Dear Lord, Please Quiet My Troubled Soul

Dear Lord, please quiet my troubled soul

And may I ever be so bold

As to make a plea

Worded only to thee

To give my weary soul

A dose of heavenly bold

To say what must and should be said

About the living and the dead

And from this morose and sadness rise

And lift my eyes up toward the skies

And though I know not where you really abide

Allow me to stand by your riven side

For whose burdens do now I feel

And from whose stories must I steal

To tell the truth to those who hear

And bring repentance to every ear

Not my story for it is surely their own

I listen and listen until I moan

For their bodies and souls to be set free

Anointed and graced my humble plea

Broken bodies healed

Spirits once crushed by your love is sealed

Injustices noted and sins against revealed

White peoples’ crimes no longer yield

Oppression now gone

Let freedom ring

They own the land

All voices with passion now sing.

Amen

Sacred Journeys: Theirs and Ours

For those of you who have been following Shoun Hill and me on either our Facebook fundraising page or here on this blog, we thank you. If you have, you know then that I have been sharing a little about the sacred stories and the sacred journey that we have been on. That journey will continue until the Black farmer documentary premiers and then beyond as we intend to use it to tell the stories of struggle and resilience of these amazing people and their fight for justice.

We have just returned to our homes and our beloveds in our cities of choice. Between Sunday and Friday, we traveled from the Bronx, NY and Denison, TX to the northern sections of North Carolina, southern Virginia, and the Durham, NC area.  We conducted five interviews for well over 12 hours and numerous hours of b-roll footage that Shoun will use in his artistic way to tell the stories of injustices done to Black farmers at the hands of the USDA and DOJ.

We are focusing on the limited number of cases that were settled with the USDA and DOJ between 1997 and 1999. Their stories are riveting. Terribly riveting.

Most of these farmers had their cases settled which means a dollar amount, debt relief, and priority services if they continue in farming. We have not asked the interviewees about money or debt relief. Those numbers are actually available most likely via Freedom of Information Act.  We'll see. We'll not reveal any specific numbers for specific farmers, just aggregates.

Along the way, we are coming face to face with a bitter reality. Several bitter realities in fact. Discrimination started very early in their farming days. Farming while Black in America is a dangerous occupation. The list of discriminatory acts is lengthy: farm operating plans changed to accommodate the county supervisor, a supervisor who "lost" the applications, overt acts of aggression such as a confederate tie around the neck of the supervisor or a gun displayed at the desk, too little money coming too late, supervised loans (while whites did not have such), debt relief not offered, and foreclosures without justification. The list is long, very, very long.

The legal processes themselves are brutal, lengthy, and painful.

We have come face to face with farmers and families who tell us that the settlement was not satisfactory. After all, how much is a life work, a kidney, an eye, the battle with diabetes or hypertension, or a marriage or a family.  No amount of money can replace a loved one.

So, as we got to the airport in Raleigh-Durham and headed to Atlanta and on to our homes. We were satisfied that we had done the technologies of recording and interviewing. On the other hands, our hearts were full of stories, expressions of grief, displays of anger, and lives realizing that dreams were lost.

The resilience of the farmers and families is inspiring. Their faith, commitment to their calling, and faith in doing the right thing will inspire us all.

We have one more week of interviewing and much, much work to do. 

Thank you for following us and supporting these efforts.

We Lingered in the Spaces and Places of Silence

Shoun and I have completed day five of our travels.  Charla has accompanied us, and what a joy she is.  We have a routine established. Shoun sets up his camera equipment.  I manage the paperwork and explanations and all. Charla stays along the fringes, being helpful to Shoun or the family. Shoun then gives the instructions of counting to three after a question and after and answer.  This is the hard part for me of interviewing versus conversing. I got good marks yesterday and today.

Our interviews have spanned the generations, elders, young adults, and slightly older adults. The conversations have been with family and friends of friends. We interviewed in a quaint and comfortable library in one small North Carolina and in the comfort of a living room in a home two hours from the first interview.

I am struck tonight with the raw emotion of stories. Stories are both evocative and provocative I have said for years. We live in and through our stories.  Our stories give us meaning.  They set the parameters of who is in and who is out of families and spaces and places.

An interview, though not a therapy session, is designed to elicit stories. The interviewee sits with camera on her or him.  I sit off to the side, out of the glare of the lights or the stare of the camera. I have to ask good questions.  It is their story that the camera and I are searching for.  I am aware of the power and influence of questions.  Questions can be biased, gender insensitive, or whatever. I have to be very, very aware that I am a white man asking questions of African American farmers and families.  My face likely looks like the faces of those who discriminated against them.

Sometimes I just have to sit back and do nothing more than listen.  The person starts at a place and goes to whatever place is deemed narrative worthy.  Within the text is sacred space and dialogue.  Within the spaces between are poetry, intensity, and deep, raw emotion.

Today we listened to stories of a movement.  I was very, very curious about how a family situation turns into a movement.  The grand narrative of service to others is rich throughout the time with them.

Today we listened to stories of loss and grief and about passing the baton from one generation to the next. We listened painfully as the living rehearsed the stories of the deceased, how their lives will never be the same, and how the USDA robbed them of their beloveds.  The design of class action suits is anywhere from restoration of wholeness, or payment for pain and suffering, or any number of other things. Sadness can turn into anger and resentment in a heart beat.

In the cases of these farmers and families, there is never enough money, and there never will be enough money to pay for their losses.  Some have wished that their loved one had walked away.  That way, they would still have their loved one.  With others, we discussed, so, how much is an eye worth, or a kidney, or a heart, or a brain, or a marriage, or a family. For such, there is no price.

We lingered in between the answers to the questions and the next question.  Yes, we lingered in those spaces and places of silence.  Those sacred moments of silence were not to be unnecessarily cluttered with words. 

So, thus we wrapped up a five day period of interviews. We conducted five interviews with five people. We have five more interviews to conduct over the next little while.

Until the next one, I think I'll continue to linger in the spaces and places of sacred silence.

Interviewing Legends, How Does One Do That?

Today was another one of those days that defies description. We cannot meet in the Community Center because the A/C would be too loud, so we move to the local community's library.  There we are greeted by the head librarian who shows us a conference room to the back of the building that will be remote and quiet.

Shoun sets up his recording equipment.  I discuss details and legalities with the interviewees, and then we are ready to begin.

How does one interview family? How does one interview legends? How does one interview people who both family and legends? That was my task for today. I just want to do well.

This is personal and uniquely so.  Some farmers I met briefly 25 or so years ago.  Some I have just met.  While the bonds of attachment form quickly when centered around things that matter, this interview is different.  Across the table sits a brother and a sister whom we have known for 14 years.  We have traveled the road together, celebrated with food, discussed things that matter deeply, and have learned to love each other despite our different backgrounds, races, and all manner of other things.

She asked me if I was part Black. I was taken aback. No one has ever asked me about that. She then said something about how much passion I bring to these issues.  My response was, "I think my soul is brown." We chuckled and moved on.

It was another memorable interview.  There are all memorable. This one was memorable.

We discussed family history, legacies, leadership in the community, and how a farm could educate them and their siblings.  We discussed how in different ways each of them was a national figure.

We could have lingered for hours.  The thing that brought us together was painful.  The USDA not once, not twice, but three times had agreements to settle the injustices done to their parents.  Not once, not twice, but three times, the USDA finagled their way out of the agreements.  This family has withstood enormous pressures to hold on to their land.  Insurmountable odds have been placed in their way, yet they still own the land.  They still live on the land.

They and their parents have spent well over 100,000 hours fighting for their cause.  They have spent untold amounts of their money in attempting to find justice for their parents who died prematurely in the cause.

As the evening shadows began to creep, we sat on their property, taking pictures, filming, and
conversing about things that matter. We flicked the mosquitoes off. We'll fight them later. They are growing older.  We are growing older. We'll not be here forever.

We wanted to linger. And then linger some more.  Again, the ground was sacred. We talked of dying and entombment and where.

Then it was time to go. We departed like friends with hugs and words of affection.

Yes, today I interviewed legends who are family. Family who are legends.

Moments not soon forgotten.

More Holy Ground, More Sacred Ground: Day Two of Travel

A certain familiarity exists as we make our way out of the city of Roanoke Rapids, NC to Tillery. Charla knew exactly which roads to take, which turns to take. At every mile of the way, memories came back with their sights, sounds, smells, and pictures.

I remember meeting the Watermelon Man at that store over there.  I was flipped off while driving over there.  We dined over real country cooking over there.  I interviewed one farmer up the road to the right that bears his name. There are many attachments to these stretches of highway.

We exit town on 125, then turn on 903, and then locate the sign that says Tillery to the left. We drive through what was the Tillery Resettlement Community, a product of the New Deal under President Roosevelt in the '30s and '40s.  We pass the highway, "Over the Farm," which means that our friends' homes are down that road to the right and the left. The sarcophagus of the elders who have passed over, Matthew and Florenza Grant, is down this road on the right. On a wall over my desk back at home is a photo engraved on a plaque for "A Man Called Matthew Award," and that same picture is on t-shirts that we have in our sacred collection.

Fields lie fallow.  Others have been plowed and prepped for planting. New houses spring up. Old houses are falling down. Life goes on.  It waits for none of us.  Not even you or me.

We take a quick left turn down a dirt path to the office of Gary Grant.  We embrace. We sit for over an hour, remembering and recalling, and calling us out to do well in the world. Again, a familiar place with familiar smells, and a family face.  This building was once Matthew Grant's casket factory. The front is Gary's office.  We have sat there many times before. We hope to sit there again and again. We are welcomed to the office, the desk, the hall with the photos on the wall, including one of two of our grandsons wearing BFAA shirts.

After another left and then another left, over there on the left is the Community Center, the hub of activities for the African American community of the larger area.  It has been this way for years. Hopefully it'll serve the people for years to come. Immediately to the right is the Curin' House, The Tillery History House, a museum for the area.  In those archives are recordings and transcripts of interviews in which I sat and listened to story after story of Black farmers across the south back in 2005. Sacred recordings in my estimation.

We first met the Open Minded Seniors, and the Concerned Citizens of Tillery, while meeting face to face with the president of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association about this time fourteen years ago, or 2005 to be exact. They still meet in the same location. It has that familiar smell, sounds, and feel to it.

We do the usuals, prayers, songs, exercise, and then lunch. The elderly are served at their tables by the younger elderly.  We are all elderly.

Charla and I are inching our way out the back door when Gary insists that we return.  We must say some things.  Gary is not one with whom to trifle. We did.

He introduced us with grace, history, and humor.  Then he gave the mike to me.

Time was drawing to an end, and I did not want to drone over and over for these elderly saints, so I summarized things as succinctly as I could. Our gratitude for the Grant family who took us in, for people like Doris and Cary who accepted us, and some of them whose faces we remember. I shared the dream of the Black farmer documentary. There were many amens and other words of affirmation. These elderly saints know the trials of farming while black. I was humbled by their responses, moved to do well even more than ever. People are watching what we do.  They are awaiting for what Shoun and I will bring to the table from the stories we are hearing.

Tomorrow we return for interviewing and filming.  Shoun will capture the conversations and then he will film "B-roll" footage for the documentary.  We'll have more interviews on Thursday. Then on Friday, we'll all fly home.  Shoun to the Bronx, and Charla and Waymon to Denison.

We live in Denison, Texas.  We leave our hearts in Tillery.

Holy Ground, Sacred Ground

Yes, we sat and talked today.  It was early morning, and we'd driven well over an hour to the farm. The conversation was lively, thoughtful, intense, and laid out the destructive paths of human beings. We were visitors, the photographer, my wife, and me.  We have traveled these roads before, but not this road. This road was the same and it was different.

It was the same. One Black farmer standing alongside other Black farmers to call out the indignities of racism and discrimination. As a member of a rather small group, an elite group, yet not a word that he was use to describe himself nor his colleagues. He is a member of the "Davids" who fought against "Goliath," and they actually won. "Nobody would bet on David to beat Goliath," I observed at one point in the conversation. He smiled and nodded knowingly. But he did.  They did.

And it was a just cause. He expressed much pride in his own version of the civil rights movement.

Without revealing any more than is necessary given that this is a part of a documentary project and process, here are some compelling things to know.

There were sixteen of them. They have names.  They have faces.  They had lives then and they have lives now, and some are lived on in their families as they have passed on. There are dates when their cases were signed off by the USDA Office of Civil Rights.  Yes.  There are actual dates upon which their cases were signed off, when the USDA OCR agreed and verified that they had been discriminated against.

A farm home plan.  A working plan to buy a chicken house. The county supervisor, all smiles and congeniality until the door was closed and the process of lining up figures started.  Then he began to balk, complain, change figures, stall, forget various documents, lose various documents. A year later, the loan finally comes through to build the chicken house.  By then, the white guy over the way had already built it.  The chicken complex would not wait. It needed chickens to sell to us the consumers. The white farmer worked the process well and got his house.  His white friend got his house.  He has no grudges against the white farmer.  He was working the system.

The system did not work for Mr. Farmer.

He has paid an enormous price for his battle for justice.  He'll perhaps tell his story on screen. It is a horrendous loss of health, family, and livelihood. We'll wait and let him tell his story.

We sat foot on his land. We drove by various and sundry places and he told us who lived where, did what, and how these were back in the day.  This is a different day.

He still owns his farm, thankfully.  It was not a part of the battle with the USDA, unlike many others.

We sat today on holy ground.  We talked for several hours on sacred ground.  His blood is on the soil.  He was made by his creator to farm.

Yes, that was holy ground, that was sacred ground.

Stories, Pain, and Suffering: Are We Every Really Prepared?

Shoun Hill, photographer and videographer from the Bronx, and I in the last days prior to our fifth trip to interview Black farmers for the Black farmer documentary project.  We have been working on it for over a year and are anticipating two more weeks of filming and then completion in mid-November when we will premier it at a Black land loss summit in Atlanta.

There is always much dissonance for me. While I have had my own life of opportunities and challenges, of successes and bitter failures, I have experienced none like the people we will interview. 

These stories are painful to hear. They are painful stories within which I will probe for emotional and relational themes.  While the stories will uniquely tell themselves, as the interviewer, I provide the prompts.  At some point in the process, they lead and I will follow.

There is something about story telling that allows the old pictures and pain to emerge into now. We have seen happy and cheerful people change before our eyes.  They countenance, demeanor, and all change before us as they remember times and places and events and words and insults.

On multiple occasions, as I was leaving interviews back in the day when on leave from Abilene Christian University, my comment was something like, "Thank you for sharing your stories with me.  I want to be a faithful witness to your stories in places that you cannot or do not wish to go."

Neither they nor I knew what that meant. Some are already deceased, and that grieves me sorely, as they did not have to die so soon, but the grind of the battle wore them out. The deceased lived in Texas, Kansas, North Carolina, Georgia, Oklahoma, and other states.

They will not get to see the fruit of their labors in the lives of people who want to do better in this world.  Yes, there are people who will want to do better in this world because they told their stories of suffering and resilience.

People whose skin looks like mine can make a difference in the world. If we sit with our anxieties, respect the people and their stories, listen empathically and not sympathetically, and if we seek to understand, we can become allies who walk alongside our brothers and sisters who have experienced systemic racism at its worst in our country.  Then, the world around us will not be the same.

Yes, Shoun and I are preparing to hear stories.  We are never truly prepared.