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One of the most fantastic things about this day and age is the ability to get your hands on information instantly. This includes books. Not long ago a friend visiting my house for a Bible study recommended a book by John McCain, Character is Destiny. While he was discussing the virtues of its contents I grabbed my iPad, pushed a few buttons, and PRESTO, a copy was in my possession, ready to read. All before he finished his description. Did not regret it, either; after having read it I believe it to be one of the more important books of our time.
Another book obtained recently with the iPad was the Complete Works of Frederick Douglass. I became interested in Frederick Douglass during my studies of the life of Abraham Lincoln. What an awesome communicator Douglass was! Such a command of the language, and such a fertile mind.
As any student of history knows, Frederick Douglass was a slave who ran away into freedom in his early adulthood. He subsequently poured his soul into helping others who were or had been trapped in the evil bondage of the South. I highly recommend reading Douglass' works and others such as Twelve Years a Slave to get an accurate portrayal of what those days were like for the Africans brought here against their will.
And one day, while a student at SFA in the late 1970's, it came home to me that those days weren't really that long ago, and still had an impact on those yet living.
As often happens with college students, I was taken in by a family who occasionally invited me over for lunch after church. (Actually, I had a string of such families, and rarely lacked for a good Sunday afternoon meal!) On this occasion it was an elderly couple by the name of Jasper and Dolly Pitts. The Pitts were real East Texans whose family had been working the same land for many generations. It was a real honor to be invited into their home out in the country and hear their stories.
One Sunday afternoon Mr. Pitts and I were standing next to his fence, chatting about the history of our surroundings. At one point he began telling me about a piece of property nearby that his grandfather had owned and maintained with "black help". It didn't register at first, but the second or third time he said "black help" I started doing some math in my head and wondered if by "black help" he meant slaves. After determining that the math could work, I got the nerve to ask, "Mr. Pitts, by 'black help', do you mean slaves?"
He looked at me, stunned. His aged face became taught, and his eyes swerved from my direct gaze. After stammering a moment, he said simply, "Yes", in a manner that suggested surprise and sheepishness at the same time. It then dawned on me that he himself had not thought of them as slaves, but that they were slaves indeed, and all of his young life at the knee of his grandfather the term "black help" was nothing more than a euphemism.
The span from the 1860's to the 1970's was only a little more than a hundred years, easily encompassing just a few generations and even fewer lifetimes that were touched by such events. I was floored by the proximity, and had no idea that slavery would again touch my life before another decade was to pass...
(Next Week - "Brush with Slavery #2")
1 comment:
Good Story, I like your thought.
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