Tonight we pray for the momma who is worried...

I think that the following prayer comes from the Midnight Mom Devotional that I used to draw from often on this blog.

Tonight we pray for the momma who is worried. Her heart is heavy. She's having trouble sleeping. She may even be crying inside but putting on a smile for others. Lord, there are so many things that we as mommas worry about daily and even nightly. You asked us to give it to You. Tonight, we give You our worries. We ask for Your peace. We thank You for taking care of all our needs. Please help this momma to find community and any help that she needs. Please grant her sleep tonight. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.

This photo comes from Ward Weems on Facebook. The accompanying caption says, "A tenant family who lived in the Camp Croft area and was removed, The man was employed working for a neighboring farm and loses employment when moved. Near Pacolet, South Carolina, March 1941 in photograph by Jack Delano for the Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress."

This photo also comes by way of Ward Weems. The caption reads, "Decosta famile mother and children, Portuguese immigrants, and Farm Security Administration client borrowers, Little Compton, Rhode Island, December 1940 in a photograph by Jack Delano for the Farm Security Administration, Library of Congress."

Millions of people the world over are leaving their homes in search of safety and work. Many are fleeing the effects of global warming and climate change and must take their children with them as they go. Some never find what they are looking for and perish along the way and only God and their families know their names. 

These photos remind us that it was not so long ago that many families in the United States were forced to move, traveling north or west in order to escape bad conditions. Political and economic refugees from fascist governments came as well, and are still coming. We should remember their struggles and trials when we consider the mommas and families seeking sanctuary in the United States today and include them in our prayers.

Rhiannon Giddens - Build a House (Official Video)

The other day a white woman---a church-going white woman at that---told me that slavery is all in the past and that we have to forget and just go on. I disagree. We're still living with the legacies of slavery, and I encounter many folks who are starting up to fight the Civil War over again.

A company that handles some of my pension money made its foundational money in part on slavery and what slaves produced. The so-called right-to-work laws that prevent people from forming unions have their origins in the southern states and the remnants of the slave-owning aristocracy. For years the low wages and poor working conditions and lack of social services and the lack of justice in the southern states---all the legacies of slavery---formed a low point and caused a downward spiral across the entire United States and we are living with the effects of that still. I live with the memory of legal segregation---it was not so long ago.

It would indeed be great to move on, but that won't happen in the years that I have left on earth. Much water will flow under our bridges before the line moves in the right direction and we have justice here. My worry is that that water will flow mixed with blood.

If you can do some justice and make some peace today, please do it. If you don't have that opportunity, then just please use your time to do some studying and reflect. Think a little about the "house" referred to in the song above. Could that be our country? Do you really want to burn it down rather than share it with others?  

Two contrasting images

 

The couple above were living in their home on the Bayou Bourbeaux Plantation in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana in 1940 when this photograph was taken. The plantation was then operated by the Bayou Bourbeaux farmstead association, a semi-cooperative established through the auspices of the Farm Security Administration. The photograph was taken by Marion Post Wolcott for the Farm Security Administration. Zoom in a little on the photograph and you will see that these are hard working people and that the man has a half-smile and that the woman and the child have that apprehensive look of people who are not used to being photographed. The child appears to be playing, or they are not working.

Natchitoches Parish has a history of free people of color, Creole, and mixed-race settlement. It is set in the historic Black Belt.

The photograph immediately above was taken in Greene County, Georgia and is also a Depression-era photograph. I do not remember who the photographer was, but I'm certain that this was also a Farm Security Administration photograph. I remember reading that this man was a plantation owner and this his operation had been in his family for many generations and that his property was heavily mortgaged at the time that this photograph was taken. He stood to lose everything that he had, I suppose.

I don't know much about Greene County, and the histories of working-class people, African Americans and Natives Americans there have not been recorded. I believe that the county has seen a loss of its Black population in recent decades.     

What stands out for me here are the different experiences and legacies captured in these two photographs. Those plantations were on stolen land. There remain the legacies of forced colonialism, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the changes that took place in the southern agricultural economies that increased production and caused dispossession of so many people, and the Great Depression. But the couple in the photograph have something to smile about and just a bit of security while the plantation owner who is facing the loss of ill-gotten generational wealth and public humiliation is clearly worried, and perhaps angry as well. The couple and their child do not stand in for all Black people, and neither does this worried and angry man stand in for all whites. The four of them are victims of a system, but they were experiencing their lives quite differently at the moments when these photographs were taken.

Semi-cooperative and cooperative agriculture would not solve every problem faced by farmers and tenant farmers. It will not, by itself, take up the questions of the theft of land and the genocide of Native American and Indigenous peoples. Restructured semi-capitalist or non-capitalist forms of agricultural production will not guarantee equality or security. No one said that they would. But I can't help but think that the plantation economy was bound to fail, and should have done so, and that semi-cooperative and cooperative government-sponsored agricultural programs had a necessary role in building up alternatives to the old ways. And within those alternatives greater possibilities were presented and made possible.

The tragedies that attended these programs were that they were not carried out to in greater scale and did not last longer and prevail against the old political and social systems. We are still fighting the hold-overs and hold-outs of the old planter aristocracy, and the threat of civil war is once again in the air. It is to our lasting shame that we have not yet found the ways to bring poor and working-class people of color and poor and working-class whites together in one mass movement to create good and lasting change.

Would you rather be the hopeful family with a chance at doing better with and within your community or the lone worried and angry man in the rocking chair?

      

     

Finding Black Louisiana Folk Artist Clementine Hunter

Wash Day by Clementine Hunter, 1980. Taken from WikiArt. 

I don't know much about art and artists, but I do want to learn more about the Black Louisiana Folk Artist Clementine Hunter. It seems tragic to me that I could live into my late 60s and never learn about her or see her work. This art is a living example of the kind of beauty that I try to get out on this blog. 

I have the Black Southern Belle and the Glitter Gallery pages to thank for brining Clementine Hunter to my attention. The Gallery provided this brief introduction to Hunter and her work and the photograph below.

Remembering Our great Louisiana Folk Artist Clementine Hunter who passed away January 1, 1988 at the age 102. She was a self-taught African-American artist from the Cane River region of Louisiana. She was born on Hidden Hill Plantation, known today as Little Eva Plantation, said to be the inspiration for Uncle Tom's Cabin. She was the granddaughter of a slave and worked as a farm hand. She was never taught to read or write. In her mid Fifties, she began painting using paint brushes left by an Artist that visited Melrose Plantation where she lived and worked. Hunter's new lifestyle of artwork depicted plantation life in the early 20th Century documenting a bygone era. She first sold her paintings for as little as 25 cents. By the end of her life, her work was being displayed and exhibited in museums and sold by art dealers for thousands of dollars. Hunter was granted an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree by Northwestern State University of Louisiana in 1986. Today her artwork appears in museums and private collections all over the world and sells into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for some of her most treasured paintings. Thank you Clementine Hunter. You Inspired Us.

Some thoughts on where we come from

 Waiting for the northbound train in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1921

during the Great Migration.

Youngsters from Washington D.C. in the early 1940s.

The following was written by Bobbie Rutledge and appeared on the Appalachian
Americans Facebook page:

I knew a man, he was a poor man but an honest and hardworking man. He pulled corn for $.25 cents a day. He graduated from high school in a time, where most young people did not. He wanted to go to University of Georgia to become a Soil Conservationist since he came from sharecroppers. He wanted to import their lives and see that they could own their own land. However he got a letter from Uncle Sam that he was needed. This man, who had never gone any further than 25 miles from Georgia went to Texas, California, Florida, France, and Germany. He drove a tank. When he got back he farmed along side his parents. He picked cotton from sun up till sundown with no complaints. He married a beautiful black haired lady. They had a child that was their world. The year the child was born his cotton crop made $50 and the hospital bill was $48. He finally decided that farming wasn’t gonna get since child any future. So he went to work driving he’s y equipment for the county he lived in grading roads thru the farm land he used to farm. That broke his heart. But life goes on. One day he was driving with his son in law , in the SIL new trick when they turned wrong and the SIL got on ONSTAR to find their way back. The man listened to the directions given and when they were back home, he turned to my hubby and said that was nice of that man to stay in the phone with us. Hubby laughed and said it was a computer. Daddy said well I swear, this came from a man, who walked to school, did his homework by lamplight and saw electric light come into his house. Saw TV come into it’s on. Finally got a telephone at the age of 40. This man who went without dinner so his child could eat. This man. Is who Americans have to thanks for being what we are today. This man is my Daddy, thanks Daddy, I sure miss you.

A Victorian street scene

From Journey of a Mountain Woman:

When I was growing up when a person was near death, the Drs would say 'call the family in' and in most cases no matter where they were they would go back to the old home place in the mountains. It was a duty and a thankfulness, and A loving grateful opportunity to say goodbye. we all dreaded to hear those words...call the family in. Things have changed but us old folks remember...we remember the goodbyes, the casket set up in the living room, us sitting up all night, drinking strong coffee, that last time. The house smelled of flowers and fried chicken and the table was laden with food brought in by neighbors. Many of us will grieve this Christmas for those who have left us. Many of us are the only one left of a large family and we will smile through the tears as we remember those sad words...call the family in. Have a good night and God bless.

Introducing the Union of Southern Service Workers

 

The Moral Monday Movement In Georgia Yesterday

 

The Moral Mondays movement has been active for many years and has been led by Bishop William J. Barber II and is associated with the Poor Peoples Campaign. This shows that people of faith speak with many voices and from many traditions and that we form a mighty bloc when we do that. This is the faith experience that masses of people are looking for without knowing it, something that speaks directly to us.

A good introduction to Beau of the Fifth Column

This is a a special post for my white friends in Appalachia who may not be aware of Beau of the Fifth Column. You can catch him on Youtube, and I hope that you will. I think that this video will give you a good introduction to him, and I think that you will be able to see or hear yourself or someone you know in him within a few minutes.

I was not a fan until recently. I have my disagreements with him, but I recently heard that he is giving strong support to the mine workers' strike in Alabama that has been going on for eighteen months now and that made me rethink my position. I like it that he's honest and I like that he's trying to move people without hitting people over the head. I deeply appreciate how he talks about race, guns, LGBTQIA+ people, and violence against women. I like that he's careful with his words and that we don't hear profanity and conspiracy theories when we listen in.

This is a good introduction, but please go to Youtube and dig in.