the state by state speak your mind about...alabama

[csziggy]

82. My Mom's family were all from Alabama. I have good and bad memories

Mom's ancestors arrived in Alabama between 1817 and 1834 and were among some of the earlier settlers. Many of them were Baptists and helped establish the Baptist church in Alabama. One was famous for being instrumental in starting the Alabama Baptist Convention and encouraged the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention. He was also an intolerant man and objected to slaves teaching each other the Bible. And he owned a lot of slaves.

A lot of my ancestors and their relatives fought and died in the Civil War. Because many of them were slave owners who needed slaves to run their farms, they lost a lot of wealth after the war. By the time Mom remembers, most were poor dirt farmers or had lost their land completely and worked other jobs.

The good memories I have are from visiting my relatives. They were nice to a little girl and her sisters. The bad memories I have are from the racist comments they'd make, not realizing those little girls understood what they were talking about and what they meant.

Mom's grandfather had owned a large house in Selma - by the time I saw the house many of Mom's aunts and uncles lived there in their retirement years. The house was on the river about five blocks from the bridge in Selma where the horrendous Civil Rights movement confrontation with the Selma police took place. After that incident, visiting my elderly relatives had a bitter edge because we had to drive over that infamous bridge every time.

While the incident did not happen in Alabama, it was my mother's eldest brother from Alabama who made me face the stark racism of many of my relatives and also made me question the value of Christianity and religion. Even though he was a minister, he told one of the most horribly vicious racist jokes I have ever heard. Even after fifty years, that memory makes me cringe. He told it to a group that included children younger than I was at the time. And nearly every one in the group laughed. I wanted to throw up.

I could not believe that a man who claimed to be a Christian would tell a joke like that and laugh. Ever since I have not been able to believe that religion is a good thing. That man, that minister, my uncle, the product of generations of ministers, is the main influence in me becoming an agnostic/atheist.

Now that I have studied the history and the genealogy of the family more, I understand that my uncle was the product of his environment but I also know that my mother, who was raised by the same parents, with the same relatives, in the same state, turned away from the Baptist Church and is a much more tolerant and compassionate human being than that "man of Gawd" ever was. Maybe it helped that she got out of Alabama as soon as she could.

As an adult I pretty much stopped visiting Alabama. I regret that I didn't visit my great aunts and uncles in their final years, but I don't regret being exposed to the archaic attitudes they had about people not like themselves. If I ever visit Alabama again, it will be solely to do genealogical research and nothing more.