Read a Story, Add a Story…
Lloyd Earl, one of the characters in A Good Ending for Bad Memories is a collector of the “Comebacks.” You’ll have to read the story to find out exactly what this means. Happy Reading! It was Lloyd Earl, who made me think about collecting. What in the world might I want to collect?
When bad things happened to my younger son, I’d always tell him to “put it in his story.” I knew that one day, he would grow up, become successful at whatever he chose, and all the bad things would simply become a part of what made him, elements of his story. He would be the better and dare I say, stronger, more interesting, even resilient for having overcome adversity.
In the past, the things that made our family stories weren’t so easy to overcome. Have you ever heard the phrase, “scratch a black family…”? Under the itch is always a surprise. More often than not, with us, it is the story of an incident/event which may have changed the trajectory of our lives. Certainly, our livelihoods, the success we were attempting. These stories may have derailed us momentarily or forever, either way, it’s a story that has become us, a part of our collective history.
I don’t want to stir up bad feelings. I want to create a repository, a collection of “scratch a black family” stories. We’ll figure out what to do with them later. Right now, let’s simply share. Think of this place on this website like the archive that Steven Spielberg created, the Shoah Foundation, for survivors of the Holocaust. We’ll name it later too. For now…
Scratch a Black Family Stories that I know…
My grandparents were the victims of eminent domain. They bought a tract of land, built a house for themselves and had just broken ground on the next house for my grandmother’s brother and family when the city came in and took all of the land. They were compensated for only a fraction of the assessed value. They moved across town and started all over again.
My dad, young and newly married, was hired at National Airport as an airplane mechanic through a series of phone interviews. He had served in the Korean War and had been well-trained and was highly skilled. “He was just the gentleman they needed.” He was hired until they met him. The job quickly became filled. On the phone, they hadn’t recognized that he was a Negro. He became an entrepreneur
My husband’s grandfather was an engineer. He was educated in the US, University of Illinois and abroad, at the London School of Economics. He applied for a US Government job. We have the letter on US Government stationery that indicates “we don’t hire Negroes.” Afterwards, he went to medical school.
Add Your story here…(75 words or less)