Starting Now.

“Have you given thought about the places…that have been erased by progress?” - Catherine Meeks

My parents and siblings were making plans to expand the commercial kitchen which supports a family business on rural land.  One scenario called for moving the one hundred year old Little House which from the 1920s through the 1970s was home to Black tenant farmers, caretakers, cooks, and house servants. 

For decades the Perry family lived there—  from grandparents to grandsons— nearly three times longer that I have ever called the same house home.

My family’s decision-makers decided to move the Little House; this was called “progress”. Others were against the move, but they would not “go against the family.”

At the 11th hour I had an idea: I would buy the Little House. If it had to move, I would take it away with me for safe keeping. I had been told, “It is too late to change course. The house movers are coming. It is a done deal.” The house was moving, but maybe I could hold it in trust until I could make a plan.

When I confided in someone about my idea to buy it away from my family,  they called that course of action “the nuclear option.” 

I did not really know what “the nuclear option” meant, but it scared me. I questioned my motives, and worried about the damage to relationships.

 I backed down.

The progress happened.

The house was moved from its foundation.   

No one else ever knew that I was trying to buy the Little House - that I had called the bank to arrange for a transfer of funds.

No one in power saw moving the house as an act of erasure- erasing the potential to recall Black homestead and story. Wait. I take that back. I have power. And I saw it as an act of erasure, but I did not interrupt it.  

Some of the history of the home is in a book. But it is no longer rooted in its story with a future threaded to a past. This  happens all the time, of course, but this happened in my orbit, on my watch, within my sphere influence, in reach of my financial means and power.  

When you erase place-based story, you give up a lot of turf.  (Including a future when linked descendants you don’t yet know will find their way to land or structures bringing stories you’ve never heard.) Would the family who lived in the Little House for decades as renters, most of it without an indoor toilet, wish a little land with the Little House right there in the middle of it?

Practice: Recall places close to home that have been erased by progress. What is something in your power to interrupt, though others may call it “ridiculous.” Do you have the resources that you would need to act? How could you be ready? Have you shared your hopes with linked descendants and landcestors? What do they want? 

Prayer: Give me clarity and courage, Lord, to preserve places in anticipation of Black joy and my own, too. 

Learning: Linked descendants are people connected to one another through slavery and its legacies. Linked Descendants Working Group and check out the Bittersweet Blog. Catherine Meeks newest book is The Night Is Long But Light Comes In The Morning.