“Oh, brother, I definitely know that feeling,” David said. “It ain’t hardly no fun.”
They laughed at their common misery, and I didn’t know whether to feel flattered or foolish.
Any More White Folks
It had been five years since I’d found the daguerreotypes and the letters of Matthew Thatcher, Adeline Routledge, and Judith Hutchinson in the library of Routledge College, and had learned who these women were, that they’d been enslaved on Wood Place Plantation. When I’d dried my tears, I’d understood something else: only half of the history had been told.
That Judith and Matthew probably had been more than friends was obvious, but the college had concealed that fact, as had everyone going back to Adeline Routledge. When I asked Dr. Oludara, and then Uncle Root, why this was the case, they both told me it had been an open secret among the historians teaching at the school. But no one in the college’s administration had wanted to reveal that Matthew and Judith were lovers: it was too explosive, in racial terms. Too embarrassing and complicated. And so that part of the college’s founding had been buried.
Then I’d let myself be fooled: I became high with the ease of my search. Even before I finished that final semester of my master’s program, I’d already outlined my doctoral dissertation on the two formerly enslaved women who had escaped from Wood Place and ended up in Boston. Dr. Whitcomb had been so proud of me: I’d sailed through my coursework for the doctoral program with perfect grades, and I’d passed my comprehensive exams with distinction that next year. So I was disappointed to find that besides the letters, there wasn’t much else on Adeline and Judith to use for my dissertation. There was so much more material on the Pinchards and Matthew Thatcher—their lives, their land, the people that they’d owned—but I didn’t want to focus only on what I’d found in the possessions of white men. The most interesting thing I’d discovered was of no use to my dissertation, though it was bound to cause a stir in my family: it appeared that Samuel Pinchard’s son Victor had married a Grace Franklin, sibling to the same Franklins from whom Chicasetta’s most odious family was descended. Which made us all distant cousins.
For a year, I was “all but dissertation” for my doctorate on Adeline and Judith and Black women’s education. I continued my research, driving down to Georgia during my winter and fall breaks, and spending time walking through my granny’s farm. I sifted through the overgrown ruins of the plantation house, where I found broken shards of cooking pots, a corncob pipe, and twisted iron. The bricks of the plantation had been made with stiff hog’s hair. The cemetery where my great-grandmother, father, and sister were buried contained the remains of generations of Wood Place enslaved folks. It was segregated, with a grass-covered space separating the two sides where the white Pinchards and the Black folks rested. In the latter space, most of the graves didn’t have stones.
But for months something bothered me, and when I woke one morning, I was embarrassed I hadn’t realized what it was before. It was so simple: somehow the saga of Adeline and Judith was interconnected with the lives of the other slaves at Wood Place. And I had been ignoring the three people who could tell me at least a bit about their stories.
*
In July, I drove down for the family reunion in Uncle Root’s town car. My own car finally had died, and he’d given me the long Lincoln to take back to North Carolina, saying it was still a good automobile, and his driving days were over. I waited until after the reunion to begin approaching this new aspect of my dissertation, about the enslaved folks at Wood Place, until the days would settle back into languor. I asked the old man, could I stay with him a few days more?
The morning that I interviewed him, he’d wanted our talk to take place early in the day. He was sharpest before noon. When I came down for the morning, he asked me, how formal did I want him to be for our interview?
“You’re not going to be on public television. I’ll only be recording you on this.”
I showed him my new piece of equipment.
“Look at that tiny little thing! Isn’t technology wonderful? Ailey, this is the first time I’ve ever been recorded. I want to be very professional.”
“As opposed to what? I’ve never even seen you in jeans and a T-shirt.”
“And you never will, as long as my head is hot!”
After I set the recorder on the coffee table, I looked at my legal pad. I’d written down basic questions. Dr. Whitcomb had told me, in his experience, even simple queries would yield great results, especially with elderly subjects. Just remember, don’t try to control their answers. And keep my opinions to myself, if at all possible.