Christmas with the family or as I sometimes call it, the meeting of the angry black people (Stay Black! Stay Angry!), brought up another crime the white man committed against our family. This year it was farmland Great Grandpa Kelly had, that the white man took away, sold for a pittance and cut Great Grandpa a small check for. Two relatives, whipped themselves up into a frenzy about how they were going to get the land back. Which will be hard considering it is currently part of a municipal airport. Dibs on the middle of runway 2.
History is filled with tons of stories of injustices, conflicts, and lots of things left unresolved. This just not the great man on the horse history, it is also relatively unknown individuals, their descendants, or their associates (connected by membership, ethnicity, nationality, local ties, etc). Descendants may file/make claims of restitution or restoration, digging in courthouses, libraries and archives to find evidence to support them. Or associates hold past wrongs done to them as justification to fight, to resist, or to distrust.
Playing out on the neighborhood level or in local politics, old (shall I call them ‘historic’?) arguments get dusted off, and are given new life in current fights against or for initiatives, as with the proposed tax on grocery bags. Historically, the municipal government has not always been fair, equitable or just with the Black and struggling populations, and that history has been well ‘preserved’ for the present day pastime of bringing class and race into the discussion.
Present day DC bureaucrats and politicians will be/are judged by the misdeeds of their associates (who have yet to be let go or voted out of office) as well as their predecessors dating back to the establishment of the federal city. I wonder how many DC citizens are still smarting from unanswered phone calls, poor city services, and other negativies occurring years ago, possibly several administrations ago, forgetting the positive efforts, mad at the present office holder?
It is history. It is not the great man on the horse history, but is part of the narrative of how we live today. Things might have been different for me if Great Grandpa Kelly never lost his land. Maybe my grandfather, his son, would have been something other than a North Carolina sharecropper, working his own land as opposed to the land of a white landlord. It’s not great history, but a chapter in my family’s history. Who knows maybe my aunt and cousin will find the documents and make a case against the county, or the bank (or the bank that bought that bank) or whomever ‘stole’ the land. I doubt it, but on the off chance they win, dibs on the runway.