and was now tracing her rebel ancestry.
“My father’s mother’s maiden name is Frank, and they came fromsomewhere in central Europe originally,” she said. “Maybe, oh maybe, I’m praying that I’m kin to Anne Frank. That would be the greatest thing in the world.”
I STAYED A WEEK in Salisbury, attending several more meetings with the Curtises. By the end, I knew the words to every stanza of “Dixie” and had learned to distinguish the rebel battle flag from the first, second and third national flags of the wartime South. I’d also begun to realize that the Curtises logged more miles for the Confederacy each year than the Army of Northern Virginia.
But my last day in Salisbury, I decided to attend a remembrance of a different sort. The third week of January marked not only the birthdays of Lee and Jackson, but also of Martin Luther King Jr. In the reconstituted world of the 1990s South, the Confederates’ birthdays were now discreet affairs, celebrated in library back rooms, while King’s was a national holiday. Virginia, I later learned, had attempted a bizarre fusion of the Civil War and civil rights, creating “Lee-Jackson-King Day” (all three men were “defenders of causes,” the state legislature proclaimed). But the hybrid didn’t take and most Virginians continued to celebrate their heroes separately.
The same was true in Salisbury. Blacks observed King’s birthday with a parade and a service at a small church a few blocks from the town’s Confederate monument. Ushers handed out paper fans decorated with King’s picture on one side and a funeral home advertisement on the other. A dozen or so whites sat near the front, including the mayor, sheriff and county judge.
The service began, like the other meetings I’d attended, with the pledge of allegiance and with tunes that echoed Southern history, albeit from the opposite shore of racial strife and liberation.
Heaven help the black man if he struggles one more day
.
Heaven help the white man if he turns his back away.
Heaven help the man who kicks the man who’s had a fall
.
Heaven help us all
.
The “birthday message” by a visiting minister also spoke to the legacy of the Civil War. “Frederick Douglass said over a century agothat America cannot remain half slave and half free,” he began. “He said the sky for blacks was dark but not rayless. I would say the same today. Do you hear me?”
“Yessir!”
“Some of us are still ashamed to be known as African-American. We have tried to assimilate harder than any other. We try to talk like other folk, we are afraid to laugh. When I was coming up, you could hear us laugh a block away. Talk to me, somebody!”
“Tell it, Rev!”
“We’re not cannibals. We don’t stew folks in pots or wear bones through our noses. When I was a child I read about L’il Black Sambo putting tiger butter on pancakes. At school I learned about Robert E. Lee. But nobody told me about the peanut man, Booker T. Washington. I didn’t hear about
our
heroes. We can’t all be superstars. Most of us are just hardworking average folk. But you are somebody special because God didn’t make any junk. I’m going to pick at this bone just a little bit and then leave it alone.”
“Nossir! Go on now!”
“Dr. King said you must be willing to stand for something or you will fall for anything. Jesse Jackson said it doesn’t matter what boat brought you to this country. We’re all in the same boat here. So let’s come together. Let’s hold hands now and smile at each other.”
The choir broke into song and everyone joined in, belting out “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” I’d heard Julia Ward Howe’s anthem to abolition a hundred times before. But listening to it now, through the prism of the Civil War, I was struck by its explicitly martial tone and its vivid imagery of 1860s army life.
“He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible, swift sword …
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a
“My father’s mother’s maiden name is Frank, and they came fromsomewhere in central Europe originally,” she said. “Maybe, oh maybe, I’m praying that I’m kin to Anne Frank. That would be the greatest thing in the world.”
I STAYED A WEEK in Salisbury, attending several more meetings with the Curtises. By the end, I knew the words to every stanza of “Dixie” and had learned to distinguish the rebel battle flag from the first, second and third national flags of the wartime South. I’d also begun to realize that the Curtises logged more miles for the Confederacy each year than the Army of Northern Virginia.
But my last day in Salisbury, I decided to attend a remembrance of a different sort. The third week of January marked not only the birthdays of Lee and Jackson, but also of Martin Luther King Jr. In the reconstituted world of the 1990s South, the Confederates’ birthdays were now discreet affairs, celebrated in library back rooms, while King’s was a national holiday. Virginia, I later learned, had attempted a bizarre fusion of the Civil War and civil rights, creating “Lee-Jackson-King Day” (all three men were “defenders of causes,” the state legislature proclaimed). But the hybrid didn’t take and most Virginians continued to celebrate their heroes separately.
The same was true in Salisbury. Blacks observed King’s birthday with a parade and a service at a small church a few blocks from the town’s Confederate monument. Ushers handed out paper fans decorated with King’s picture on one side and a funeral home advertisement on the other. A dozen or so whites sat near the front, including the mayor, sheriff and county judge.
The service began, like the other meetings I’d attended, with the pledge of allegiance and with tunes that echoed Southern history, albeit from the opposite shore of racial strife and liberation.
Heaven help the black man if he struggles one more day
.
Heaven help the white man if he turns his back away.
Heaven help the man who kicks the man who’s had a fall
.
Heaven help us all
.
The “birthday message” by a visiting minister also spoke to the legacy of the Civil War. “Frederick Douglass said over a century agothat America cannot remain half slave and half free,” he began. “He said the sky for blacks was dark but not rayless. I would say the same today. Do you hear me?”
“Yessir!”
“Some of us are still ashamed to be known as African-American. We have tried to assimilate harder than any other. We try to talk like other folk, we are afraid to laugh. When I was coming up, you could hear us laugh a block away. Talk to me, somebody!”
“Tell it, Rev!”
“We’re not cannibals. We don’t stew folks in pots or wear bones through our noses. When I was a child I read about L’il Black Sambo putting tiger butter on pancakes. At school I learned about Robert E. Lee. But nobody told me about the peanut man, Booker T. Washington. I didn’t hear about
our
heroes. We can’t all be superstars. Most of us are just hardworking average folk. But you are somebody special because God didn’t make any junk. I’m going to pick at this bone just a little bit and then leave it alone.”
“Nossir! Go on now!”
“Dr. King said you must be willing to stand for something or you will fall for anything. Jesse Jackson said it doesn’t matter what boat brought you to this country. We’re all in the same boat here. So let’s come together. Let’s hold hands now and smile at each other.”
The choir broke into song and everyone joined in, belting out “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” I’d heard Julia Ward Howe’s anthem to abolition a hundred times before. But listening to it now, through the prism of the Civil War, I was struck by its explicitly martial tone and its vivid imagery of 1860s army life.
“He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible, swift sword …
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a
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