The Power of Testimony

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When I was growing up, my father liked to teach us things. One
time he took my younger sisters, Beth and Susan, and me with
him when he was delivering something to a home-​mission church
in Paterson. It wasn’t far—​less than four miles—​but a world away.
After completing the errand, he drove us to the Great Falls on the
Passaic River. We got out of the car to peer over a rusted, wobbly
railing. The churning water of the falls was so full of garbage and
brown foam that it looked like sewage. I had never seen a natural
site so defaced. The riverbank was lined with crumbling, graffiti-​
covered buildings, their broken windows like blank, blind eyes.
“Girls, those are abandoned silk mills,” my father said. He went
on to tell us about the silk industry and how it had once been
Paterson’s economic engine. He described how “the Negro people”
came up from the South to get the mill jobs, but the working conditions
were terrible. There were strikes and picket lines and riots,
but the city always sided with the mill owners.
“What shut down Paterson’s silk mills wasn’t justice,” my father
said. “It was polyester.”
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