# 11 Mississippi Queen,Ya Know What I Mean?



In response to both Pauline Hopkins’ “As the Lord Lives, He Is One of Our Mother’s Children” and Claude McKay’s poem “Outcast”, I explore the very perplexing question that I have myself struggled with for what seems to be the entirety of my life post adolescence and discovering who I am/want to be. My question is by taking on the character and persona of a very 21^st century westernized, American girl, and ultimately suppressing my “out of Africa black” roots in this country and all the weight that goes along with it, am I wrong to do so? I was originally born in a very small town in Mississippi, but I moved to Texas when I was only a month old so really I consider Texas my home. Both my parents are from and grew up in that small Mississippi town and so did my grandparents and their parents. We go back and visit this town, frozen in time it appears, nearly once a year, every year. The setting in which Hopkins describes the gang of white men and the lynching of Jones, practically the entire story, reminded me very much of this small town and could have easily taken place there. There was one instance that popped into my mind upon reading when my family and I were driving down the town’s main street  and saw the KKK with a table set up literally on the side of the road advertising their meeting that week with men dressed in full garb and supportive drivers hooting and beeping along side us. I was only about 9 or 10 at the time but I remember that day so vividly. I am a descendent of slaves no doubt and have had more than my fair share of history lessons on the subject but until that day I’d never experienced the terrible feeling that was probably comparable to only a minute fraction of the emotions my ancestors felt. The riotous way Jones met his maker was definitely a reoccurring event in my hometown, and coming to terms with that fact nauseates me.  As a modern day kinda girl, sometimes I want so badly to be able to erase any ties I have to such a horrible place where even more unbearably horrific things happened. The more my family and I went back there, the more I would mentally and emotionally distance myself from it and all that it means: my slave blood, murderous people, the wilds of Africa, etc. Much like McKay’s “dim regions from whence my fathers came/ My spirit [was] bondaged” by the slavery stained history of not only my family, my place of birth, but of me. I yearn so badly to escape the chains of who I am historically and fully submerge myself into “the great western world” and “never hope for full release” of all that the seemingly more blended American world has for me.  

#10 Reacquainted With Love

Firstly, it must be said that I greatly enjoyed reading these two texts. My most significant Aha! Moment came from reading Charles W. Chestnutt’s “The Wife of his Youth”. In reading the first section of the short story, I became deeply invested in Mr. Ryder’s aspirations of proposing to Ms. Dixon. I rejoiced in the fact that he set out to organize a ball in honor of the lady he had fallen in love with. This earned Mr. Ryder several points in my book. I fell even more in love with his character as he looked to the poet Tennyson for written expression of his feelings for the lovely sounding Ms. Dixon. The way in which Tennyson describes Queen Guinevere is heartwarming. The lines which read, “A man had given all other bliss/And all his worldly worth for this,/To waste his whole heart in one kiss/Upon her perfect lips", resembled the way in which I feel for my very own boyfriend, to whom I aspire to marry one day very soon. I feel like he is a secret treasure shared with me from God and that I have been entrusted with his very tender and loving heart. At this notion, I so deeply wished to read on and make sure that Mr. Ryder’s proposition for marriage was accepted and to read the undoubtedly poetic way in which he would express his delightfulness in having his love reciprocated. With this in mind, one can see how I was taken a back at the introduction of his elderly female visitor and her distraction from the love story that I had expected to take place. As she began to tell Mr. Ryder her story, an idea ran past my mind, for an extremely brief moment, that he could in fact be the man she’d been tirelessly searching for. However, I quickly dismissed the thought by saying to myself that Mr. Ryder and his whole heart belonged to Ms. Dixon, and that surely they were to be together. This old woman seemed, in my mind, incapable of ever holding the attention and affection of the refined, scholarly, and debonair Mr. Ryder. Ms. Dixon was the only woman capable of doing such a thing, she was his perfect female counterpart.   Once Mr. Ryder began to explain the old woman’s testimony to the party guest, I thought he chose her story rather than the Tennyson poetry to Segway into his proposal to Ms. Dixon. I began to question this idea once he used the old “my friend has a problem “ example when he said that a friend of his came to him with asking for advice. Everyone knows that when they have a problem that they are embarrassed claim as their own, they use the example of knowing a friend who has said problem. As I read that the old woman was indeed “ the wife of his youth” I was admittedly a tiny bit sad for his future with Ms. Dixon, but at the same time rejoiceful for the elderly woman who could at last end her search for the man who’d captured her hearts affection so many years ago. 

# 9 History Repeating

       The contemporary connection I found from the years 1865 to 1914 had to do with the struggle for rights that African Americans faced and how that is very similar to the contemporary Chicano Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Slaves that were previously denied any type of privileges and rights were suddenly given a voice by President Lincoln and other legislative amendments, now deeming them as a real part of American society. The same happened with the indigenous people of Mexico who had lived  there all their life when suddenly, after the U. S. won parts of the Mexican territory (present day California ) from the Spanish-American War, they now found themselves in America. Literally overnight, they had become American citizens. Although these people were technically on American soil, they were no more American than the African slaves who had been captured and brought there centuries before. Like they newly emancipated African American slaves, the previously Mexican “Americans” in the US were thrust into the population, having to abide by the nations rules and regulations, but had no real representation or any way in which to participate in the government that was ruling over them. Both Mexican’s and freed blacks experienced the discrimination from white supremacist groups when they attempted to garner some support and privileges for their own rights. The KKK disenfranchised blacks when they tried to vote with literacy test and intimidation. At the same time, Mexicans were being exploited in the farm laborers market with unfair working conditions and very low wages. However, Mexicans continued to participate in the labor market because there was no other job opportunity for them.  The same way blacks were discriminated by whites over the issue of race, Mexican Americans too faced scrutiny for their tanned complexion, being referred to as dirty and Chicano, which originally functioned as a derogatory term that was later used to unite the movement behind an individual identity. Participants of the Chicano Movement used tactics like protesting, marches, and large gatherings to persuade the government to take heed to the lack of Chicano representation and the inequality they faced. African Americans also made efforts at moving the government to include this extremely large former slave population in its ideas for the country. I am also sad to say that like the freed slaves efforts to be painted into the picture of an American, the Chicano Movement also faced much opposition and to some still remains to see its efforts come into fruition.  

# 8 Response to Sophie Milner

            As Sophie takes on a Northerners perspective to reread the poem The Death of Lincoln and the diary A Diary From Dixie, I wish to expand upon the ideas she brought up in her analysis. In the poem about Lincoln’s death, it is very apparent to see the great sorrow that it brought upon the people of the north, the loss of their great leader. In a northerner’s perspective, it appears that Lincoln was like a martyr to their cause for the abolition of slavery. Just the way that John Brown was depicted as a martyr when he was executed for his actions at the Harper Ferry Raid. Lincoln had just dealt the south a big blow with the Thirteenth Amendment and Gen. Lee’s surrender was giving the Union increasing hope that they had gained the upper hand, when suddenly possibly the most devastating type of blow came to the north with Lincoln’s death.  The poem later expresses that even in Lincoln’s death, he will still be regarded as being “ among  the noble host of those who perished in the cause of Right.” On a side note, I personally thought it interesting that although there were a staggering amount of deaths in the Civil War, 600,000, totaling greater than any other previous war's deaths combined, that fact didn’t seemed nearly as heart breaking to northerners when compared to Lincoln’s death. Thousands and thousands of their young men and boys even  were being slaughtered in the south, and no great emotional sentiments were expressed or mentioned along with Lincoln’s death. Now, in reference to the diary of Mary Boykin Chestnut, as Sophie’s northern perspectives portrays, great offense must have been taken by the remarks expressed in the diary. Not only were the Northerner’s seen as “red ants, like the locusts and frogs which were the plagues of Egypt”, getting at their claims to be such good Christians, but they were furthere demeaned when Mary Darby stated that “now [they] belonged to negroes and Yankees!”, at the news of Lee’s surrender. I feel like as a northerner, although they were pro-antislavery, to have the comparison to a slave would have been very perturbing in their minds. I suspect that people of the north already had a low minded impression of people of the south due to the fact that they engaged in the brute act of slavery; once Lincoln was assassinated and the conspiracy to revenge the Confederacy defeat was proposed as the purpose for his death, I imagine that the already low view of southerners decreased even more in the eyes of the Yankees. At Mary Chestnut’s claim that the Yankees “murdered him themselves”, a person of the north would have been very outraged to be charged with the death of their great, Christ-like leader and President. Likewise, at the remarks of President Lincoln “not [being] the last … put to death in the capital”, I think the north may have felt like they, the south, had already taken their greatest hope, what/ who is left for them to take that could leave as equally a painful scar as did Lincoln’s death.