Down South in the USA

I have visited the USA often over the last 20+ years, but this last trip was the first one that I spent any significant time in the south. An opportunity to present at a conference was the main reason for the visit which of course got extended because “if I was going all the way I should make it worthwhile”. Visiting the south was a very different experience, especially with my daughter beside me, whispering that she felt like she was on the set of the movie, Get Out. Suffice it to say that we had arrived from Mexico where we had blended in with the locals a lot more easily. 

The conference took place in Charleston, South Carolina (there are two Charlestons in the USA). Charleston, SC, was the American capital of the transatlantic slave trade, with 40 percent of enslaved Africans passing through it. The opening shots of the Civil War were fired in April 1861 at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour. 

Inside Mother Emmanuel Church

The conference, “Transforming Public History from Charleston to the Atlantic World,” was organized by the College of Charleston’s Race and Social Justice Initiative and the Avery Research Centre.  The opening address was given by Dr Lonny Bunch, founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, at the Mother Emmanuel church, where nine worshippers were shot and killed in a racially motivated attack. The church was built in 1816 and has survived natural disasters and burning for its association with slaves; civil rights activists gathered there, Martin Luther King Jr spoke from its pulpit. The church has survived the shootings and has become a site of pilgrimage and a symbol of forgiveness.

That weekend happened to be the second anniversary of the racist shooting at the church in which 9 people were killed. In my experience, places of worship, no matter what faith they celebrate, are imbued with a sense of peace and spirituality. It’s difficult to imagine anyone violating that space. Sitting in the pews with sunlight streaming through stained glass window, reminded me of a visit we had made to Regina Mundi in Soweto, the site of police shootings in 1976. 

People around us were whispering about a noose that had been left at the museum recently and were wondering whether Dr Bunch would mention it in his speech. He didn’t, but spoke instead about the importance of public history, about remembering the history that is omitted from the official narrative and how slavery and race and ethnicity have shaped America. He concluded that it was important for everyone to be exposed to this history since it had shaped everyone. His speech, the venue, the anniversary of the shooting … all added emotional layers to the conference. With topics like, “My Skin – the Costume I’m in”, “Black Lives Matter in the Age of Trump” and “They wore white and prayed to the east”, the conference helped me to place my study in an international context. 

Charleston SC waterfront. Fort Sumter to the right in the distance

Given this history, it was a shock to walk along the waterfront on our last afternoon there and see statues and monuments to the confederacy. Even more so, since the Mother Emmanuel shooter had posted images of himself flying the confederate flag. 

On our last morning we visited the Mcleod Plantation, all “Gone with the Wind” – a long driveway lined with tall trees dripping with Spanish moss, leading to the mansion. A guide who had been on a panel the previous day gave us a more inclusive tour, taking us around the back to tell us stories of the people who had lived in the row of one-roomed wooden houses. It was chilling to think that, Dylan Roof, the Mother Emmanuel shooter had been on this same visit and taken photographs in the same places we did.  

On my entry to the USA, immigration officer, on hearing the purpose of my visit, remarked, I don’t think we’ll ever learn, do you? I’d like to think that everyone at the conference left with a renewed conviction to share the stories, to tell history with a multiplicity of voices.

The Warmth of Other Suns

                                        

I have been immersed in Isabel Wilkerson's book, an account of the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for the northern and western cities, in search of a better life between 1910 and 1970. This epic story covers an exodus of six million people but Wilkerson follows the journey of three main characters, each representing a different decade of the Great Migration: Ida Mae Gladney (1930s), a share-cropper's wife who left Mississippi for Chicago, George Starling (1940s), the valedictorian of his "coloured" high school class in Florida who escaped lynching in Florida and landed up in New York and Robert Foster (1950s), a Morehouse-educated  surgeon from Louisiana who finds himself in California. 

Wilkerson writes easily about difficult subjects - I was shocked at the brutality of the conditions they were escaping and I had no idea of the extent of what she calls the Great Migration, before I went to the MoMA on our recent visit to the USA.  

Wilkerson's mother left rural Georgia and her father southern Virginia to settle in Washington, D.C., so she has a personal interest in this story. She has done a great job of bringing the stories to life and recording it for generations to come. In her Epilogue she mentions some of the many well-known children of people who left the South to give their children the opportunity to grow up free. These include Toni Morrison, Michelle Obama, Serena and Venus Williams, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross and Oprah Winfrey.

     

Michelle Obama 

Oprah Winfrey

                                                     
I was deeply moved by this work of narrative non-fiction which humanises a history of race, class and politics. It is the author's revelation of the personal details of the struggles of ordinary men and women which brings this story alive.

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson is published by Vintage Books.

For more on the Migration in this blog, see Jacob Lawrence and the Migration Series

Image of book cover from: http://isabelwilkerson.com/

Images of Obama and Winfrey courtesy of www.shutterstock.com 

Education to Change the World

A very recognisable quote as we rounded a corner in Boston

While in the USA, I visited a few of the 1 200+ schools* (see below). I was struck by two characteristics which I believe are common to the education system in America. One was the accessibility of the education and the other was the balance of the curriculum. 

For Americans who want to study, there are federal grants and bursaries and many of the universities, even those like Harvard, offer needs-based scholarships.  This means that if you have the academic ability, by and large, lack of funds need not be a stumbling block. This results in a diversity of students which I found exciting.

I was also very taken with the liberal arts core of the curriculum. Subjects like art, history, music and science, form the basis of an all-round foundation. In other words, graduates who are able to hold forth on a variety of topics, are being produced. Majors are only declared in third year. 

Education was the tool that the South African government used to oppress us…education was meant to keep us in our place. You were able to learn just enough for the jobs that you were expected to do; depending on the colour of your skin, you had enough education to become a factory worker, a maid or a gardener, or if you were lucky, a teacher or a nurse. 

My grandfather taught me that education was the one thing that the apartheid government couldn't take away from us; that they had taken away our rights, property and opportunities but they couldn’t take away what was in our brains, they couldn’t stop us from learning. I believe that it’s the same tool that was used to oppress us that must be used to uplift us. So many generations of people in our country haven’t had access to education. We’ve come a long way from where we were but we have to keep fighting so that our children, and our country, can have a better future. 

I know that the American school system is far from perfect, but I think that this kind of accessibility and well-rounded curriculum is something to strive for. 

*A four-year college or university offers a bachelor's degree. Programs that offer these degrees are called "undergraduate" schools. A "university" is a group of schools for studies after secondary school. At least one of these schools is a college where students receive a bachelor's degree

Jacob Lawrence and the Migration Series

The migrants arrived in great numbers - Panel 40

"Having no Negro history  makes the Negro people feel inferior to the rest of the world...I didn't do it just as a historical thing., but because I believe these things tie up with the Negro today." 

Jacob Lawrence 1940

This quote sprang out at me from the wall of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). It is the reason that I need to start writing the stories of growing up in Cape Town during the 1960's and '70's. I was inspired by the simplicity of Lawrence's series of 60 paintings which records a significant era in American history.

One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series and Other Visions of the Great Movement North is currently on at the MOMA as part of a programme exploring the legacy of the Great Migration and its impact on American culture. From 1915 to 1970, almost six million black people fled the rural South for northern and western cities in search of a better life, thereby indelibly altering the demographics of the USA.

Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) grew up in Harlem, New York but both his parents had been part of the mass relocation from the impoverished South to the urban, industrialised cities. He was greatly influenced by the colour and vibrancy of the community in which he lived and set about recording the songs, stories and experiences of his parents' generation through his art. 

By the time he was 23 he had completed the paintings which make up the Migration series. In 1941, at the height of racial segregation in the country, he was the first African American to have his work exhibited at the MOMA. 

A long table with a row of tablets giving access to a multi-media website, occupied the centre of the exhibition room. It soon attracted a group of school children tasked with a summer project of choosing their favourite painting to write a poem about...21st century technology providing the bridge to history. 

                                 

This painting illustrates how effectively Lawrence has captured the loss and suffering brought about by the human rights abuses during this period of American history. It's what he has left out of the picture which is most striking. 

The exhibition is on until 7 September. 

View the Migration Series here 
Image from Migration Series from MoMa website, click here 

A Walk in the Woods

"A path that vanished into a wood on the edge of town ...
A sign announced that this was no ordinary footpath but
the celebrated Appalachian Trail."

I had grand plans for reading Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods while in the USA and then actually walking a little of the trail in Maine. The plan to visit Maine didn't work out, so I was pleased to find that we could access the trail from where we staying on the New York-Connecticut border.

I'm a big Bryson fan, but for some reason, it proved easier to actually get out there and experience the trail than get into the book. I think that it was the moaning of his friend, Stephen Katz, which put me off, but then who am I to talk after only doing 1/300 of the 2 100 miles of the trail?

"The AT is the granddaddy of long hikes."

The Applachian Trail is the longest continuous footpath in the world, stretching along the east coast of the USA, from Georgia to Maine.

From Georgia ...

...to Maine

I did read enough to be warned about the merciless insects. The insect repellent was no match but, being from Africa and having observed many a zebra or antelope in the wild, we found that by swishing a small branch over alternating shoulders, we could stop the pests flying right into our mouths every time we tried to speak to each other. Perhaps it was a similar scenario which inspired those Australian hats with dangling corks. We could have done with one of those. 

It wasn't long before we reached the end of the woods and wandered along paths edged with metre-high grasses and rolling meadows. I repressed the urge to break out into song...we were already get odd looks from fellow-hikers when they saw our fly-swatters.

According to Bryson, every twenty minutes he and Katz did on the AT was further than the average American walks in a week. "For 93% of all trips outside the home, for whatever distance or whatever purpose, Americans get in a car." That may be true, but I did get in at least twice as much as walking as I would normally do at home and, like Katz, I can say " the only thing that matters ... is that I hiked the Appalachian Trail". 

Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods, is published by Transworld Publishers, UK

Walking to Connecticut

It's been a while since I travelled to the USA, as mentioned in my last blog, and I'd forgotten about the effects of a six-hour time difference. It didn't take too long to settle in once we arrived at my friends' house in a village on the border of New York and Connecticut states, though. It helped that I could put on my tackies and walk across state lines...here are some photos of rural America taken on our many walks...

We arrived on the Independence Day weekend, so had the opportunity to soak up the American way at a barbecue, where teenage girls frolicked in the pool, impromptu games of soccer were played on the lawn and the noises of fireworks and college kids home for the summer were punctuated by the thwack of a baseball in a catcher's mitt. Desserts of peach cobbler, blueberry pie and other cakes dazzled with sprays of stars and stripes in red white and blue.

flags everywhere...even in the middle of a field

The jet lag was more of a killer coming back home, hence the delay in posting, but look out for more from "the greatest country in the world" (as overheard at the barbecue). 

I am off to the USA next week. It's been eight years since my last visit and I am looking forward to catching up. I thought I would share some impressions from our last visit (2007) with my children, aged 14 and 10.

As soon as we stepped out of the taxi-cab, we were assailed by neon lights and sky-high billboards screaming for attention from entire sides of buildings. Electronic adverts for Foot Locker, Swatch, Virgin Mobile and Lucky Brand jeans, flickered in competition with announcements for Dancing with the Stars, Ultimate Fighting Championships and Stomp.

Towers of glass and concrete intersected at multi-lane crossroads of streaming yellow taxis, thick crowds of humans, blinding lights and the noise of a city on the go. I was reminded of how cosmopolitan the people in New York were. They appeared to have come from all over the world, each with a different dream. They were quirky with wild hairstyles, coiffed and business-like, strange, daring, downright weird, designer-heeled, sneaker-wearing, grey and colourful. No wonder people were prompted to do anything to be noticed, like don cowboy boots and a hat to play guitar naked in the traffic.

On our first trip with my daughter 13 years earlier, we’d been on our way down Fifth Ave, when we noticed a crowd gathering on the sidewalk, at the traffic lights opposite Van Cleef and Arpels. The large woman’s loud yellow shirt and gaudy floral tights were enough to cause a stir but it took me a few moments to realise that it was the python she had draped around her shoulders which was gathering attention.

New Yorkers, with mobiles glued to the sides of their faces, briefcases in hand, strode purposefully along sidewalks or streamed across the road, in obeisance to the flashing “Walk-Don’t Walk” signals. I recalled how curious a similar sight of businessmen accessorised with mobile phones had been on our visit in 1994. Two cell phone network providers, Vodacom and MTN, had only just been granted licences to operate in South Africa. We were a long way off from embracing cell phone technology and it seemed strange to me then that it could be such an indispensable part of American lives.

"This is just like in the movies,” my daughter remarked, as she slowly turned around on the sidewalk to take in the familiar sights. America was in our living room every day. This was where movies were made. She knew what Americans looked like, how they talked, hailed taxis, ate, ordered coffee, and fell in love. She thought all telephone calls started with “area code 555” and recognised the sound of police sirens. I’d fought to limit their exposure to television and find the balance with reading and outdoor activities, and yet she could rattle off names and intimate details of a string of actors. I joked that if her school work could be made into a movie, she'd be top of her class.  

The extract above is from my MA thesis.

Image by Gail Lindgren from http://www.freeimages.com/