Historical Trauma: Past Pains Must Lead To Future Promise [1] Karsonya Wise Whitehead (bio) As someone who grew up in Jim Crow South Carolina, my father likes to call himself a survivor. He has looked white supremacy and racial hatred in the eye, and though he has not won, he wants to note that he has not lost, not yet. When I was in college, I asked him why he was convinced that he had not won. He said that winning, for Black folks, would only come when we could walk anywhere in this country and not be concerned that the color of our skin could mean the end of our life. My father remembers the days of being called “boy” even though he was a man, of being dismissed and overlooked even when he followed the rules, and of hearing his mother cry when she realized that he had decided to fight back and not give way. Those types of decisions, he would say, are best made once you realize that you are willing to die to be free rather than live in fear under the thumb of whiteness. My father’s family carried pistols and shotguns whenever they rode into town. My grandfather used to sit on a pillow, and his pistol would be underneath, on the right side, in case he needed to grab it in a hurry. His sons, my father’s brothers, would have shotguns on the floor near their feet. Nobody ever said it, but everybody knew that if the Klan confronted them, they were prepared to meet their Maker, standing up and fighting back. Such was the reality of living in a Southern county where performative whiteness manifested itself through the law and daily acts of random domestic terror against Black people. It was not unusual for Black women to have a kaffeeklatsch, sharing horrific tales of lynchings and cross burnings over sweet potato pie and integrated coffee. It was not uncommon for Black households to keep an open Bible on the coffee table and a loaded shotgun at the door. My grandmother, my father’s mother, knew how to shoot. She knew how to steady her shoulder and [End Page 8] set her arm so that her hands never wavered. She grew up on a farm, way down South, so she knew how to pick cotton, twist off a chicken’s head, and grab her shotgun, look white terror in the eye, and not look away. My father once told me that he learned that the best time to plant a tree was fifty years ago, and his mother taught him that the best time to decide to fight against whiteness was five minutes before the Klan showed up. Such decisions, he would say, must be made before you see the white sheets out your front window. My father was twelve years old when they murdered Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. He remembers how his mother and all of the women at the church were weeping and wailing during Sunday church service. What kind of men, the pastor intoned, could look a boy in the eye and then torture him to death? How much effort would it take for us to love the hell out of white people’s hearts and minds? My dad said the murder of Emmett Till changed everything. After that, Black boys were taught by their parents, who wanted to keep them alive, not to look white women in the eye, not to speak first, and not to be too excited once you spoke. It was the act of bearing witness to his friends learning how to give way that strengthened my father’s resolve to fight. If he was going to die at the hands of whiteness, he told me, he was prepared to do it standing up, with his shotgun in his hand, and a steely resolve in his eye. The summer before they heard about Emmett Till, my father said my grandmother used to sing a song around the house when she was cleaning up. He said she kept her voice real low, but sometimes when she thought she was alone, she would sing loud...