Pass It On

Walking in your granddaughter or grandsons' shoes, transfixed with the thought that whatever you do today will matter for the next forty to sixty years, perhaps even longer. Thinking about what counts most in life, many African Americans have just recently begun to consider our legacy for the future, or the generations to come do. It's what the Native Americans thought about even as they fought those bloody battles in which they knew that they would lose. Even the Captains of Industry, who sold dungarees and pick axes to the 'Forty-niner California miners (few of whom actually got rich quick or at all), knew that they had to make future decisions contemplated on 140 years for their family.

I had a conversation with one of the heirs of a one hundred-fifty plus year old jean company who told me that her forefathers made decisions that would impact five or six generations out. Like those Indians, she and her fellow family shareholders continue to make similar decisions for their great-great-great-grandchildren so that they can leverage the future unencumbered by financial worry, while focusing on what kind of legacy they want to leave their family and the community at large.

Should we, as Black people, be thinking this way about our future? Or have we completely bought into the bootstrap, individualistic concerns that television and the larger American culture market to us today?

What did our parents and grandparents and great grandparents provide for us? Since this piece reflects my Father's Day sentiment (Father's Day, as many of you know is a Hallmark Card created event), I'll try to answer that question with a few anecdotes-parables, if you will.

Many African American families can point to rich family traditions, spectacular long running reunions, vibrant oral histories, and the kind of legacies that rival those of other ethnic groups. Examining many of these Africanate rituals that promote a different set of family values than what the Euro-centric views espouse, they provide a compass for some, if not all, of us on how to navigate our lives in still tempestuous seas that remain these United States.

Our fathers and grandfathers made it possible for many of us to create and sustain these rituals. In looking at the strength of African American culture, it's hard to argue against the predominant women-centered society that many of us grew up in. I was raised by a very strong African American mother who took us to church every Sunday to give us a deeper sense of ourselves and our connection to each other, who left bad marriages because they weren't working for her or her children, who stood by us as we suffered through the slings and arrows of high school, Big Ten colleges, and Ivy League universities. Our mothers did, and still do much.

Yet, what of our fathers? What did our fathers, grandfathers, and great grandfathers leave?

Stories. The men in our lives gave us an abiding commitment to the things that would last. True knowledge, hard work, love of family, personal sacrifice, and faith, which stand as the four cornerstones in the African American family. These four elements redound in our lives in their words and deeds, echoing soundly in stories.

When I was young I heard stories about my great grandfather Gabe. He worked hard down in Jackson, Mississippi, in a paint factory (breathing those toxic fumes day in and day out), to provide for his family. There is very little that I know about him, except that he was a dark skinned brother (like me) and that he would have done anything for his children.

Escaping a bad marriage by fleeing to Chicago, my grandmother wrote to Daddy Gabe and told him to get her a divorce. All I can do is imagine a conversation between Great Granddaddy Gabe and my Great Grandmama, Sarah:

Gabe (taking off his paint splattered work boots): Now, she say she want to do what?!

Sarah (shelling peas): She say she want a divorce. It's right here in her letter...

Gabe (turning up his nose, either at his own smelly feet or the unpleasant conversation): I don't care what she want, I told her not to marry that hard-headed Negro in the first place. How much is this gonna cost me?

Sarah (giving him "the look"): It don't matter, man. Let's just... let's just help her out. Again (under her breath).

In the absence of written or oral archives, the imagination works just as well. The lesson of our great grandfathers is that they survived in harsh times and loved their children fiercely. They loved them even when they could not understand them. They loved them even when they disagreed with them. They also loved them when they had good reason to doubt their children's very sanity.

For many of us, the lessons that we learned from our forefathers means that the history must be filled in to match the lives we now lead. The words, distilled into action, that Gabe Hubbard gave to my grandmother, which I have lived my life by is: That you do (almost) anything for your family. Friends and lovers may come and go, but it is family that lasts forever.

Coming to the aid of our faulty imaginations is always the memories of others. My mother's father, my grandfather, died nearly ten years before I was born. The stories that my mother and grandmother gave my brother and me more than made up for his physical absence. Being a barber and deacon of his church, Granddad Kirk's aphorisms resonate in my head:

¨Can't nobody turn you around unless you want to be turned around.

¨ Sometimes you just got to agree to disagree.

And (my favorite)...

¨ God bless babies and fools, so you must be doubly protected.

I think about that man whom I never met. As with Great Granddad Gabe, I also create those conversations with Kirk, perhaps an inspiring pep talk that would have gotten me through some low point or seeing him beam happily at my seventh birthday party. When I was around eleven or twelve years old my grandmother gave me his old leather key purse. I have long worn through that token, but my keys, with all of their imagined importance, unlocking so much of my past and future, weigh heavy on me as his must have on him.

Finally, I think about my father who passed away this past September, just a few days before September 11th. We talked plenty, although he wasn't always present in my life.

It's funny that I don't often remember the words he spoke-maybe a few phrases here and there. What I'll forever remember, and the legacy I'll pass on to my own son and daughter, is the sunshine in his voice, the flowers he planted all over his neighborhood just weeks before he died, and the way his light now reflects in the eyes of every good person that I meet. That's what I'll pass on.

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Credits: Brian Thomas