Lawrence P. Jackson

I picked this up on a whim from the University of Chicago Press winter sale 2 yrs ago, it sounded intriguing - "Armed with only early boyhood memories, Lawrence P. Jackson begins his quest by setting out from his home in Baltimore for Pittsylvania County, Virginia, to try to find his late grandfather’s old home by the railroad tracks in Blairs. My Father’s Name tells the tale of the ensuing journey, at once a detective story and a moving historical memoir, uncovering the mixture of anguish and fulfillment that accompanies a venture into the ancestral past, specifically one tied to the history of slavery." Man am I glad I did!

"And years later, when I reflect that he might have chosen a birthday card that he could not read, and signed a name on that card in an alphabet that was murky to him, or called me from a place that was not his home, I understand that I am only beginning to know the heavy trust of his distant love."

Jackson weaves an interesting combination of a localized history (of Pittsylvania County VA), mostly with regard to slavery, interwoven with the personal narrative of a family history that he pieces together. Jackson is about to have a son, and this occasion has spurred him to looking into his own past. He happens to wind up somewhat close to the area his family comes from, and decides to take a drive and go see if he can't find his grandfather's old home, where he hasn't been for 30 years. Once in the general area he ends up having to ask several people he encounters how to get to the more specific area he's trying to find, and not quite getting there, before finally calling his mother to ask for help. She gives him some pointers, and also reminds him his (great) aunt's house was across from the school. He comes upon his grandfather's house by chance - a man that he's encouraged to talk to is actually renting that very house, and after talking to him a bit, and learning the spelling of the last name of the sister & brother-in-law his grandfather had lived with, he then goes back to check on Aunt Sally's house, and suddenly finds himself in the midst of his grandfather's family.

"In the middle of the stacks closest to the street were the massive volumes indexing the county's marriage certificates and deed books between 1767 and 1889. I began looking up the marriage records, maneuvering the weighty leather-bound volumes off the rods with alacrity and rushing them three feet over to the examination table before I could feel their heft. Laywers must have been as strong as farmers at one time, or maybe they were all the same people."

It's not until a few more years later that he comes back to the area again to start really digging into things, and spends two days searching in the town records for any clues he can find. And surprisingly, he manages to find a good deal. Mainly because for some reason, his grandfather also put his parents' (Jackson's great-grandparents) names down on his father's birth certificate. This is what really enables him to piece things together.

"Some black people I have known counter that look of remote defensiveness by making every interaction with whites a confrontation with the enemy. The author Richard Wright once wrote of another style, insistent and obsequious; but in my day, apart from courtrooms, welfare offices, hospitals, banks, and police stations, I have not seen black people kneel in fear and submission. I have, however, witnessed numerous occasions where I watched blacks zealously guarding white feelings. As for my approach, I style myself a spy in the enemy's country."

Pretty much every African American [of non-recent immigrantion] knows that just a few generations back, their family were slaves. They were property. Everyone is aware of it, everyone is at least mildly familiar with that period of American history, you simply can't not be. But it is one thing to "know," and another thing to go through preciously preserved pieces of history in special collections libraries in the south, and suddenly find yourself holding the little ledger book of the asshole who sold your great-grandfather's father to the county's professional "Negro Trader" for $1690.00, and your great-grandfather's mother and two children to someone else for $2,050. Because he was in need of money and selling everything off. While your great-grandfather was about four years old and went with neither of them, but was likely there, watching. I just. I can't even begin to imagine. Not to know, not to have some vague ideas of "yes it happened," but to literally hold in your hands... No. I have no words. It just hurts.

"White Americans' willingness to tell a story they are intrigued by but distant from, and black Americans' reluctance to bore into the same topic at depth, suggests that whites understand our history as a puzzle, and we blacks pick at it like a sore."

I would definitely recommend this to everyone. This was an excellently written slice of both personal history and American history. And, for anyone curious, UCP actually has an excerpt up on their site here, where you can take a look at it for yourself.… (altro)