The Living Son Of A Slave: At 88, He Is A Historical Rarity

[appalachiablue]

- Dan Smith, 88, on the front porch of his house in Northwest Washington.
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- 'At 88, he is a historical rarity- the living son of a slave.' Washington Post, Feb. 7, 2021. - Excerpts, Ed -

The whipping post. The lynching tree. The wagon wheel. They were the stories of slavery, an inheritance of fear and dread, passed down from father to son. The boy, barely 5, would listen, awed, as his father spoke of life in Virginia, where he had been born into bondage on a plantation during the Civil War and suffered as a child laborer afterward. As unlikely as it might seem, that boy, Daniel Smith, is still alive at 88, a member of an almost vanished demographic: The child of someone once considered a piece of property instead of a human being. Long after leaving Massies Mill, Va., and moving up North as a young man in his 20s, Smith’s father, Abram Smith, married a woman who was decades younger and fathered six children. Dan, the fifth, was born in 1932 when Abram was 70.

Only one sibling besides Dan — Abe, 92 — is still alive.

It’s not possible to know how many people alive today are the children of enslaved people, but we shouldn’t be so surprised that they still exist because the generations since slavery can be counted on one hand, said Hilary Green, an associate professor of history at the University of Alabama. “We don’t want to talk about it because we as Americans … we’re always forward thinking. We never think enough about the past.” The American tendency toward selective memory applies doubly so to slavery, Green said. “How do you remember this violent period in history, the owning of people? It does not fit our narrative that we tell about ourselves. … We ratify the myth rather than deal with the truth.”

After his father died in 1938, Dan Smith picked up where Abram’s life left off, witnessing decades of the nation’s racial history — the injustice of Jim Crow, the grief and glory of the civil rights movement, the elections of the first black president and then Donald Trump, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. He watched the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis caught on cellphone video, horrified, and wonders where this new unrest will lead. All along, Smith created his own history — as a medic in the Korean War and a hometown hero who rescued a man from a flood. He’s been chased on a dark road by white supremacists in Alabama as a foot soldier in the fight for civil rights. Smith was there when a young firebrand named John Lewis roused the crowd at the March on Washington, and he linked arms with activists in Selma across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.




- Dan Smith and his wife walk past their vegetable garden in Northwest Washington, D.C.

Just weeks before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Smith moved to the Washington area, where he built a rich and meaningful life. Smith and his first wife, who was black, raised their two children in Bethesda, Md., while he pursued his career as a federal worker promoting health and education and fighting poverty. He retired in 1994 and in 2006 wed his second wife, Loretta Neumann, who is white, at the National Cathedral, where as head usher he escorted presidents. What does it mean to Smith to be the living son of an enslaved person in the 21st century? “Quite frankly, I’ve just grown up and been busy, and I’ve never thought much about it,”.. Smith shared his life story from the wide front porch of his home in NW Washington.. The 157 years since his father’s birth had once seemed like “a solid gap,” but now the time strikes him as distressingly brief.

With Trump as president, the years feel to Smith like an accordion — the decades folding, folding — back toward slavery “almost to the point where it could happen again.”...

Read More, https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/07/27/slave-son-racism-george-floyd/
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- 'Son Of A Slave Connects Yesterday With Today,' NPR, 2009,
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99549319

- Massies Mill, Virginia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massies_Mill,_Virginia

[efhmc]

1. The people in Michele's family were.

[LenaBaby61]

2. "The Living Son Of A Slave: At 88, He Is A Historical Rarity."

My late parents (Mom would be 96 and my late Dad 103 actually knew slaves, and some of the stories that they told me that those ex-slaves told them still haunt me some nights until the point where I want to cry, and I'll be 60 years soon 😢

OMG, some white men's inhumanity to a fellow man/woman/child just because of the color of their skin, and because of white male privilege.

[mopinko]

3. a generation can be a long time w big families.

i was shocked to find that an ancestor of mine that fought the brits in ireland in 1898 was only my great, great, great uncle. i expected 5-6 greats.

[pfitz59]

4. I once met the daughter of two slaves. She was 106

Still had all her wits. Told a few stories that were passed down to her.

[Duppers]

5. This...

Put a lump in my throat.