"I WANT TO KEEP THIS!"--the impulse to keep what you think are your accomplishments

 This morning I posted about giving up a book with interesting reviews inserted into it. This morning, also, using 2 128GB Samsung flash drives, I copied a big ancestry file, GLIMPSES onto a new flashdrive. It says it contains 10,003 items but I think that does not include the many items inside Folders. What I am doing with this is giving it away, to anyone in the family, any grandson, any great grand nephew. This is a way of making my 20 years of research available long after I die.

The same impulse to put things out governs my posting chapters from AN OKIE'S RACIAL RECKONINGS. 

Ken Burns on "Reckoning with A History Fraught with Violence and Injustice"

In the Washington Post 22 November 2021 Ken Burns says: "Being an American means reckoning with a history fraught with violence and injustice. Ignoring that reality in favor of mythology is not only wrong but also dangerous. The dark chapters of American history have just as much to teach us, if not more, than the glorious ones, and often the two are intertwined.”

Table of Contents of "An Okie's Racial Reckonings"

What I have been doing in 2021 and 2022 is just what Burns says, reckoning with American history.  This may be the first book in which an ordinary Southerner investigates his ancestry on this continent and then focuses on his kinfolks and race. All these chapters are about kinfolks of mine in the colonies or in the United States. Every chapter needs revision, but all the chapters are complete as of April 2022.

 

                                   AN  OKIE’S RACIAL RECKONINGS

 #01 “GODDAMN OKIES”--How Grapes of Wrath defined Oklahomans

#02 WHO THE OKIES WERE--(Eastern Oklahomans, white, red, and black, who had been there in Choctaw and Cherokee Territories)

#03 FAMILY STORIES--BEFORE I SAW WHAT I HAD TO write was A RACE BOOK--good happy oblivious stories

#04 COUSINS AT WAR ON THE CHEROKEES --What the Carolinians were doing after the first battle in 1776 instead of going off to fight the British

#05 JEFFERSON, COCKE, SIMS (The burning of the Sims Settlement 2 times. Jefferson as one of the cousins, an inconsistent one)

#06 RACIAL OBLIVIOUSNESS AT TRAP HILL (Cousin who married the Siamese Twins in NC--and 2 NC cousins who held Union meetings in 1863)

#07 Brigham Young’s Utah: Polygamy, Murders, and Massacres, always Blaming the Indians  (Many of my family were murdered)

#08 Slaughtering for Parley, Brigham, and Jesus, But Saving Some Babies for Ransom

#09 JESSE SPARKS--Falsely ACCUSED OF ATROCITY TO  BLACKS, he  LIVED TO BEFRIEND INDIANS AND BLACKS--NEVER KNOWING OF THE ACCUSATION.  HE AND MILTON (SEE #10) ARE COUSINS OF MINE BUT NOT OF EACH OTHER

#10  MILTON SIMS--“SENTENCED TO BE HANGED” --THE GREATEST ADVENTURER; AFTER THIS DETAILED HISTORY of him as federal prisoner. He lived TO KISS THE GLOVE OF THE EMPRESS CARLOTA.

#11  FLETCHER HILL & FRATERNITY--1864 escape from Rebel Prison and journey to Union lines with help from Blacks and Red Stringers, then a generous afterlife

#12 CAPT. MATTHEWS--LIAR & MURDERER 1866 (His Freedmen's Bureau lies are history now, still repeated)

#13 TOURGEE vs  MCGEHEE--KKK 1860s & 1870s--grisly details about KKK and end of Reconstruction

#14 WILLY SIMS & THE DANVILLE “MASSACRE" or "STREET-FIGHT” (a reckless cousin who all by himself (some said) may have ended Reconstruction in Virginia)

#15 GLENN-TUCKER, the  JARNDYCE vs JARNDYCE OF I. T. --My family’s fight against Choctaw corruption--story ending with 3 judges who ruled against us--one died in alcoholic binge, another slit his throat (but lived), and third had a leg cut off and died)

#16 DICK COSTNER’S GALLANTRY AT WOUNDED KNEE--a provocative chapter--Sen. Warren is right to want to rescind medals--but Dick deserves to keep his medal.)

#17 LEE SPARKS--ONE BAD COP --Houston white thug who incited and doomed the Buffalo Soldiers in 1917

#18 DOVEY--BLACK COSTNERS--horrific  story of black family driven from place to place.  [MY MOTHER WAS MARTHA COSTNER.]

         Appendix--RACIAL DOCUMENTS--grim items about kinfolks--disposition of slaves in wills, ads for runaways, auction ads for slaves, &c.

 

    I WOULD LIKE TO PUBLISH "RACIAL RECKONINGS" AS A BOOK, BUT THAT REQUIRES TIME (MUCH TIME) AND PATIENCE AND FROM A PUBLISHER TOLERANCE OR EVEN RECKLESSNESS. TRUTH HURTS SOMETIMES. I am grateful that I lived to finish something started just after the horrible health problems of 2020. Maybe I will live to self-publish it as a book. But OK, OK, it's done and I can go on cleaning up and giving away anything of intellectual or historical value. So today a flashdrive with 10,003 items in it.