Partition
The postman pulled up to the box today and I walked out to greet him. Last Friday, he told me he was going to visit family in Philly and I wanted to know how that went. The trip was great but the story he related had to do with morning refueling at the local Mobil station.
The PM (postman) who is Black was getting gas when two motorcyclists exited the store looking his way as he stood at the pump. One guy looks to the other and loudly stated, “I thought this was Cornish?” PM knew what that masked remark intended to say and replied with an equally obtuse remark, “This is Cornish, is there something here you don’t like?”
I saw weariness in his eyes and an acceptance that he must stay ever vigilant. This year, in particular, I am aware to a discomforting degree of the deep-seated racism embedded in the hearts of some of the people I interact with every day. I can never fully comprehend PM’s challenges but a few years ago, when vacationing in South Carolina, our family visited a plantation.
With vivid clarity, I see the majestic Live Oak canopy spanning the wide avenue leading to the mansion. Before reaching the antebellum three small brick building to my left catch my attention and I more interested in seeing these buildings head for the House Slave Quarters rather than tour the mansion.
Each 100+/- sq. ft. single room hut had a dirt floor, a small fireplace, and a cooking pot. Multiple families squeezed into these one-room sheds and by today’s standards they wouldn’t qualify as chicken coops because chicken coops have floors.
In one building, a black mannequin mother sits in a rocking chair with her baby nestled against her bosom. This Norman Rockwell, Saturday Evening Post Cover illustration, pure quilt personified. The blatant dismissal, the obscene cover-up, and sheer gall of some great, great, nephew who now glorifies and speaks proudly of first homesteading plantation owner, bragging about Heads of State who once attended dinner parties there, sickens me. The shacks were the Field Slaves lived were never reproduced.
In our country and who knows, the world, history is under constant revision. There is no comfortable ground here and I am thankful that I feel a need for change.
