An Okie's Racial Reckonings Paperback – March 11, 2024
by
Hershel Parker
(Author)
Hershel
Parker, the textual scholar, sent his vast Melville archive to the
Berkshire Athenaeum in 2020. An amateur genealogist, he had built
another archive—by then more than ten thousand documents about his
American family, starting with the 1600s. An Oklahoman, he wryly
minimized the file as “Ornery People,” yet he had fallen in love with
under-sheriffs, bakers, cordwainers, gunsmiths, militiamen, moonshiners,
and their brave wives. At eighty-four, only weeks after escaping
blindness, he could not write about all these “Ornery People.”
Then on 25 May 2020 George Floyd was killed. Parker at once began pulling out files in which whites, Indians, and Blacks play crucial roles. He would not write a family history or retell episodes in American history. Instead, he could bring some of his newly discovered kinfolks to life through historical events involving race relations. Whites drove Indians out of their lands before intermarrying with some of them. A white cousin conducted the wedding of two white sisters to the Asian Siamese Twins, who owned slaves. Whites massacred other whites (among them cousins of mine) and plundered their corpses then blamed the crime on Indians. Yankees falsely accused my Southern white cousins of horrific atrocities against Blacks. A star of the Freedmen’s Bureau told lies about a cousin which are still in history books. General Sherman did his best to erase Southern history and later to erase Indian languages and lives. An elegant politician cousin forced North Carolina to give amnesty to the KKK for all its crimes. Parker’s aged relatives did not know why they were not on the Choctaw Rolls, but his research stunned him with a grotesque answer. Most newly freed Black Costners stayed in Gaston County, N. C., but enterprising Moses tried sharecropping across from King’s Mountain, took his family to Texas long after Blacks were needed or wanted there, then sought safety just across the Red River. There in 1911 white racists drove terrified Blacks away by trainloads. During this flight, the spokesman Dovey Costner made a nationwide plea to be shipped to safety in Liberia. He stayed on by the Red River, renting, but keeping the family together. In Houston a policeman cousin pistol-whipped Black women and men, causing the Riot of 1917 for which dozens of Buffalo Soldiers were hanged or imprisoned.
The family stories and historical documents here will jolt readers. Slaughter of Indians! Jefferson’s treachery to Indians! White racist violence! Murder of slaves! Murder of masters! Voter suppression! Mocking of injured veterans! This truly is An Okie’s Racial Reckonings.
Then on 25 May 2020 George Floyd was killed. Parker at once began pulling out files in which whites, Indians, and Blacks play crucial roles. He would not write a family history or retell episodes in American history. Instead, he could bring some of his newly discovered kinfolks to life through historical events involving race relations. Whites drove Indians out of their lands before intermarrying with some of them. A white cousin conducted the wedding of two white sisters to the Asian Siamese Twins, who owned slaves. Whites massacred other whites (among them cousins of mine) and plundered their corpses then blamed the crime on Indians. Yankees falsely accused my Southern white cousins of horrific atrocities against Blacks. A star of the Freedmen’s Bureau told lies about a cousin which are still in history books. General Sherman did his best to erase Southern history and later to erase Indian languages and lives. An elegant politician cousin forced North Carolina to give amnesty to the KKK for all its crimes. Parker’s aged relatives did not know why they were not on the Choctaw Rolls, but his research stunned him with a grotesque answer. Most newly freed Black Costners stayed in Gaston County, N. C., but enterprising Moses tried sharecropping across from King’s Mountain, took his family to Texas long after Blacks were needed or wanted there, then sought safety just across the Red River. There in 1911 white racists drove terrified Blacks away by trainloads. During this flight, the spokesman Dovey Costner made a nationwide plea to be shipped to safety in Liberia. He stayed on by the Red River, renting, but keeping the family together. In Houston a policeman cousin pistol-whipped Black women and men, causing the Riot of 1917 for which dozens of Buffalo Soldiers were hanged or imprisoned.
The family stories and historical documents here will jolt readers. Slaughter of Indians! Jefferson’s treachery to Indians! White racist violence! Murder of slaves! Murder of masters! Voter suppression! Mocking of injured veterans! This truly is An Okie’s Racial Reckonings.
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