Author's mother,13, far right, with her family. 1942.
The Story Behind the Book
When I set out to write this story, I had two questions I wanted to answer for myself. One, how did my family get to be the way they were? And, how in the world can you make an entire race of people disappear into the background, as we whites did in Mississippi during Jim Crow?
The first question, took me into a new relationship with my parents. My mom and dad, both refugees from poor, backwoods farming families, much like Hazel and Floyd, somehow pulled themselves into a comfortable upper middle-class lifestyle. But like immigrants who come to America committed to protecting their children from their own traumatic existence in the old country, my parents talked very little about their childhood, perhaps out of shame, or pained memories, or perhaps not to burden my brothers and me with a past they had done their best to escape and were dedicated to saving us from. My parents were determined that their children would have every chance at success that was deprived them.
So when I began writing about the period in which both their childhoods occurred, I told them I needed their stories to make my book authentic. They put their reservations aside and made every effort to give me what I needed. They opened up the very fabric of their lives to me. They showed the scars and shared the secrets they had carried like soldiers from a long-ago war. I learned that my parents lived heroic lives. At some of their stories I was saddened; some filled me with gratitude; some made me laugh; others horrified me. Through this experience, my parents took on a larger dimension. No longer did I view them as merely characters in my own life story, as if their entire existence, and worth, could be summed up in what kind of parents they had been to me. They became much greater than that. They became these amazing characters in a larger saga, only one aspect of which was “being my parent.” The greatest reward in writing the book was to fall in love with my parents as the fascinating people that they are, to allow them their own story, one that was free of my childhood estimations. In turn, they put me into the larger story of “my people.”
The question about Jim Crow didn’t captivate me until I was in my thirties and had lived outside Mississippi in Minnesota for several years. I had one of those moments in which you see for the first time, what has been before you all along. I’ve heard those moments called BGO’s—a Blinding Glimpses of the Obvious. A perfect description, because in a split second, it dawned on me that, having been raised as a white male in Mississippi, my entire identity rested on a complex system of lies, most of which had been right in front of me, but which I hadn’t seen. That realization happened one day in 1988, while watching old black-and-white newsreels of the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi. That’s when it hit me, my BGO—“Oh, my God, that wasn’t just black history. That was also my history. I was part of it and I missed the whole thing! These people, white and black, made me who I am, and I know nothing about it!” The staggering effect was like a curtain suddenly rising between me and half the population I had grown up with but never really seen.
I’ve since learned a new definition of the word "perception" and it explains quite well the phenomenon of selective vision.. It goes like this: perception is seeing what we believe instead of believing what we see. At that moment in 1988 I realized I must have been carefully groomed as a white boy to see the world in a way that conformed perfectly to the prevailing concept of white superiority. Not groomed in the formal sense, necessarily, but by picking up the coded language, beliefs, attitudes and prejudices that pervaded my society, that were practiced by those whom I loved, and were bestowed upon me as a token of that love, a perverse love that said that I was special because of my skin. But no one sat me down and explained, here’s how to be a racist. I absorbed it from the world around me, just as I did the religion that infused our culture. It felt good to be special, so I readily believed it, unquestioning of the price.
What intrigued me as a writer was the question, in what ways was I groomed to be a racist, without my even noticing? How does a society go about oppressing half of its members under an inhumane system of governance called Jim Crow in way that is perfectly acceptable in the eyes of a young white boy, one who was already steeped in the loving principles of Jesus Christ? As a practical matter, how does a toxic society like this operate day-to-day, at a community, neighborhood and personal level and appear so seamless, virtuous, and perfectly amenable to everyone? What was it that both whites and blacks did to make this life appear pre-ordained and so natural? What roles did blacks themselves play to make this system workable, and what was the real cost to them? What went on with blacks when they weren’t playing the role of contented, inferior? What did they do and say, how did they act when whites weren’t looking on? What did they really think about us?
I knew none of these things, and I was certain I would never know my own story until I found out. I assure you, the best way to find out about something of which you are ignorant is to write a book about it.
So as I did with my parents, I began to ask black Mississippians to share their stories with me, of growing up at the same time, in the same State, but in an entirely different world. And like my parents, they were generous with their stories, in part I believe to set the record straight about the lives of African Americans in the age of Jim Crow. Indeed, like my parents, they gave me heroes to write about.
In her lovely book, Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels has a character who is a writer give this advice to a novice. “First write to save yourself…then write because you have been saved.”
In many ways, writing this book saved me. My parents and my fellow Mississippians whom I never “saw” until I was ready to see my own brokenness, lovingly gave me what I needed to heal my very soul.
When I set out to write this story, I had two questions I wanted to answer for myself. One, how did my family get to be the way they were? And, how in the world can you make an entire race of people disappear into the background, as we whites did in Mississippi during Jim Crow?
The first question, took me into a new relationship with my parents. My mom and dad, both refugees from poor, backwoods farming families, much like Hazel and Floyd, somehow pulled themselves into a comfortable upper middle-class lifestyle. But like immigrants who come to America committed to protecting their children from their own traumatic existence in the old country, my parents talked very little about their childhood, perhaps out of shame, or pained memories, or perhaps not to burden my brothers and me with a past they had done their best to escape and were dedicated to saving us from. My parents were determined that their children would have every chance at success that was deprived them.
So when I began writing about the period in which both their childhoods occurred, I told them I needed their stories to make my book authentic. They put their reservations aside and made every effort to give me what I needed. They opened up the very fabric of their lives to me. They showed the scars and shared the secrets they had carried like soldiers from a long-ago war. I learned that my parents lived heroic lives. At some of their stories I was saddened; some filled me with gratitude; some made me laugh; others horrified me. Through this experience, my parents took on a larger dimension. No longer did I view them as merely characters in my own life story, as if their entire existence, and worth, could be summed up in what kind of parents they had been to me. They became much greater than that. They became these amazing characters in a larger saga, only one aspect of which was “being my parent.” The greatest reward in writing the book was to fall in love with my parents as the fascinating people that they are, to allow them their own story, one that was free of my childhood estimations. In turn, they put me into the larger story of “my people.”
The question about Jim Crow didn’t captivate me until I was in my thirties and had lived outside Mississippi in Minnesota for several years. I had one of those moments in which you see for the first time, what has been before you all along. I’ve heard those moments called BGO’s—a Blinding Glimpses of the Obvious. A perfect description, because in a split second, it dawned on me that, having been raised as a white male in Mississippi, my entire identity rested on a complex system of lies, most of which had been right in front of me, but which I hadn’t seen. That realization happened one day in 1988, while watching old black-and-white newsreels of the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi. That’s when it hit me, my BGO—“Oh, my God, that wasn’t just black history. That was also my history. I was part of it and I missed the whole thing! These people, white and black, made me who I am, and I know nothing about it!” The staggering effect was like a curtain suddenly rising between me and half the population I had grown up with but never really seen.
I’ve since learned a new definition of the word "perception" and it explains quite well the phenomenon of selective vision.. It goes like this: perception is seeing what we believe instead of believing what we see. At that moment in 1988 I realized I must have been carefully groomed as a white boy to see the world in a way that conformed perfectly to the prevailing concept of white superiority. Not groomed in the formal sense, necessarily, but by picking up the coded language, beliefs, attitudes and prejudices that pervaded my society, that were practiced by those whom I loved, and were bestowed upon me as a token of that love, a perverse love that said that I was special because of my skin. But no one sat me down and explained, here’s how to be a racist. I absorbed it from the world around me, just as I did the religion that infused our culture. It felt good to be special, so I readily believed it, unquestioning of the price.
What intrigued me as a writer was the question, in what ways was I groomed to be a racist, without my even noticing? How does a society go about oppressing half of its members under an inhumane system of governance called Jim Crow in way that is perfectly acceptable in the eyes of a young white boy, one who was already steeped in the loving principles of Jesus Christ? As a practical matter, how does a toxic society like this operate day-to-day, at a community, neighborhood and personal level and appear so seamless, virtuous, and perfectly amenable to everyone? What was it that both whites and blacks did to make this life appear pre-ordained and so natural? What roles did blacks themselves play to make this system workable, and what was the real cost to them? What went on with blacks when they weren’t playing the role of contented, inferior? What did they do and say, how did they act when whites weren’t looking on? What did they really think about us?
I knew none of these things, and I was certain I would never know my own story until I found out. I assure you, the best way to find out about something of which you are ignorant is to write a book about it.
So as I did with my parents, I began to ask black Mississippians to share their stories with me, of growing up at the same time, in the same State, but in an entirely different world. And like my parents, they were generous with their stories, in part I believe to set the record straight about the lives of African Americans in the age of Jim Crow. Indeed, like my parents, they gave me heroes to write about.
In her lovely book, Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels has a character who is a writer give this advice to a novice. “First write to save yourself…then write because you have been saved.”
In many ways, writing this book saved me. My parents and my fellow Mississippians whom I never “saw” until I was ready to see my own brokenness, lovingly gave me what I needed to heal my very soul.
The author with his mother, Fay Johnson