WIS News 10 - Columbia, South Carolina | South Carolina Family Secrets

South Carolina Family Secrets

(Columbia) Feb. 11, 2004 - Carrie McCray loved and admired her mother, Mary, a woman who fought for the rights of blacks and women, "Everybody in the family said, 'You should write a book about Mama.'"

So, McCray decided to share her mother's story in a book called "Freedom's Child." as she researched she uncovered a family secret, "It shouldn't have surprised any of us." Mary was part white.

Mary's father, Carrie's grandfather, was Confederate General John Robert Jones, "I would've thought our mother would have told us." When asked why, Carrie says, "The same reason other people don't talk, the same reason Essie Mae didn't talk."

Essie Mae Washington-Williams in December confirmed what had been whispered in the Palmetto State for decades, that Strom Thurmond, one of the most passionate one-time segregationists in America, fathered a child with a black woman.

The same story is being told over and over across South Carolina in households like Brenda Canzater's. Researching her genealogy at the state archives, she uncovered a white ancestor, too, "Everybody has some white or black in their family. It's not a surprise."

And, Raymond Curtis says he knew his light skin tone meant he had a white relative, "On my mother's side there was, I think it was a great-great grandfather."

Carrie McCray dug deep and found her secret had so many layers, "That just about knocked me down when I found out he was a Confederate war general. ... I was angry. I know that might sound funny, but I thought of my grandmother, and here was a man who was fighting to keep her in slavery."

But, Carries it was more than anger. When asked if she or her mother were ashamed she said, "I think so," because in an instant what she had thought about her life for more than three quarters of a century had changed.

She says the psychological blow did not change the way she saw herself, "I consider myself 100 percent black," and as for her grandfather, "I don't care what he was. I'm not talking about that white blood. I'm talking about my feelings, my beliefs, my culture. My everything is black."

Carrie says she learned the general loved his black family. That's when, she says, "He didn't just become a white man to me. He became my mother's father and at that point my grandfather. That's when I wrote a poem ... called 'Conversation: Past Due.'"

Conversation: Past Due
(On passing through Virginia - Summer 1993)

Are you really there, Grandfather, or is this some transcendental joke, some aberration
There is a strange sense of your presence here in the shadows of the Shenandoah
This lovely valley, where you and my grandmother walked together in the season of a different sun
You, an officer in the Army of the young Southern Confederacy,
She, born of a million African moons

I see you there in the mist, a puzzled smile on your face
The gray of your uniform angered me for a moment then dissipated by Aun' Tannie's words
"A good man, caught in a time of evil. He loved your mother ad I believe he loved Malinda too."
Did you lover her, Grandfather?
I had not thought of it as love

Perhaps there is a love that transcends, that's unafraid, uncompromised
Perhaps there is a love that laughs in the face of the shallow Oh, mys of white-gloved ladies
Perhaps there is a love that says "To hell" (pardon me, Grandfather) "with false barriers," and stands there, unadorned, in pure naked beauty, like a field of wildflowers unashamed of their unlike likenesses

The ease with which I call you Grandfather bewilders me
First time allowing myself this truth
On rare occasions when I dared speak to you at all in muffled tones, I said, "My mother's father"
Then you stepped out of the shadows, smiling
A whirl of conflicting emotions engulfed me and I called you Grandfather

Anger is a bitter cup, from which I no longer want to drink
Here in this place, this peaceful glen, I want to reach out, reach out and see if you hand it there waiting to take mine
You're offering me your hand, Grandfather?
You're offering me your hand?
Our steps are slow, measured, unsure but closer and closer
We're almost there, Grandfather, almost

I want to see if we can walk together
I want to talk more with you and for that one day I will come again
The distance seems shorter, the truth is clearer, and I walk freer

From Freedom's Child: The Story of My Mother, a Confederate General's Black Daughter, by Carrie Allen McCray

by Craig Melvin

posted 6:00pm by Chris Rees