Our Stories, Our Voices Page 7

  One evening a few years ago, I watched video of Hamer at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, where she testified to challenge the appointment of all-white Mississippi delegates. I couldn’t look away as she sat poised and calm in her printed cotton dress, Southern accent strong as she matter-of-factly described her beating in a Mississippi jail after being arrested with a group for trying “to register to become first-class citizens.” President Lyndon B. Johnson attempted to block Hamer’s speech from television by holding an impromptu press conference, but he was unsuccessful. Her impactful testimony was broadcast by several evening news programs, providing her with an even larger stage to tell her story.

  “I question America,” Hamer said at the end of her speech. “Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?”

  * * *

  My hometown newspaper published an article in 2006 to commemorate the hundred-year anniversary of the triple lynching of Horace Duncan, Fred Coker, and Will Allen. I was in my midtwenties, living in my adopted hometown of Los Angeles, and read it alone in my bedroom, huddled in front of my laptop with tears streaming down my face. It was hard to work through my emotions at the time, but years later I would cycle through the same set of feelings after watching Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, the true story of Solomon Northup, a freed Black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery: shock, horror, extreme rage, and hopelessness.

  I also felt, in both instances, that it would be a long time before I could face a white person without projecting my anger onto them. That wasn’t fair, but it was honest.

  At the time I read about my hometown’s shameful history, I was sharing an apartment with two white women who were also my close friends. Both had blond hair and blue eyes; they could be mistaken for sisters, and I used to joke about how different their Nordic features looked in comparison to mine. I was happy with the way I looked by then, having learned to love my brown skin that bronzed with a noticeable glow when I spent time in the sun, and even embracing the natural curls of my hair, which I’d been conditioned to dislike for most of my life. But it was instinct, going back to my days of being the only one—pointing out my differences before someone could do it for me.

  My white women friends in Los Angeles were proud progressives, and my roommates were no exception. They had racially and sexually diverse friend groups and coworkers. They welcomed inclusivity and were willing to have uncomfortable, open talks about race. But as white women, they couldn’t quite grasp how my Blackness intersected with my gender.

  I locked myself in my room when the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina permeated news reports because I was so angry at how Black people in New Orleans were abandoned by our government. My roommates didn’t understand that although, like them, I was far away and had no family living there, the people in the devastated communities of New Orleans felt like my brothers and sisters. I knew what it was like to feel that nobody cared about your well-being simply because of your skin color, and I was seeing it play out on national TV.

  There was a local bar up the street where my roommates and I were, admittedly, regulars. The crowd was pretty typical of the neighborhood, with mostly young, white professionals gathering to have drinks with friends. One night, I was shocked to see two Black men sitting with a group at a table in the corner. They noticed me, too, and in a move that still makes me laugh to this day, one of them sent his friend over to say my presence was requested at their table. I don’t take orders from many people, and especially not strange men, so I shook my head and continued talking to my friends. Later that night, I was going over the incident with my roommates, annoyed and wondering what would possess someone to “approach” a woman like that. A few moments later one of my roommates said, “Maybe he was intimidated because you were with two white women.”

  It was my second shock of the night. Though it wasn’t an excuse for sending someone else to do his bidding, I could see intimidation being a factor—for a number of reasons. Maybe he thought I was pretty . . . or he was painfully shy around strange women . . . or he didn’t want to approach me because I was with friends. But being intimidated because those friends were white women? I was offended that she’d had that thought and that she had been careless enough to say so in front of me. I was offended, but instead of confronting her, I shut down the conversation and went to bed. I was offended, and I was tired of feeling like I constantly had to be on alert with people who were ostensibly on my side.

  * * *

  Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election but failed to win the electoral college. I was upset when she lost, but I wasn’t surprised. Though support for her had been strong in my circles, clearly a large part of the country did not feel she was the best candidate. And as cynical as it sounds, I personally believed our luck had run out after the country voted a Black man into office for two consecutive terms. What I saw as the inevitable backlash reminded me of the vitriol spewed by suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony, who were enraged that Black men had been allowed to vote before white women.

  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen my white friends, particularly the women, so distressed. Suddenly, people who had never even acknowledged activism for marginalized groups were taking to the streets, posting selfies from protests around the country. They had gotten a taste of the deep injustice that marginalized people in the United States have experienced for centuries and were determined to do something about it.

  I was included on group texts with well-meaning friends who were too blinded by their newly felt oppression to realize that many other groups had more to lose than them. I muted and eventually removed myself from the texts because I didn’t have the energy—nor was it my responsibility—to console them. I knew before I was ten years old what it felt like to have racial slurs hurled at me, and to have people who knew nothing about me assume my parents couldn’t afford to take me out for cheeseburgers, and to have white parents hustle their kids out of the hotel pool when my family was on vacation in Orlando because I wanted to swim, too, and I had brown skin.

  Suddenly, in their thirties and forties, my white women friends realized how it felt to know that no matter how hard you worked and how much you hoped, you could still lose horribly. Because I was a woman, these friends automatically thought to include me in their complaints about the rampant sexism and disregard for women’s rights. They weren’t wrong—I feel sickened by it, too. But they failed to see that this isn’t a new feeling for me, just an additional struggle in my life. They wanted support, and I was irritated that the same people who chose to say and do nothing to protest the multiple murders and mistreatment of Black people caught on film in the last several years were looking for comfort from marginalized communities.

  Perhaps the most upsetting part of the election for me was learning that 53 percent of white women voted for Clinton’s opponent—a man who had a strong history of discrimination against Black people and held no regard for the lives of immigrants and Muslims, who openly mocked a disabled reporter, and who surrounded himself with shameless bigots. If all of that combined didn’t convince them not to vote for him, I was sure the last straw would be when he was caught on tape boasting about sexually assaulting women—white women.

  There was no last straw.

  * * *

  A couple months after the election, a decade-old interview with the woman who had accused Emmett Till, the teenager murdered in Mississippi, of flirting with her, was released. The suspects of the murder (the woman’s husband and his half brother) had been acquitted in 1955. In 2007, Carolyn Bryant, who went into hiding after the trial, admitted to a historian that she had lied in court about her contact with Till. “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” she declared.

  But it was much, much too late. Her regret couldn’t have saved him back then, but perha
ps it could have served him justice in court.

  * * *

  Nobody really talks about the lynchings in my hometown. They weren’t a part of our history lessons growing up, and while I’m not sure how many people are aware of the story, those who are seem profoundly uncomfortable when the topic surfaces.

  Though I didn’t read the details until I was much older, there were always vague murmurings around town. In the aftermath, the lynchings were crudely referred to as the “Easter Offering”; they made the front page of several newspapers around the country and have been covered in books, as well. The tower used for the hangings, which featured an iron replica of the Statue of Liberty, was destroyed a few years afterward.

  I attended college in my hometown and used to walk through the square quite often. I must have crossed through the exact site of the lynchings dozens of times—on the way to my internship at the city’s business journal, which had likely never employed a Black editor, or huddled with a giggling group of my white friends as we stretched across the sidewalk after nightfall, heading to our favorite bars and clubs.

  In August 2002, the city voted to erect a bronze plaque in the square to commemorate the lynchings, despite controversy. The plaque measures about four inches by twelve inches, and I’ve heard it’s so small that it can be easily missed, even if you’re looking for it.

  I haven’t seen it. I moved to Los Angeles in January of the year it was installed, and though I’ve returned many times to visit family, I haven’t made the trip to the square. I will go see it someday. It feels, somehow, like the best way to pay my respects to Horace Duncan, Fred Coker, and Will Allen.

  Maybe then I won’t feel so much resentment at the fact that my hometown became a nearly all-white city not by circumstance but by force.

  Perhaps then I can come to terms with the fact that although our country is fraught with racial tension and division to this day, there are people who eventually seek to acknowledge the wrongs of the past.

  There are people who won’t let us forget, no matter how small the reminder.

  * * *

  I left my hometown sixteen years ago, and I continue to struggle with my memories. It’s difficult to have warm, fuzzy feelings about a place that, as a whole, never seemed that welcoming. I am still friends today with several people I met there, and the memories of my childhood are more fond than unpleasant. Since moving away, I’ve lived in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Los Angeles again. I’ve always said Springfield was a nice place to grow up, and it was—because I was strong enough to handle it. Or maybe I just adapted.

  Either way, I grew a thick skin that serves me well today. The ignorance, microaggressions, and blatant racism still hurt, but at this point in my life it’s rare that I’m confronted with a situation I’ve never dealt with. Now I face these experiences with the confidence of knowing who I am, not mired in worrying about how other people view me. I have the language to express myself when I see or experience injustice, and I use it.

  In the days, weeks, and months after the election, a common refrain was that people were numb. They didn’t know how to feel when it was exceedingly clear that the foundation of this country they held so dear was in jeopardy. They didn’t know how to complete their everyday tasks or feel okay about relaxing when human rights were at stake.

  I don’t know how to make them feel better about their sudden awakening, but I strive to use Fannie Lou Hamer as a role model—a woman who fought for the rights of Black people, women, and poor people because she knew what it was to live as a poor Black woman.

  I know that as a Black woman, I will keep doing what I’ve been doing my whole life: I will fight for the voiceless and those who are less privileged than me. I will fight even when I am uncomfortable. I will fight to make myself seen and heard.

  I will fight until there is no longer a need.

  TRUMPS AND TRUNCHBULLS

  Alexandra Duncan

  When I was growing up, one of my favorite books was Roald Dahl’s Matilda. Not just because the title character has telekinesis, which I think we can all agree is pretty sweet, but because of the villain, Miss Trunchbull. Miss Trunchbull is the sadistic headmistress of Matilda’s school, Crunchem Hall. She keeps a medieval torture device called an iron maiden in her office and devises bizarre ways to punish her students for minor infractions or imagined slights, such as flinging them over fences by their braids or force-feeding them chocolate cake until they burst. She is able to get away with this because her behavior is so outlandish that none of the parents believe it when the children complain.

  Don’t get me wrong, I hated Miss Trunchbull. But I was grateful for her existence, because she gave me a way to frame the abuse and gaslighting that was going on in my own home. My Trunchbull, like the one in the book, always told me I was exaggerating or making things up, always saying—in so many words—that no one would believe me about the things he did. He was a respected member of the community, after all. A family man. Powerful. Religious. And me? I was just a kid whose dad had run off and left her mom alone. Then a teenager who had better watch her smart mouth. Then a young woman whose word could be dismissed because the fact that she wrote novels for a living meant the stories she finally told her mother were just more “creative writing.”

  “I don’t remember that” was his refrain when confronted with accounts of his behavior.

  The time I tried to catch my baby sister when she was falling and he insisted I pushed her, then made my mother spank me as punishment?

  “I would never have done that.”

  The time he turned on pornography in front of me and my brother?

  “That never happened,” he would have said. “And if it did, why didn’t you leave the room?”

  The million cutting comments? You should be a country singer, since you’re so good at whining. You’re too smart to be so stupid. That’s going straight to your waistline. Are you gay?

  “If I said those things, why didn’t you tease me back?”

  The one time I did talk back to him and he told me he’d make my life a living hell?

  “I don’t remember that.”

  End of conversation. If he didn’t remember it, it hadn’t happened.

  This tactic is called gaslighting. The term comes from a 1944 movie about a man who tries to convince his wife she’s going insane. He moves objects in their home, hides her belongings, and dims the gas lights, all the while insisting that the changes aren’t happening, or if they are, she is the one responsible for them. The term has come to describe a common pattern of behavior among abusers and emotional manipulators. Sometimes it shows up as the abuser convincing his victim that she caused or deserved whatever terrible thing happened to her. Sometimes it’s the abuser denying that he did the terrible thing at all. And sometimes it’s the abuser preemptively accusing his victim of exactly the terrible thing he himself is guilty of in order to undermine her ability to call him out on it.

  Gaslighting sounds like a sophisticated technique, but it’s not. All it requires is a convincing facsimile of conviction and the mere suggestion that reality is not what it seems. If the abuser shouts his Bizarro-World version of events loudly enough and often enough, at least some people will believe it, and that will make his victims second-guess themselves. That’s the real terror of gaslighting—that your sense of reality begins to warp and bend until you’re excusing the abuser and doing his work for him.

  It’s my fault. If I hadn’t been so slow to finish raking the lawn, if I had said yes, sir when I answered, instead of just yes, he would have let me out to see my friends. He wouldn’t have stopped me from going to my great-grandmother’s one hundredth birthday party.

  It’s not like he hit me . . . except for that time when he slapped the dish towel against me so hard it stung. Or the time he spanked me because I was trying to hug him good night and accidentally knelt on his groin. But those don’t count. It’s not like it was a regular thing.

  It’s not like he raped me or anythi
ng. He only pinched my butt. And that one time, when I was in college and he tried to get me to kiss my friend on the lips so he could take our picture. (And, and, and . . .) But he was just teasing. He didn’t know those things were inappropriate. I’m overreacting.

  Then when they talk at school about abused women and kids you think, Those poor women. Those poor kids. That’s not me.

  * * *

  When I was in high school I thought sexism was over, because my parents had me do boy chores like mowing the lawn and the riot grrrl ethos of the early nineties had been commodified and repackaged as the Spice Girls. Women could be astronauts! Barbie was a doctor! Girl power! My mother and her friends all worked, and I didn’t notice until later that for the most part, they were confined to a very specific set of careers: nurse, teacher, secretary. They were smart women. They cared about their kids and their church, so wasn’t it natural that they were the first ones to be asked to drop work obligations when the kids were sick or the church needed volunteers? Women were innately better with kids, so wasn’t it natural that they—and I—should be the ones asked to miss out on the church service in order to watch the nursery?

  And so, whenever someone underestimated me or talked over me at school or work or church, I ascribed it to something else.

  It’s because I’m young, I told myself. When I’m older, they’ll take me more seriously.

  Or, It’s because I’m new here. Once I’ve proved myself, they’ll listen.

  Or sometimes, I must not be adding anything to the conversation. If I had something smart to say, they would pay attention.