Ellington

It was 1961 when my father, then 19, moved from Mound Bayou, Miss., to Milwaukee, Wis., to live with his older brother Willie. Mound Bayou was offering few if any jobs, and the last thing he wanted to do was to go to college. Milwaukee, on the other hand, was full of jobs and opportunity. Also, his oldest brother, Claude, had his own barbershop and was one of the founders of a new church, Faith Temple. During a time in the Delta that was heated with racial tension, Mound Bayou was a safe haven for civil-rights workers, being one of the only towns at the time with a black-owned hospital, post office, pharmacy and even a zoo. But the move seemed like the best choice; my father felt that he had experienced enough injustice and was thinking of what would be best for a family. I grew up in Milwaukee and returned to my father's home state to attend Jackson State University. I recently asked my father to talk about his life in Mississippi. Many of his memories surprised me.

My father can remember several incidents that influenced him to follow the "great migration" to the north. Once when he was in grade school, he and my grandfather were headed to Shelby to shop. "I was young and didn't know I was supposed to say 'yes sir, no sir‚' to the whites. One of the men in the store ask me what I was doing, and I answered without saying 'sir'," he remembers. What followed was insults and threats, including, "You little n****r, I'll put my foot up your ass."

The other incident that touches me most is one that could have happened to myself had I been in the situation. My grandfather (Willie) had a habit of placing his hands into his pocket, a habit that I also have, though I never got to meet him. He and my father were coming from Memphis one day when they were pulled over by a trooper for no apparent reason. No taillights were out, they were not speeding, nor had they made an illegal turn. The officer asked Willie to step from the vehicle; then after standing for a while, his hands found their way into his pocket. "Get your hand out your pocket, n****r!" Willie obeyed the rude command. As the officer proceeded with the "routine" stop full of harassment, Willie's hands ended up back in his pocket. A second later, the cop swung his black flashlight into the side of Willie's head, knocking him to the highway pavement. My father just looked on, unable to help because he was a child. My father says now, "The cop knew he (granddad) didn't have a gun or a way to defend himself, and he didn't pose any harm. It was just pure evil."

This event was only one of many other brash encounters with white people that led to my father's decision to leave the state. To this day, he has no regrets of leaving his home because he feels he did what someone with plans to raise a safe family would do. "When I came to Milwaukee, it was full of jobs and opportunities for business. I was able to send my children to better schools, and give them exposure to the world outside of Mississippi. So many people come up down there and never leave as if there ain't a world out there," he tells me.

My mother, too, had left Mississippi for the North, where she met my father. "In Indianola we (blacks) always went to different schools than them (whites). Daddy kept us separated and protected from all that," she says now. Her father was a well-respected man in the town, so whites generally liked him. Regardless, this side of my family had a more direct relationship with the Civil Rights Movement. My mother recalls times when my grandmother cooked meals for the white volunteers who came down from the North with the Freedom Riders. I have always bragged about my grandmother's cooking, but little did I know these secret recipes were used to feed the civil-rights workers that I always heard and read about.

My mother can even remember the time when the freedom workers taught Uncle Jacy how to write his name. How he walked around the house saying, "I can write my name! I can write my name!"

It wasn't until I started researching this essay that I learned the specific role my family played in the Movement. I was most surprised to find out my mother was one of the first blacks to get a federal job in business management in downtown Indianola. "It was because I had just received my degree from Valley (Mississippi Valley State University) in business so I was qualified," she says.

In the past, I have heard some of the glory stories of the South from my father, but these secrets of my family's past have awakened a new consciousness within me. I now feel a responsibility to "take up the torch." I always felt connected to the Civil Rights Movement, touched beyond that of my peers by the stories of the marches and songs. I now see that it was a part of me that I inherited unknowingly. Since I came to Jackson, people regularly ask me what brought me all the way down here. The answer has always been that my roots are in Mississippi. I am a member of a very large family, 12 uncles and aunts on my father's side, 11 on my mother's that have spread across the nation. There are six generations of us living to date.

Even after moving to Milwaukee, my father made certain we understood exactly where we came from. I can remember spending almost every spring and summer break in the Delta, learning the back routes to Highways 49, 61 and 442. Riding through Drew, Shelby, Mound Bayou, Kilmichael, Cleveland, Shaw and Indianola, hearing tales from my father of what went on during his youth in this Delta region. But there was something hidden, almost like a riddle with no punch line. Was it that they felt at my young age I would not understand the importance of that history? Or that a spark would eventually ignite me to ask for the details behind all these stories?

I remember them always talking of cotton, but the idea was displaced in my mind to sometime in the past, much like slavery is for many of us. The truth is, I am one generation beyond the experiences of sharecropping and picking cotton. I was raised by parents who worked their way into the middle class. They were raised by sharecroppers, which in my mind equals neo-slavery. I am a product of the racial tension and injustice that drove them to leave the South in hopes that their children would turn out with the advantage. My sisters and I are living examples of that decision. One sister is a dedicated teacher and a graduate of Jackson State; the other is an attorney and government official. Both are influential members of the African-American community in Milwaukee. I am now also a student at JSU with open doors and opportunity ahead. None of this would be possible if it were not for the struggle of my family, alongside the countless other families who have faced the same struggle.

Geoffrey Edwards is a junior at Jackson State University. Read his Search for Jackson's Black Heritage.