When I think about family pride I remember a story my mother tells with glee. A simple story ,of a simple man (my grandfather) who stood against what he believed to be the injustice of the day. When the rabble-rousers came into his small town in Mississippi on trains and in busses to stir up the pot of conformity he was waiting there with a shotgun in hand.
According to my mother, There were these uppity sorts from “the North”… those damn Yankees couldn’t leave well enough alone and they had the gall to begin an all out invasion of their peaceful town.

As those rebels dismounted from their busses and trains, my grandfather was approached by the Police officers who were there to keep the peace.
They asked him “ What are you doing down here Old timer?”

To which he replied “Just making sure there ain’t going to be no trouble.”

We’ve got it under control they said, and he nodded his head and headed back to his farm.

My mother tells this tale in awe of his dignity and his belief in his fellow man to do what is right. She tells this story with admiration of a man who stands up for his ideals. After all the man was her father, a humble man with a good heart.

The truth of the tale though sends a cold chill down my spine. The so called rabble rousers are actually the activists of Dr. Martin Luther King who had carried the dream of freedom even further than it had gone before. Here stands my family, loyal to the old way of viewing the world..

I can give all manner of excuses as to why he behaved as he did; in the end he followed the mob. He followed the fear. As such, his experience was full of the fear and the sorrow that was involved in the new evolution of society.

When viewed from the eyes of a loving daughter, it is a testament of her father’s steadfast righteousness. When viewed from the eyes of history, he is another person who didn’t see the problem as it truly was. Yet another ignorant peasant, led by a mind that was unwilling to think outside of the box as it had been painted by his southern heritage.

He was a sharecropper by trade, only one or two steps higher on the social ladder than the black folks around town anyways. But only in appearances, for he ate at the back counter with the rest of them. Rode at the back of the bus. Had to use the colored’s drinking fountain and rest rooms as well… My grandfather built churches for the Negro communities and more often than not lived among them as a neighbor and a friend. He helped build barns and coops with his neighbors (as was common in the days when we tended our own lands) never minding if it was a new immigrant family nor if it was one of the black families that were sharecropping on a plot close by or perhaps even bought it outright with loans from the bank or their savings.

As to the reason why my grandfather brought his shotgun to the rail road station that day I am unsure if I shall ever understand what he was thinking.

It does make me begin to wonder though.
After all my family always knew my grandmother was 1/2 Cherokee squaw, could it be that my grandfather was actually whitewashed? Could he have been protection for Dr. King, all undercover and secret agent like? Or was he just another mindless oaf out to scare off the rabble rousers before they could cause any series damage.

The story about my grandfather’s childhood is rather strange. According to the legend (as there is no record of his actual birth) my grandfather practically raised himself. Both parents dying very early on in his youth, by the age of 12 he acquired a fellow lost child to take care of. A young black boy who at the time was about 5 or 7 years of age. They grew up together as if they were brothers, according to the story. My grandfather helped him get work away from Mississippi as the climate there was too rough for black people at the time. The young man even took up my grandpa’s family last name as his own and by the telephone directory as proof I’d say that he probably became Catholic (IE: Highly prolific). What if he, my Grandfather was the product of a mixed union and the young boy who was of a darker skin tone was actually his brother. As rural folk go they usually don’t travel too far from their starting origin, which would mean that his parentage would be known by locals. Children of mixed families had it rough on both sides. Not accepted as white and not accepted as black. They fell into a middle ground that still can cause tension.

What if a union of the churches in the south had spoken to the white sympathizers with a passion to help them provide protection for their brothers up north? Grandpa never said who the rabble rousers were. He could have been talking about the folks in the towns getting all riled up about this so called invasion the news papers were talking about, or he could have been talking about the passengers on the trains and buses from up north.

Sadly there is also a good chance that my grandfather was just simply an ignorant man. Caught up on the hype of the day that was fed to him by the government in the form of radio broadcasts and newspapers about the evil Dr. King and his communist ways. Brought up on the daydreams of old Confederate soldiers who bedazzled young boys with the wonders of the Camelot in America not that long ago.

I guess my biggest gripe is the shotgun, after all how cliché is that.