‘Run, N-gger, Run’

I stumbled upon a classic American folk song earlier this year... one I’d never heard of before.

It’s called “Run, Nigger, Run.”

This tune – under the variant title “Run, Boy, Run” – is an old-time country music standard. It has been recorded by famous fiddlers such as Eck Robertson and Earl Collins, and by banjo-pluckers like Uncle Dave Macon and Jim Smoak.

But those were instrumental versions. You can click here and sample Fiddlin’ Eck Robertson’s rendition from the 1920s, streaming on my Vox audio stash.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Catchy little melody, isn’t it?

Now, ready for a version with lyrics? Click here for “Run, Nigger, Run” as recorded in 1927 by the Skillet Lickers (pictured). Again, I’ll wait.

Oh, I wish I could see your face right now. In case you couldn’t make out the words, he’s saying:

Run nigger run, the pateroller catch you,
Run nigger run, well you better get away...

Nigger run, nigger flew,
Nigger tore his shirt in two,
Run, run, the pateroller catch you,
Run nigger run, well you better get away.

Just so you know, the Skillet Lickers were NOT the house band for the Ku Klux Klan. They were a popular and influential group that recorded this song (and more than 100 others) for Columbia Records!

Also, they didn’t write it. “Run, Nigger, Run” was already a part of Southern folklore. Click here to listen to a verse recited by a white woman in Tennessee, as documented by folklorist John Quincy Wolf.

Now here’s the real surprise: “Run, Nigger, Run” was originally a black folk song. More precisely, a song sung by slaves.

And that, of course, gives a whole different meaning to the lyric. “Run, nigger, run” isn’t supposed to be a threat; it’s a cheer... and a word to the wise.

Listen for yourself. The only black version I can find is a half-minute fragment by prison inmate Mose “Clear Rock” Platt, recorded by folklorists John and Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. Click here.

There is much documentary evidence that this was a popular song amongst colored folk. Joel Chandler Harris, that famous white expert on Southern Negroes – (he wrote the “Uncle Remus” stories) – mentions the song by way of defining the black term “patter-rollers” (“patrols”).

“In the country districts,” Harris wrote, “order was kept on the plantations at night by the knowledge that they were liable to be visited at any moment by the patrols. Hence a song current among the negroes, the chorus of which was: ‘Run, nigger, run; patter-roller ketch you – Run, nigger, run; hit’s almos’ day.’ ”

Another white gent, Abraham Hoss Yeager, wrote in his autobiography about a folk song which “grew out of the custom of appointing patrols to see that the Negroes stayed in their quarters at night.”

“It gave them extreme pleasure to elude these nocturnal guards,” Yeager continued, “and they celebrated their narrow escapes by song. The Negroes called these guards ‘patty rollers,’ and they embalmed the name in the chorus: ‘O! run Nigger run the patty roler’l catch you; O! run Nigger run it’s almost day.’ ”

Deeper still, the song was referred to by elderly ex-slaves in various documented “slave narratives.”

Harre Quarls of Texas remembered: “[U]s couldn’t go anywhere ’cept us have pass from our massa to ’nother. If us slips off, dem patterrollers gits us. Patterroller hits 39 licks with de rawhide with de nine tails. Patterroller gits 50 cents for hittin’ us 39 licks.

“Captain, here am de words to de patterroller song: ‘Run, nigger, run, patterroller cotch you...’ ”

Likewise, Cresa Mack of Arkansas told an interviewer: “I remember that they used to sing: ‘Run nigger run, The paddy rollers catch you...’ Course if they catch you without pass, they’d beat you nearly to death, and tell you to go home to your master.”

The most detailed recollection comes from a man named Sylvia Floyd of Mississippi. Here is what Mr. Floyd told a U.S. government interviewer, exactly as it was rendered in the official transcript:

SYLVIA FLOYD: ... Dey never let ’em leave de plantation wid out a pass, an’ dey had patrole riders to go out an’ git ’em ifen dey didn’t come in. Dey didn’t hab to be much late ’fore yo’ could hear ’em commin’ after ’em.

De darkies use to pull pranks on de patrole riders by strechin’ grape vines across de road to throw de horses. At other times de slaves ’ud git a little riled up an’ jump de traces a little by fightin’ back wid fire, but dey couldn’t never do much fer dey never was allowed to git together enough to carry out nothin’. De patrole riders kept ’em purty well rounded up an’ seperated only ’cept long enuf fer a little frolicin’.

Dey use to sing dis ole song ’bout ’em:

Run, nigger, run, de patrole’s a commin’,
Run, nigger, run, de patrole’s a commin’,
Dat nigger run, dat nigger flew
Dat nigger tore his shirt in two
Run, nigger, run!

A positive spin on the Ku Klux Klan

Ever feel like the KKK gets a bum rap?

I mean... there’s two sides to every story, right? Maybe a case can be made that the original Klansmen were heroes. Freedom fighters. Manful defenders of their women. Soldiers of God.

Well, don’t risk pulling a muscle on that little mind experiment, because the case was made. In the Encyclopedia Britannica, the finest compendium of general knowledge in the English language.

You know I love rummaging through old texts. You step back in time 100 years, you’re bound to discover some interesting perspectives on things. Dig it: The contents of the classic 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (now unprotected by copyright) are online and searchable at www.1911encyclopedia.org.

For shits and grins, I looked up “Ku Klux Klan.”

The current Encyclopedia Britannica describes the Klan as “either of two distinct secret terrorist organizations in the United States, one founded immediately after the Civil War..., the other beginning in 1915...”

But the word “terrorist” wasn’t used in the 1911 edition. To say the least. Here is how the 1911 entry begins:

“KU KLUX KLAN, the name of an American secret association of Southern whites united for self-protection and to oppose the Reconstruction measures of the United States Congress, 1865-1876.”

Self-protection? Okaaay. Tell me more.

“The object was to protect the whites during the disorders that followed the Civil War, and to oppose the policy of the North towards the South, and the result of the whole movement was a more or less successful revolution against the Reconstruction and an overthrow of the governments based on negro suffrage.”

Wow. Sounds kind of valorous when you put it like that. How did this revolutionary movement begin?

“[The Ku Klux Klan] began in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a social club of young men. It had an absurd ritual and a strange uniform. The members accidentally discovered that the fear of it had a great influence over the lawless but superstitious blacks...

“The various causes assigned for the origin and development of this movement were: ... the corrupt and tyrannical rule of the alien [i.e., Northern whites], renegade and negro...; the disfranchisement of whites; the spread of ideas of social and political equality among the negroes; fear of negro insurrections; the arming of negro militia and the disarming of the whites; outrages upon white women by black men;” –

Naturally.

– “... the humiliation of Confederate soldiers after they had been paroled – in general, the insecurity felt by Southern whites during the decade after the collapse of the Confederacy.”

Perfectly understandable. So what were the Klan’s stated principles?

“[T]he following are characteristic: to protect and succour the weak and unfortunate, especially the widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers;” –

Awww... widows and orphans. Nobody ever talks about that!

– “to protect members of the white race in life, honour and property from the encroachments of the blacks; ... to defend constitutional liberty, to prevent usurpation, emancipate the whites, maintain peace and order, the laws of God, the principles of 1776” –

People, let me hereby repeat: This is from the ENCYCLOPEDIA FREAKING BRITANNICA!

– “and the political and social supremacy of the white race – in short, to oppose African influence in government and society, and to prevent any intermingling of the races.”

I see. So how were these noble principles actualized? What were the Klan’s tactics?

“To control the negro the Klan played upon his superstitious fears by having night patrols, parades and drills of silent horsemen covered with white sheets, carrying skulls with coals of fire for eyes, sacks of bones to rattle, and wearing hideous masks.”

(Pictured at left is a genuine 1870 Ku Klux Klan mask from the North Carolina Museum of History.)

Shit! That sure would scare me good. Not to mention the bullwhips and guns. Oh, right... you didn’t mention the bullwhips and guns. Anyhoo, please continue, Encyclopedia Britannica...

“In calling upon dangerous blacks at night they pretended to be the spirits of dead Confederates, ‘just from Hell’.... Mysterious signs and warnings were sent to disorderly negro politicians. The whites who were responsible for the conduct of the blacks were warned or driven away by social and business ostracism or by violence. Nearly all southern whites (except ‘scalawags’), whether members of the secret societies or not, in some way took part in the Ku Klux movement.”

All right now, reality-check time. Was there anything negative about the Ku Kluxers? What about that violence you alluded to?

“In some communities they fell into the control of violent men and became simply bands of outlaws, dangerous even to the former members; and the anarchical aspects of the movement excited the North to vigorous condemnation.”

So give me the bottom line, 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. What did the original KKK accomplish?

“[T]he Ku Klux movement went on until it accomplished its object by giving protection to the whites, reducing the blacks to order, ... expelling the worst of the carpet-baggers and scalawags, and nullifying those laws of Congress which had resulted in placing the Southern whites under the control of a party composed principally of ex-slaves.”

The End.

Dang. With such a romantic view of the KKK inscribed even in the Encyclopedia Britannica, is it any wonder that a new Klan arose in 1915 and lives on to today?

But let’s end on an up note.

As much as our modern imagination pictures Negroes quaking in terror from the night-riders... as much as that old encyclopedia speaks of fearful and superstitious blacks... there is this New York Times item, published March 19, 1868:

Artifact: Slave and master duke it out!

You’ll find some amazing documents floating around on the Internet. Stuff that makes history jump to life.

For instance, there’s the complete text of an 1895 memoir titled “The New Man: Twenty-nine Years a Slave, Twenty-nine Years a Free Man,” by Henry Clay Bruce.

What follows is a recollection unlike anything you might’ve seen in “Roots”… or even “Mandingo.” I’ll have more to say about H.C. Bruce and his autobiography at a later date. For now, just let your mind paint a picture of this:

HENRY CLAY BRUCE: I am reminded of a fight I once witnessed between a slave and his master. They were both recognized bullies. The master was a farmer, whose name I shall call Mr. W., who lived about three miles from Brunswick, Missouri. He had, by marriage I think, gained possession of a slave named Armstead.

Soon after arriving at his new home his master and he had some words; his master ordered him to “shut up,” which he refused to do. The master struck him and he returned the blow. Then Mr. W. said, “Well, sir, if that is your game I am your man, and I tell you right now, if you lick me I’ll take it as my share, and that will end it, but if I lick you, then you are to stand and receive twenty lashes.”

They were out in an open field near the public road, where there was nothing to interfere. I was on a wagon in the road, about forty yards distant. Then commenced the prettiest fist and skull fight I ever witnessed, lasting, it seemed, a full half hour; both went down several times; they clinched once or twice, and had the field for a ring, and might have occupied more of it than they did, but they confined themselves to about one fourth of an acre.

Of course Armstead had my Sympathy throughout, because I wanted to see whether Mr. W. would keep his word. They were both bloody and also muddy, but grit to the backbone. Finally my man went down and could not come to time, and cried out, “Enough.” There was a creek near by, and they both went to it to wash.

I left, but was informed that the agreement was carried out, except that Mr. W. gave his whipped man but six light strokes over his vest. Could he have done less? But I have been informed that these men got along well afterwards without fighting, and lived together as master and slave until the war.

Stilled life

I hate to bum y’all out on a Monday. This link is definitely not for everybody.

But here is a Flash movie by James Allen based on his book “Without Sanctuary,” a collection of photographic post cards of black people lynched by whites.

It’s hard to wrap one’s mind around these grim artifacts of American social history. But the practice of lynching, the administration of “mob justice” – like so much of our shared past – was a more complicated phenomenon than we give it credit for.

Whites, for example, lynched plenty of white folks too. (Back in February, I mentioned the case of Roy Belton.) This Flash movie includes a photo of the hanging body of Leo Frank, whose lynching inspired the formation of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.

Some blacks, such as followers of the Nation of Islam, place lynching high in their bill of indictment against the White Man. Some white racialists who express themselves on the Internet point to the disproportion of black violent crime today and say the lynchers did what they had to do to protect white communities from Negro savagery.

Me, I look at these photographs and struggle to connect with the humanity on both ends of the rope. Human beings did this. To other human beings. And nothing human is alien to me.

(Hat-tip: The Electronic Village by way of AfroSpear.)

Booker T. Washington speaks

“To those of my race who… underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: ‘Cast down your bucket where you are’ – cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded. …”

You know I love peculiar media artifacts. Especially those that make American history come alive (such as narratives by ex-slaves).

Well, imagine my shock and awe to come across an actual voice recording of Booker T. Washington from 1906! (It was recorded on an Edison cylinder, and it’s the only known record of Washington’s voice ever made.)

Washington, as president of the Tuskegee Institute, became the most prominent black American of his era. He rubbed elbows with U.S. presidents. Himself born a slave, Booker T. Washington advocated an up-by-the-bootstraps self-improvement philosophy that has resonated in the black community ever since.

On September 18, 1895, Prof. Washington addressed a largely white audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. That speech is now known as the “Atlanta Exposition speech” (or, by some, as the “Atlanta Compromise”).

It’s the speech that made Booker T. Washington a national figure.

Because he didn’t push for “social equality” with whites, he was later attacked by W.E.B. Du Bois, who declared: “Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission. ... [His] programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races.”

But most black leaders at the time praised the Atlanta Exposition speech.

White folks really praised it. President Grover Cleveland sent Booker T. Washington a congratulatory letter. The New York World newspaper called him “the Negro Moses.”

“As Prof. Washington strode forward to the edge of the stage,” wrote James Creelman in the New York World, “the low, descending sun shot fiery rays through the windows into his face. A great shout greeted him.”

The journalist continued: “There was a remarkable figure; tall, bony, straight as a Sioux chief, high forehead, straight nose, heavy jaws and strong, determined mouth, with big white teeth, piercing eyes and a commanding manner. The sinews stood out on his bronzed neck, and his muscular right arm swung high in the air with a lead pencil grasped in the clinched brown fist. … His voice rang out clear and true, and he paused impressively as he made each point. Within ten minutes the multitude was in an uproar of enthusiasm – handkerchiefs were waved, canes were flourished, hats were tossed in the air. The fairest women of Georgia stood up and cheered. It was as if the orator had bewitched them.”

Creelman also reported: “Most of the Negroes in the audience were crying, perhaps without knowing just why.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Levering Lewis calls the Atlanta Exposition speech “one of the most consequential pronouncements in American History.”

The voice recording I stumbled upon isn’t from the Atlanta Exposition itself. Washington recited parts of his speech 11 years later, in 1906, to make a phonograph record for reasons unknown.

Still, it’s a thrill to hear the words in his own voice (notwithstanding the surface noise of a 100-year-old cylinder).

To hear a three-and-a-half-minute streaming mp3 of Booker T. Washington’s speech, click here.

You can purchase it for download here, on eMusic. There’s also a shorter (and cleaner-sounding) version available on iTunes, from a CD titled “Every Tone a Testimony.”

You can read the entire Atlanta Exposition speech here, or read more about it here.

The Vice President and His Mulatto (p.p.s.)

Brenda Gordon has also sent me a fascinating artifact relating to the half-hidden history of her family… and of American politics.

It’s a newspaper article dated November 29, 1832. Here’s what the Lexington Observer and Kentucky Reporter had to say about the marriage of a white man, Thomas W. Scott, to Adeline Johnson, daughter of future U.S. Vice President Richard M. Johnson and his octoroon slave/common-law wife Julia Chinn.

(Mrs. Gordon discovered about a decade ago that Richard Johnson and Julia Chinn are her great-great-great-grandparents. She transcribed this article from a microfilm copy at the Kentucky History Center.)

Marriage Extraordinary! MARRIED, In Scott County, on the 8th inst. By the Rev. ------*, Mr. THOMAS W. SCOTT, a white man, to Miss ADELINE J. JOHNSON, a mulatto girl, and reputed, or acknowledged, daughter of the Honorable Richard M. Johnson, one of the Representatives of the state of Kentucky in the Congress of the United States!

A few days after Mr. Scott became the happy husband of the FAIR and lovely Adeline, he was presented by her father, the “good Colonel,” with a fine tract of land, known as the “Blue Spring farm,” for which a deed has been regularly made and entered of record in the office of the Clerk of the Scott County Court. The deed runs, “to Thomas W. Scott and Adeline J. Scott, his wife, jointly, their heirs,” &c.

This is the second time that the moral feelings of that portion of the people of Scott county who possess such feelings, have been shocked and outraged by the marriage of a mulatto daughter of Col. Johnson to a white man, if a man, who will so far degrade himself; who will make himself an object of scorn and destation to every person that has the least regard for decency, for a little property; can be considered a white man. About two years and a half ago, a Mr. DANIEL PENCE, married IMOGENE, Colonel Johnson’s eldest daughter; and, as has more recently been the case with Mr. Scott, was soon after rewarded for his degradation, by being put in possession of a large farm and a number of slaves to cultivate it.

How long will the people of Scott County – of Kentucky – permit such palpable violations of the laws of their state to be commited with impunity! How long will the moral and religious part of the community suffer such indecent and shocking example to be set for their sons and the rising generation, before they put their veto upon them? – before they consign to private life at least, if not to infamy, those who encourage such violations of the laws both of God and of man? The laws of Kentucky forbid, under heavy penalties, a white man’s marrying a negro or mulatto, or living with one in the character of man and wife. Why should Pence and Scott not be held amenable to the laws? What are the Grand Jury of Scott about? … Will they suffer Pence and Scott to go unpunished because they have become the sons-in-law of Col. Johnson? – We hope not. We hope to see the supremacy of the laws of the country maintained, although persons high in office should be made to feel their weight.

* The Rev. Thomas Henderson, Principal of the Choctaw Academy, is said to have performed the marriage ceremony between Mr. Scott and Miss Adeline. We incline to doubt his having done so; for we have a higher opinion of Mr. Henderson than to believe he would be guilty of such an outrage against public opinion and the laws of his country.

The Vice President and His Mulatto (postscript)

Brenda Gordon thanked me warmly for yesterday’s post. She also sent me a link to the above image: a political cartoon from 1836 which attacks Richard M. Johnson by mocking his love for Julia Chinn and his fathering of quintroon daughters.

Titled “An Affecting Scene in Kentucky,” the cartoon shows Johnson – at that point the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee – distraught after reading the New York Courier and Inquirer (a pro-slavery newspaper). The cartoonist put these words into Johnson’s mouth:

“When I read the scurrilous attacks in the Newspapers on the Mother of my Children, pardon me, my friends if I give way to feelings!!! My dear Girls, bring me your Mother's picture, that I may show it to my friends here.”

That’s supposed to be Julia Chinn in the painting, wearing the turban. Of course, being an “octoroon” (one-eighths black), the real Julia Chinn most certainly wasn’t brown-skinned. Johnson’s two daughters even less so.

The cartoonist also ridicules the black man at Johnson’s right side, having him (in Negro dialect) pledge “de honor of a Gentlemen dat all de Gentlemen of Colour will support you.”

The cartoonist was Henry R. Robinson, a prominent illustrator of the era. In fact, you can order a lithograph of “An Affecting Scene in Kentucky” for yourself from the Library of Congress! (Click here, and you can also read a little more about the cartoon, including what those other characters are saying.)

You can also read about the cartoon here, at the Harper’s Weekly website.

The Vice President and His Mulatto

Half-hidden in the pages of history is a fascinating tale about race, sex and politics in 19th-Century America.

Let’s begin in the present day with Brenda Gene Gordon, a 67-year-old white woman in Chandler, Ariz. Very nice lady.

Mrs. Gordon is directly descended from a U.S. vice president… but she didn’t discover that fact till recent years. Her ancestor is Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky, the ninth Vice President of the United States (1837-1841). He served under Martin Van Buren.

How on earth could Brenda Gordon not have known that her great-great-great-grandfather was Vice President Richard M. Johnson? Wasn’t this fact passed proudly from generation to generation inside her family?

No, it was not.

Why not? Because the woman who bore Johnson’s two children – a woman named Julia Chinn – was, by law, a Negro. And in Johnson’s time (not to mention since), that was scandalous.

“I grew up never hearing the names Richard M. Johnson (even in Kentucky history classes) or Julia Chinn,” Mrs. Gordon wrote to me during a recent email correspondence.

How much of a “Negro” was Julia Chinn? Well, she was a slave… a slave Johnson inherited from his father. She was “Negro” enough that Richard Johnson couldn’t have married her legally.

Yet she was his mate. His common-law wife, in effect.

“She was the hostess at his Kentucky home when [French aristocrat] the Marquis de Lafayette visited,” wrote Lindsey Apple, a retired Georgetown College history professor, in answer to questions from me.

Evidently Julia Chinn was one-eighths black (i.e., she had one black great-grandparent). She was described as a “mulatto” but she was, more precisely, an “octoroon.”

No paintings of Julia are known to exist, but she must’ve been very light-skinned. Her two daughters by Richard M. Johnson – Imogene Chinn Johnson and Adaline (or Adeline) Chinn Johnson – both married white men.

Which means that Imogene and Adaline were bona fide, fully vested white people. Well-off ones at that, because Richard Johnson gave some of his farmland to each of them and their husbands.

Growing up, “Imogene and Adaline Johnson lived in their father's Kentucky home and enjoyed their parents’ undivided attention,” wrote historian Wilma King in 1997. “Johnson, a Baptist known as a humanitarian among his contemporaries, indulged his daughters and provided for their education. … Imogene and Adaline Johnson received instruction ‘until their education was equal or superior to most of the females in the country.’ ”

Quite extraordinary.

Especially when you consider that Richard Mentor Johnson was a politician. His career included service in Kentucky’s state legislature (1804-1806; 1819), the U.S. House of Representatives (1807-1819; 1829-1837) and the U.S. Senate (1819-1829) prior to his becoming vice president.

I still can’t figure how he managed to get elected and re-elected – in Kentucky! – when his love life with a Negro slave was pretty much an open secret.

Johnson’s political enemies certainly spread the word about his babies’ mama.

Duff Green, a partisan journalist of the era, is said to have described Julia Chinn as “a jet-black, thick-lipped, odiferous negro wench.” Duff declared it “astonishing” that Richard Johnson had “reared a family of children whom he endeavored to force upon society as equals.”

Prof. Apple, in his email, told me: “Some of the propaganda, i.e. mudslinging said he tried to introduce his wife and daughters into Washington society. I have found no evidence to substantiate that.”

Indicative of the historical fog surrounding Julia Chinn, author Roger G. Kennedy, in his 1990 book “Rediscovering America,” stated wrongly that she “served as the vice president’s official hostess in Washington.”

Prof. Apple points out that “Julia died in the cholera epidemic of 1833”… several years before Johnson became vice president. And during Johnson’s years in Congress, Julia stayed behind in Kentucky, overseeing his large farm.

At least Roger Kennedy knows there’s a story here. He described Julia Chinn as a “deliberately forgotten woman.”

Forgotten indeed. But she lurks in the annals of U.S. political history.

No less a man than Abraham Lincoln made reference to her. And not in a good way. He exploited Richard Johnson’s relationship with Julia Chinn to score a point against Stephen Douglas during the legendary Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858.

Lincoln asserted, to the applause of his audience, that “I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races… nor qualifying [negroes] to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people…”

Lincoln went on to say this:

I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.] My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. …

I will add to this that I have never seen to my knowledge a man, woman or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negroes and white men. I recollect of but one distinguished instance that I ever heard of so frequently as to be entirely satisfied of its correctness – and that is the case of Judge Douglas’ old friend Col. Richard M. Johnson. [Laughter.]

Is it any wonder that, even among Johnson’s descendants, some historical amnesia took hold?

Which brings us back to Brenda Gordon. She has been researching her family’s history for the past decade. (I stumbled across an old post of hers on a genealogy website and decided to track her down. The first I’d heard of Richard M. Johnson was while reading that passage from the Lincoln-Douglas debates.)

Brenda Gordon’s interest was piqued when she acquired family photos and memorabilia dating back to the time of Daniel B. Pence. He was the man who married Julia Chinn’s older daughter, Imogene, in 1830. (Daniel and Imogene had six children. One of them was Brenda Gordon’s great-grandfather, Daniel Franklin Pence.)

It was an uncle who sent Ms. Gordon pages from the Pence family Bible. He also sent her photocopied pages from a 1932 book, “The Life and Times of Colonel Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky.” This uncle also sent along his own drawing of the family tree.

“I don't recall whether my uncle and I actually talked about Julia being a mulatto, or if I read it in the pages from [the 1932] book,” Gordon wrote to me. “My uncle had a wry sense of humor and when he got to my daughter on the drawn tree, he wrote the following comment: ‘Does this mean Leigh's the first red-haired pick-a-ninny in captivity?’ ”

I’m not crazy about pickaninny jokes, but Brenda Gordon’s uncle highlighted an intriguing thing: the amorphousness of the color line. Usually when a prominent white man snuck sex with a colored girl, and it resulted in a baby, that child was raised among the colored folk… as colored. Such was the case in my own family, just three generations back.

Julia Chinn’s offspring, however, got a passport to whiteness. I mean big-time, because Imogene Chinn Johnson – daughter of a slave – owned black slaves herself after she married Daniel B. Pence.

By the time Brenda came along, the full family story may not have been considered her birthright… but a white identity surely was.

“I really don’t know if the silence came from race issues or not,” Brenda Gordon wrote. “It’s quite possible because my mother (also named Imogene) was shall we say ‘social minded.’ My birthday parties were announced in the newspaper and I went to social dancing school at the right age and on to belong to the Jr. Cotillion. My family didn’t have any money, but we appreciated nice things, were attractive and intelligent. … The emphasis seemed to be on the Pence surname rather than Johnson.”

And now that Gordon has dug up the truth? Well, this happened:

“I haven’t lived in Kentucky for over 40 years, but still have friends there and go back every few years…. However, I do know that race is still a big issue there whether or not they admit it. … A few years ago when I was there visiting friends and doing some research I told them about the family history, as I thought it would be of interest to native Kentuckians. However, one of the husbands definitely didn’t want to read or hear anything about it, and we had all been friends forever.”

Yep. That’s what you get for looking too deep in the woodpile.

“I certainly don’t have a problem with the heritage and just find the whole thing fascinating,” Gordon wrote. “Searching for more information has given me many hours of entertainment.” (I feel you, sister.)

Plus, Brenda has new insight on her middle name, “Gene,” which may be a “watered down” version of Imogene… a direct callback to her quintroon ancestor, Imogene Chinn Johnson. (Yes, “quintroon” is a word. At least it used to be. Times were different back then, you know.)

It’s Confederate History and Heritage Month!

That’s right, y’all. Down yonder in the South, April is known as Confederate History and Heritage Month.

Not everybody is cool with this. In 2006, for instance, the mayor of Suffolk, Va., refused to sign a proclamation recognizing Confederate History and Heritage Month. And so the national Sons of Confederate Veterans boycotted that city’s annual Civil War Weekend.

But in Cobb County, Ga., last week, it was a black member of the county commission – one Annette Kesting – who announced the proclamation in honor of Confederate History and Heritage Month.

Kesting, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “said she had no trouble honoring the Confederate cause.”

“They were fighting for their families and their history,” Kesting said. “Everyone is entitled to their history.”

Can’t argue with that. And since my peoples all hail from Virginia – the capital state of the Confederacy – I aims to do my part throughout the month of April to recognize Confederate History and Heritage Month on this here blog.

Shall we start by listening to the voice of an actual freed slave?

Alice Gaston was born as chattel in Gee’s Bend, Ala., in 1853. She was still in Gee’s Bend in 1941 when ethnographer Robert Sonkin visited and recorded this three-minute interview. Alice Gaston had vivid memories of the end of “slavery time.”

It blows my mind to have this woman’s voice coming out of my laptop today, in an America she never could have imagined. I acquired this piece of living history – plus audio files and transcripts of 22 other former slaves – on CD-ROM from a website called Paperless Archives. Check ’em out, they have lots of great digitized artifacts.

Y’all come back now, hear?