I heard Mother Tatum tell the story of how her father had been a trafficked human in Louisiana-- in 1865 he walked off that terrorist's (let's call him rapist/terrorist because he was the young man's father too, according to my research) plantation and worked and saved and bought his own farm and started his family and breathed deep that soupy Louisiana air-- she told the story to me and Mama on a 40-year-old screened farm porch in Camden Arkansas, 1987--
White American terrorists had ridden onto her father's farm, held a gun to his back and said, "This is ours now, Slim. You move along." Stole it from him and from his wife and from his children.
They went ahead and started over.
And the terrorists lied and stole and murdered and raped some more. And they kept it a secret with silly songs and Victorian fantasies and canon building and meticulous hatred -- and that flag envy -- it's colors found no where in Nature- they manufactured inhuman, dishonestly split identities and realities. And underneath it all, their dungeons shook. They held so tight.
They measured heads and snatched civilizations and pinned a tail on everyone but themselves--then exported pictures of a blue eyed blond Jesus. They replicated this Renaissance Jesus in film and, and then slipped a Tommie gun in his hand--sent him to explore and dig further--He said, "And what about beneath the ground and in the sky and the seeds and everywhere?" And we watched his insults against Creation knowing he'd have a reckoning one day.
And here's the truth.
He is perpetually afraid and always in defense against the darkness, the darkness of his own memory and the darkness in our skins:
Donald Trump ran a full-page add calling for the lynching of the Central Park "rapists".
(Defenseless BOYS, WHO WERE COMPLETELY INNOCENT OF THE CHARGES AGAINST THEM. THOUGH THEY WERE CONVICTED AND YEARS LATER SET FREE. [Move along now, Slim])
Meanwhile, we knew the truth like the Mende knew and the Blackfeet knew and the Arawak knew and the Inca knew and the Mende knew and every time that terrorist looked into our eyes he saw something magical--the truth.
And Iyanla can go somewhere with that laying the work at black women's feet. Black women are the only ones confronting that terrorist to his face and on a daily basis. Acting out the Got damn truth, tired of burying the dead, speaking for the family, raising the chilren, keeping everybody fed and at school. We don't like lies.
My Mama wrote a letter to me about April 4th, 1968. She was pregnant with this here black woman:
"I knew right away I would go to Dr. King's funeral and thought it would be in Atlanta. I got on the phone and talked to people in the organization, Pine Bluff Now. The members were angry and crying and wanted to strike back at this horrendous act. Your grandma sat on the couch in the den and just decried the fate of us all in the racist and sick society we lived in."
Donald Trump is America's truth. It is our mistake to identify him separate from that terrorist from whose conscience he shook loose.
We know that. This is our reckoning.
Mama made it to Dr. King's funeral because as she said, even though we in SNCC did not agree with the non-violent SCLC tactics anymore, we respected Dr. King and he was ours. She said Pine Bluff exploded that night. As much as Pine Bluff could.
In 2014, she told me that we were both at that funeral, marking the slow silent march of his mule and wagon.
Mama didn't want to talk about it too much. It was a tough time.
