bookshelf. Every day in February they highlighted an author or illustrator and there is a lot of good stuff over there.

A few weeks ago I got an email about TheRoot.com, a new website headed by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. It’s a bit like a Huffington Post, but with African-American concerns at the fore. It’s also more news magazine-like with the various bloggers only being one component. So far I find it interesting and entertaining in equal measure.

Besides the blogs and news, there’s also a section where you can start your genealogical search and get your DNA tested to see where your origins lie. Now I am aware that this process isn’t perfect, but I am rather interested to see if there’s something in my background I’m not aware of or if I can find out from what region of Africa some of my ancestors hailed from. Still, until I have a few hundred dollars lying around doing nothing, I will just have to wait.

Last and least, here’s the stupidest Black History Month thing I came across on the Internets:

Walgreens Sort of Celebrates Black History Month

Is this a cotton-picking joke? We’ll never know. What crazy stuff did you all find/hear about?

All good things must come to an end -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

Today’s Guest Essay is by Andrea Hairston

For many years I have taught various courses in 20th century Black Theatre, focusing on how 19th century blackface minstrelsy and its 20th century progeny served as a catalyst for many black theatre and film artists. In our discussions of black performers who donned the minstrel masks, many students couldn’t understand why any self-respecting African American would act in a coon show or why Native Americans acted in Wild West Shows. Despite our (obvious) complicity in any number of contemporary atrocities, students insisted they would never have done minstrelsy or “stood around watching horrible things going down on stage and off.”

Although I persuade them of the complex choices facing 19th and early 20th century performers, I realized that to a degree, I secretly shared my students’ smug, superior attitude. Shocked by my own self-righteous judgment, I determined to write about characters who we, given the luxury of historical distance, might dismiss or hold in contempt. On sabbatical, I researched blackface, hoodoo, vaudeville, and early film for a novel and a course I now teach on minstrelsy from Daddy Rice to Big Momma’s House.

I finally have a draft of the novel, Redwood and Wildfire! I decided to embody people who chose to act in coon shows, Wild West Shows, and early blackface comic films. I wanted to discover their humanity and increase my own.

One of the major characters in my novel was inspired by my mother’s aunt who was born in 1889 and who was by all accounts a fierce conjure woman. I witnessed her personal power as a child. She was tireless and fearless. “I ain’t scared of nothing!” she said once before jumping on the triple-dipper, mountain rollercoaster in Pittsburgh to inspire great grandchildren who were too scared to ride. With minimal formal education, she was a teacher, union organizer, rabble-rouser. Age didn’t slow her down. She started a Head Start program at seventy-five and received a ten-year plaque at eighty-five for exemplary service.

I have always had enormous respect for my great aunt. She inspired and challenged me to be an engaged citizen, a fearless artist, and a free woman. She told me wild tales of her exploits from the turn of the century. Her stories were far from the standard hoodoo/voodoo tales! So I used her to create the character of a conjure woman/performer in theatre and film at the turn of the twentieth century—Redwood Phipps.

My father’s family, the Hairstons, is a prominent multi-ethnic American clan with books chronicling the family tree and large reunions. I have always shied away from what I considered circus get-togethers. Growing up, too many of the relatives on this side of my family wished to claim any identity other than one with an African ancestry, talking ‘bout Indian this and Irish that. Coming of age in the 60s, I glibly attributed the Hairston’s (multi-cultural) family myths to denial and self-hatred. It seemed to me that they were all too happy to be Cherokee or English, but screamed “I ain’t African!” when connections to that “dark continent” were mentioned.

In my righteous anger and black pride, I simplified what was going on.

I now wish I’d paid more attention to the tall tales the old folks told. I did remember stories from my grandparents (who were both very fair) about the trials and tribulations of the black, Native American, and white folk who wove a good life in the midst of turbulent and destructive times. I used these stories to help fashion my second major character who has a multi-ethnic background and did early Westerns—Aidan Wildfire.

Through research and also through teaching the class on minstrelsy and film several times, I developed a deep appreciation for the richness, complexity, and brilliance of people coming up from Georgia and making a life on stage and screen in turn of the century Chicago. Here was a treasure trove of stories that haven’t been told—people whose lives we often cannot imagine. Aida Overton Walker, a major African American actress, writing in the Indianapolis Freeman in 1906, deplored the fact that the general public didn’t have the faintest idea about the lives of colored performers. She also lamented that during her ten years of performing in and producing plays, there had “never been even the remotest suspicion of a love story.”

So Redwood and Wildfire is a romance, exploring the lives of “colored” performers from Walker’s time.

I also had a great time delving deeper into hoodoo. Hoodoo is an African American “magical” practice encompassing everything from herbal medicine used to cure physical and psychic ailments to the creation of fetish bags for attracting lovers or punishing enemies. The power of hoodoo is the power of a community that believes in its capacities to heal and determine the course of today and tomorrow. My Georgia hoodoos are word wizards casting a spell with story, singers and dancers shaking reality with their hips, conjurers jazzing up our minds and leaving troublesome gods to the Baptists and Vodou practitioners. Still, many folks condemned hoodoo as backward superstition—a belief system we needed to let go of in order to be acceptable to a modern society.

At the core of Redwood and Wildfire are brilliant, powerful characters whose options are limited by real-life Injun and coon shows. We don’t live in a meritocracy now and we certainly didn’t have one in 1910. It’s a grand myth, a grand fiction, but indeed the American Dream of social mobility is still a dream, not a reality [PDF].

People with power, talent, and beauty don’t necessarily get wealth, success, and happiness. The tragedies that befall us are not simply caused by the flaws in our characters. Power and talent can be a torment in a system stacked against you. People can shun the magical ones, be jealous or frightened of brilliance. Social forces can thwart even the strongest will and structural reality can crush individual imagination and agency.

In all of my stories, History and the Future are always manifest in the now, in the Present. As a writer, I ask, even if folk are talented, powerful, and beautiful, what do they need in order to come through a treacherous world, whole and creative?

How can we conjure the wondrous world we believe in?

This is the struggle I love to write about.

Indeed, this is the struggle I live.

Photo Credit: Micala Sidore

“How can we conjure the wondrous world we believe in?” -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

Today’s Guest Essay is by Charles Saunders

History influenced my writing from the get-go. In a way, fantasy fiction offers a different perspective on history – the perspective of mythology and folklore. It’s like looking at history through a kaleidoscope. Each turn of the tube yields a different image. And each turn of a writer’s imagination creates a different history.

Part of my motivation for writing the Imaro novels and other African-oriented fantasy stories was to make a new kaleidoscope for African history, because the one that existed at the time was flawed. The African-history perspective in fantasy and sword-and-sorcery fiction was either distorted or missing altogether. What I wanted to do was to reclaim that history, and bring what was lost or hidden back to light.

Three outstanding books on African history formed the foundation for the setting of the Imaro novels: The Lost Cities of Africa by Basil Davidson, The World and Africa by W.E.B. Du Bois, and Cheikh Anta Diop’s The African Origin of Civilization. Interestingly, Davidson was a white British scholar, Du Bois was African American and Diop was Senegalese. Yet despite the differences in their backgrounds, their works are remarkably similar.

Together, those books illuminate the African history that was hidden or destroyed in an attempt to foster the illusion that Africans had no history before their continent was colonized by Europeans. The fantasy fiction of the time when I conceived Imaro and his setting (that would be the early 1970s) replicated that illusion.

I used real history to change fantasy history – a reversal of the usual mode, in which fantasy history is a transmutation of real history. Were it not for the historical sources provided by the books of Du Bois, Davidson and Diop – along with many others that line the shelves of university libraries – I probably never would have started writing at all.

“Each turn of a writer’s imagination creates a different history” -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

This February I plan to celebrate the month in three ways.

First, I’ll continue the project I started last year and put up more of my own family history. I’m going to contact some of my mother’s college friends and ask them to write a little something about her. And I’ll keep reaching back into the dark parts of history where my train-robbing ancestor’s antics still lurk.

Next, I plan to feature black authors and their books. I mainly know about science fiction and fantasy authors, so I welcome any suggestions of mainstream, fantasy, mystery, and non-fiction authors you’d like to see up on the blog.

Last, I want to invite some guest bloggers to contribute a post or two over the month. I’d really love to get some international black bloggers in for that. Again, if you have suggestions on who might be interesting, say so in the comments. (You can mention yourself, if you like :) )

I think that should fill up 29 days quite nicely, don’t you?

Oh that black history! -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

Still, it was an extremely moving trip for me. I stood on the land my ancestors walked and lived on. I stood in the church where they worshiped. I stood on the ground they were buried under. I stood inside my own history.

My cousin John Finley told us family stories during our tour of the area and one in particular stuck with me. The story of how the Larkin boys–my great-great grandfather and his brothers–came to own land in Fourth Creek. I recently called to ask that he tell me the story again so I could get it straight. I thought my computer was recording the conversation, but, alas, it betrayed me. Good thing I was taking notes.

The three Larkin brothers that started our branch of the family were Charles, Mose (or Moses), and Sump (or Sumpter) Larkin. They were from the Carolinas and of Irish descent. They came down to Alabama in order to buy some land and establish themselves. On the way down from the Carolinas they ‘picked up some wives’; at least one of the wives was mulatto. When they got to Alabama, the boys discovered that they would need more money in order to buy the land they wanted. So they went to Texas (sans wives) to make some money. Apparently, the opportunities in Texas were not as lucrative as they believed. According to legend, they conceived and pulled off a train heist. The proceeds were enough that they were able to go back to Alabama and buy land in Fourth Creek.

There was some sort of strife among the brothers regarding race. Apparently Charles and Sump objected to Mose having relations with women that were considered too dark. It isn’t clear if the Larkin brothers were fully ‘white’ themselves or were somewhat mixed. But at least one of them definitely wasn’t having any really dark-skinned folks in his family. Thus, there are now two Larkin graveyards in Fourth Creek, about a mile apart. One referred to as the ‘white’ cemetery and one referred to as the ‘black’ cemetery.

Mose was Julia Larkin Finley’s father. He was more tolerant of darker-skinned folks because Julia’s husband, Dallas, wasn’t light-skinned. There are no stories saying that Mose objected to this marriage. However, his brother Charles wasn’t so tolerant. His son, Archie, is my grandmother Ree’s father. He loved my great-grandmother, Kate, so the story goes. But the family would not allow him to marry her because she was too dark.

One of the things I’ve always heard about the Larkins is that they were very keen to keep their light skin. Then as now, light skin was a status symbol. Light-skinned folks were seen as better or more white–or, at least, they thought they were. Because of this, there were quite a few marriages between too close of kin (by our standards).

The Larkins did have a modicum of influence in Fourth Creek because they were land owners and there were a lot of them. They were one of four interconnected families in that area; the Finleys, the Tidmores, and the Hicks were the others.

Julia married a Hicks and a Finley. My grandmother married a Tidmore (Derry) and so did her aunt Ida (Sam). Ree and Ida were close in age – really like sisters since they were only a few years apart. My grandfather, Derry, was the youngest of 8 or 10, I think, and just a few scant years older than Sam, who was his nephew. So my grandmother’s aunt married my grandfather’s nephew.

Yeah, it gives me a headache, too.

I visited the cemeteries my ancestors were buried in. In one (which I was told is the ‘white’ cemetery, but I think whoever told me that was confused) Mose is buried along with Julia, Dallas, their daughter Eliza, and, oddly, Archie Larkin. As I said, it was an incredibly moving experience.

Before the reunion, my cousin Richard and great-aunt Peggy also told me stories about the Larkins.

On the Larkin side are very colorful characters.
The Larkins were Irish.
And I remember asking Aint Katie
sometime
about my grandmother Julia
and I said
“Who in Gramma’s family was black?”
And she said
“Nobody”

There were no black part of the family.
Gramma Julia’s mother was
Rose Larkin
she had about three sisters
one was named Jane.
Jane married
Sump Larkin
Rose married
Mose Larkin.
And that was gramma Julia’s
mother and father
Mose and Rose.
And then Sump married Jane.
Also great-grandmother Rose
had a brother named
George
and they were Carpenters
before they married the Larkins.
Their mother’s name
I think her name was
Lucy Carpenter.
I don’t know her husband’s name.
But to the best of my recollection
and everything that I’ve uncovered
they were all white
Irish white.
They told me the story
that when Sump and Jane
had their first child
they had to lock Sump
out of the house
because they had said
the child would be black.
Jane was darker than her sisters,
but she still had straight hair
she just had an olive complexion.
And Sump had made the statement
at the time
that if he thought
he had an ounce of
black blood in him
he would cut it out.
Of course
the baby came out white.

Yeah they wanted to keep
that side of the family
high-yellow.
That’s why a lotta
mental problems
on that side of the family.
Because they married
each other
first cousins
and that kinda stuff.
So it was a lotta
mental problems
in the family
because their inter-family marriage
and havin’ babies by
too close of a relative.
So it was just a messed up situation.

All the higher yellow blacks
treated the darker color blacks
you know
like inferior
because they thought they were better.
They thought just because of
the color of their skin
they took the white man’s attitude.
And they wouldn’t
socialize with ‘em,
didn’t hardly marry
a darker skinded black.
They would go and
lay down with them
you know
like Archie did with Mom
and had a baby,
but as far as marrying
they didn’t hardly ever
marry outside of their
“High Yellow Clan”
I called them.
They were black people
so they lived with the black people
maybe next door to them
but they didn’t live with them.
You understand what I’m sayin’?

Tags: Our Black History, Black History Month

Our Black History – the Larkin Family in Fourth Creek -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman