Nineteen Fifty-Six Vol.4 Issue 2

IS...
never
knew some of the things I shared
in the presentation about her. Remain
persistent and diligent throughout the
years to collect, record, and document
what came before you.
Had I not documented this history and
had oral accounts to go along with it, I
probably would have never known that
some events that fueled the movement
in Greene County were my Nana getting
hit during the demonstration by a white
deputy in downtown Eutaw and my
Papa’s brother being shot and killed by a
white man. And so, as my grandmother
is telling me this story, she says, “You
won’t find a lot of this in the newspaper.
It wasn’t newsworthy.” It was not
documented and the Black folks during
that time did not have many cameras or
phones to do their own documentation.
It is sad that people can walk this Earth,
live a life, and some folks don’t even have
a record of their existence. People need
to be affirmed that they were here and
that they took up space!
History is also a gift to anyone who is
reading. My grandmother’s story is a
gift to me. My passion for mutual aid,
community involvement, social justice,
and even radical space were already
things that my grandmother was doing.
Imagine if I did not know these things.
It is from this history that allows me
to imagine big possibilities, ones that I
don’t believe my Nana has ever imagined,
but she started and here I am picking up
the torch doing some of the exact same
things just in a different way.
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