Do you know where I can get a transcript of Chapman's speech?
My email is richbeckhiker@aol.com
In the wake of Coatesville's arsons, I have been writing an essay on my hometown entitled "The Coatesville Question."
Here's an excerpt:
Every Christmas when I was a child, we would eat dinner at our grandparents’ house on Goosetown Road. Two Black families lived up the hill, the Beasley’s and the Gibb’s and an one-legged paratrooper named Smokey lived in the shack at the bottom. My grandfather, he died in 1973, was present at the lynching of Zachariah Walker in Coatesville. He was 11 years old at the time. After dinner, he would tell the story. I always felt that my grandfather was relating the story to get something off his chest. I can only imagine how traumatic it must have been for an eleven year old to watch a man burn. He was trying in his own way to strike some kind of racial or historical balance, to orally document some kind of apologetic. Both Black and White share a kinship with Zachariah Walker. When mapmakers removed Coatesville from their maps as punishment for a lynching north of the Mason-Dixon, the mapmakers not only removed white folks but black folks as well. One group was punished for committing the unspeakable act and the other group for not doing enough to stop it. We share a kind of collective shame, a shame that transcends race about the incident. Out of the shame of that summer Sunday a collective consciousness was born; a Coatesville consciousness was born.
Here's a blog I sent to Obama website in response to his speech on race:
One White Man’s Life of Racial Irony Response to Barack Obama Speech in Philadelphia March 18, 2008
Barack Obama touched a chord in white male America. White males, and I am one, cannot say with real authenticity that we feel the pain of racism but some of us can come close to feeling what it must be like to be rejected because of race. But, racism and rejection are two different things. You can recover from rejection but not from racism. Certainly, we also have felt, and this I can speak of personally, the pull of racial commentaries that have placed us on either side of the racial divide and threatened to suck us into the abyss. I, like Barack, and like most Americans, have that uncle or aunt, cousin or parent, friend or colleague who just cannot seem to close the divide. We also, both black and white, have shared experiences that are so painful that we have buried them in the deepest recesses of our collective consciousness, experiences, like this essay relates, for example. For when my mother hears I wrote this and published it, she will, even though I'm 53 years old, still admonish me. “You really don’t need to bring this up,” she will say. Or, as my aunt might say, “That’s nobody’s business.” Or my Dad might lament, “Why do you always want to cause trouble?”
For some I am a racial sell-out. Someone who has crossed the line. I married outside of my race. Now, this puts me in a very precarious and at times funny, although not humorous, but funny position. For example, a high school mate of mine did some work in our basement and afterward we reminisced about our glory days. In the course of the conversation, he suggested that I join a local club. They had just built a new building. He prefaced his invitation by saying, “They don’t allow any N-----s in there.” I thought I’d pursue this line further so I said to him. “Well, do you think they would let Maria in; she’s Puerto Rican?” To my amazement, he said with great sincerity, “Probably not Rich, but you can come.” I wasn’t angry but I felt compassion and pity for him. How could anybody even conceive that race was more important to me than the love I have for my wife? The mother of my children. And this, coming from a man who himself had broken off an engagement to a Puerto Rican girl. I thought whimsically that he probably had broken off the engagement so he could join the club.
On another occasion, I remember that when my son was born, my first child, one of my aunt’s came to our door, knocked, and without stopping, proceeded to go directly to our bedroom where the baby was sleeping. After a moment, she came down the stairs, walked to the door, and turned to Maria and me and said, “I just wanted to make sure he was white.” Maria and I looked at one another and as my aunt went out the door I yelled, “Thanks for comin!” She turned to us and without any regard for what she said, as if it were her obligation to the community to sanctify the hue of my child said, “You’re welcome, honey. I’m in a hurry but if you need anything, let me know.” My wife didn't quite understand the cultural implications of what was said because there is no colorline in Puerto Rico. Do I love my aunt less because of that incident? No. This was the same aunt whose husband opened doors for me at Villanova to get me admitted after my high school guidance counselor had given up on me and expected me to get a job at the mill, Lukens Steel Company, where all the boys went who didn’t go to the army or college. This same aunt who wept with me at her kitchen table when as a teenager I needed to confess my angst and fear of being drafted and going to Viet Nam. This is the same aunt who drove to Pittsburgh to retrieve me when I ran away from home. How could I not love her?
As a young girl, my mother was cared for by a black family, the Beasley Family. When my grandmother got sick, there was no one to take care of my mother who at the time was the youngest of four sisters. Edith Beasley, their black neighbor, took care of her and her sisters. My Mom relates the story with such pride and love about how Edith always thought of her as her favorite. Once, Edith took her on the train to Philly around Christmas time to Strawbridge’s on 69th Street. Both of them pretended that my Mom was a rich girl and Edith was her Nanny. As Edith and my Mom were in line to pay, the cashier said, “What’s a n----- doing with that little white girl?” My Mom told the lady to mind her own business. Edith turned to my Mom and told her very forcefully, “Be quiet and respect your elders.” Yet, to this day, my Mother still uses the N-word and even prefaces the use by saying, “They’re not all that way.” Am I to deny my own mother or my children a grandmother?
Every Christmas when I was a child, the five sisters and their families would eat Christmas Dinner at our grandparents’ house. My grandfather, he died in 1973, was present at the lynching of Zachariah Walker in Coatesville. He was 11 years old at the time. After dinner, he would tell the story. I would hear mixed comments from the family like, “That’s horrible” and “Served him right.” I always felt that my grandfather was relating the story not out of racism but out of a need to get something off his chest. I can only imagine how traumatic it must have been for an 11 year old to watch a man burn. Immediately after the telling of this story, like clockwork, somebody would ask Poppop to tell the story of the city-slicker, traveling salesman. It was as if my family as a whole was trying in their own way to strike some kind of racial or historical balance, to orally document some kind of apologetic.
The story goes that a traveling salesman, a city slicker, had gotten fresh with my Aunt Betty one day in the West End of Coatesville better known as Honkey Hill. My grandfather owned a garage behind Sears before Sears closed their downtown store, abandoned Coatesville, and moved to the Exton Mall. My grandfather had a kinship with black folks in Coatesville that has perplexed me over the years. When I was young, I thought that it was because of my grandfather’s legendary strength and athleticism. He is supposedly the only person ever to hit a baseball completely over the Plate-Planers Building at Lukens and could actually lift a car up from the back and set it on blocks. This I witnessed myself. However, as I got older, I began to think or hope that somehow the kinship was inextricably linked to Zachariah Walker. It is as if the community of Coatesville, both Black and White, shared some kind of collective shame, a shame that transcended race about the incident. The old black men that I spoke with growing up in Coatesville always spoke fondly of my grandfather.
As the story of the traveling salesman goes, Poppop had two very close black friends who upon hearing that Poppop was going to kill the salesman, ran as fast as they could to Poppop’s garage. Poppop somehow had lured the salesman to the garage and was about to throw the man into the furnace where he burned old tires when his two black friends arrived and stopped him, saving the salesman’s life and probably, my grandfather’s life as well. Somebody in my family would always preface the story with this comment that still rings true in my ears today, “If you have a black friend, you have a friend for life.” And yet, I recall, one day going to my friend’s house, Greg Jamison, in South Coatesville and asking his mother, Henny Jamison, if Greg could come to my house. Mrs. Jamison said, “Honey, respectable black people don’t socialize with white people. Here. Take this sweet potato pie home to your Mom. Tell her, I'll see her at the game. Tell her to save me a seat.” Such is the utter irony and confusion of the racial portrait of America.
My wife Maria is from Puerto Rico and my Mom never misses an opportunity to remind her to speak English. My wife speaks English very well but still has her accent and still sometimes doesn’t pick up on all the cultural nuances and imbedded meanings of the language. Mom gets very upset when we speak Spanish in front of her and I remind my mother that I never heard her criticize the DioBilda’s when they spoke Italian or the Braverman’s when they spoke Yiddish or the Kornet’s when they spoke Polish at summer neighborhood picnics. Her response is, “That was different.” Yet, I have heard stories over the last 20 years of times of when Maria has misunderstood somebody’s English and the unfortunate person has said something supposedly derogatory to Maria in front of my Mother. My Mother's reaction to offending person has been to give them a good-cussin’-out. It is an irony of family and race.
My mother insists on going with Maria anytime she has to encounter somebody from officialdom perhaps to help her, maybe to defend her, or to protect her. My wife doesn’t mind. In Maria’s culture, this is not enabling or domination but rather a deeper sense of commitment to family and shared responsibility that is present in the Latino Community. My parents are in their 80’s and my wife Maria recoils at the thought of putting them in an old folk’s home. I know where Mom and Dad will be when it’s time. In our house. Maria wouldn’t have it any other way. Yet, some of the things Mom says about Puerto Ricans makes me, as Barack said about his grandmother, cringe. That doesn’t matter to Maria. They are her husband’s parents and because of that, regardless of what they say, they deserve her respect.
My Uncle Larnie, nicknamed the plowboy was raised on a farm, one of eight children. He is a local baseball legend. In 11th grade, he quit high school and signed with the St. Louis Browns for $700 in 1949, quite a sum back then. He was hitting over .400 in the minors when he became homesick for the farm or maybe for my aunt and walked and hitchhiked all the way from Louisiana to Coatesville. Twice the Browns tried to get him to return. Even after he was drafted into the Army, the scout who signed him came to him and told him that he could get posted stateside at the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Grounds and play baseball for the Brown’s minor league affiliate there. My uncle refused saying that he was no different from anyone else. For him serving his country was a sign of status and being excused from service just to play a game, even if that service put him in harm’s way, reminded him of the same kind of social ostracism that had earned him the name plowboy. My uncle taught me how to play baseball. How to keep my head up if I struck out or made an error. How to sacrifice bunt to move a teammate into scoring position. How to love a game that is a metaphor for America itself. But, he also taught me when it was time to hang up my spikes and focus on my education. He taught me how to make a new dream. At one Thanksgiving dinner, with all the family present, my uncle began to rant about how anybody who didn’t speak English, shouldn’t be in America. It was so absurd to be farcical. I said to him, “What about my wife, Uncle Larnie. Do you want to send Maria back to Puerto Rico?” His response, “No, Maria’s different.” Do I love him less for being so ridiculous? No. And then, to my amazement, my dear wife says to me, “He’s right Richard, people should learn English.” Do I love my wife less for not standing up for her people? No. I just shook my head, looked down the table, and tried to decide whether I wanted the creamy white mashed potatoes or the orange brown-skinned cinnamon coated sweet potatoes. And I thought to myself, “There are some battles you can win and some you can’t but what a full rich table we have.” That’s family.
1 comment:
Hamilton,
Do you know where I can get a transcript of Chapman's speech?
My email is richbeckhiker@aol.com
In the wake of Coatesville's arsons, I have been writing an essay on my hometown entitled "The Coatesville Question."
Here's an excerpt:
Every Christmas when I was a child, we would eat dinner at our grandparents’ house on Goosetown Road. Two Black families lived up the hill, the Beasley’s and the Gibb’s and an one-legged paratrooper named Smokey lived in the shack at the bottom. My grandfather, he died in 1973, was present at the lynching of Zachariah Walker in Coatesville. He was 11 years old at the time. After dinner, he would tell the story. I always felt that my grandfather was relating the story to get something off his chest. I can only imagine how traumatic it must have been for an eleven year old to watch a man burn. He was trying in his own way to strike some kind of racial or historical balance, to orally document some kind of apologetic. Both Black and White share a kinship with Zachariah Walker. When mapmakers removed Coatesville from their maps as punishment for a lynching north of the Mason-Dixon, the mapmakers not only removed white folks but black folks as well. One group was punished for committing the unspeakable act and the other group for not doing enough to stop it. We share a kind of collective shame, a shame that transcends race about the incident. Out of the shame of that summer Sunday a collective consciousness was born; a Coatesville consciousness was born.
Here's a blog I sent to Obama website in response to his speech on race:
One White Man’s Life of Racial Irony
Response to Barack Obama Speech in Philadelphia March 18, 2008
Barack Obama touched a chord in white male America. White males, and I am one, cannot say with real authenticity that we feel the pain of racism but some of us can come close to feeling what it must be like to be rejected because of race. But, racism and rejection are two different things. You can recover from rejection but not from racism. Certainly, we also have felt, and this I can speak of personally, the pull of racial commentaries that have placed us on either side of the racial divide and threatened to suck us into the abyss. I, like Barack, and like most Americans, have that uncle or aunt, cousin or parent, friend or colleague who just cannot seem to close the divide. We also, both black and white, have shared experiences that are so painful that we have buried them in the deepest recesses of our collective consciousness, experiences, like this essay relates, for example. For when my mother hears I wrote this and published it, she will, even though I'm 53 years old, still admonish me. “You really don’t need to bring this up,” she will say. Or, as my aunt might say, “That’s nobody’s business.” Or my Dad might lament, “Why do you always want to cause trouble?”
For some I am a racial sell-out. Someone who has crossed the line. I married outside of my race. Now, this puts me in a very precarious and at times funny, although not humorous, but funny position. For example, a high school mate of mine did some work in our basement and afterward we reminisced about our glory days. In the course of the conversation, he suggested that I join a local club. They had just built a new building. He prefaced his invitation by saying, “They don’t allow any N-----s in there.” I thought I’d pursue this line further so I said to him. “Well, do you think they would let Maria in; she’s Puerto Rican?” To my amazement, he said with great sincerity, “Probably not Rich, but you can come.” I wasn’t angry but I felt compassion and pity for him. How could anybody even conceive that race was more important to me than the love I have for my wife? The mother of my children. And this, coming from a man who himself had broken off an engagement to a Puerto Rican girl. I thought whimsically that he probably had broken off the engagement so he could join the club.
On another occasion, I remember that when my son was born, my first child, one of my aunt’s came to our door, knocked, and without stopping, proceeded to go directly to our bedroom where the baby was sleeping. After a moment, she came down the stairs, walked to the door, and turned to Maria and me and said, “I just wanted to make sure he was white.” Maria and I looked at one another and as my aunt went out the door I yelled, “Thanks for comin!” She turned to us and without any regard for what she said, as if it were her obligation to the community to sanctify the hue of my child said, “You’re welcome, honey. I’m in a hurry but if you need anything, let me know.” My wife didn't quite understand the cultural implications of what was said because there is no colorline in Puerto Rico. Do I love my aunt less because of that incident? No. This was the same aunt whose husband opened doors for me at Villanova to get me admitted after my high school guidance counselor had given up on me and expected me to get a job at the mill, Lukens Steel Company, where all the boys went who didn’t go to the army or college. This same aunt who wept with me at her kitchen table when as a teenager I needed to confess my angst and fear of being drafted and going to Viet Nam. This is the same aunt who drove to Pittsburgh to retrieve me when I ran away from home. How could I not love her?
As a young girl, my mother was cared for by a black family, the Beasley Family. When my grandmother got sick, there was no one to take care of my mother who at the time was the youngest of four sisters. Edith Beasley, their black neighbor, took care of her and her sisters. My Mom relates the story with such pride and love about how Edith always thought of her as her favorite. Once, Edith took her on the train to Philly around Christmas time to Strawbridge’s on 69th Street. Both of them pretended that my Mom was a rich girl and Edith was her Nanny. As Edith and my Mom were in line to pay, the cashier said, “What’s a n----- doing with that little white girl?” My Mom told the lady to mind her own business. Edith turned to my Mom and told her very forcefully, “Be quiet and respect your elders.” Yet, to this day, my Mother still uses the N-word and even prefaces the use by saying, “They’re not all that way.” Am I to deny my own mother or my children a grandmother?
Every Christmas when I was a child, the five sisters and their families would eat Christmas Dinner at our grandparents’ house. My grandfather, he died in 1973, was present at the lynching of Zachariah Walker in Coatesville. He was 11 years old at the time. After dinner, he would tell the story. I would hear mixed comments from the family like, “That’s horrible” and “Served him right.” I always felt that my grandfather was relating the story not out of racism but out of a need to get something off his chest. I can only imagine how traumatic it must have been for an 11 year old to watch a man burn. Immediately after the telling of this story, like clockwork, somebody would ask Poppop to tell the story of the city-slicker, traveling salesman. It was as if my family as a whole was trying in their own way to strike some kind of racial or historical balance, to orally document some kind of apologetic.
The story goes that a traveling salesman, a city slicker, had gotten fresh with my Aunt Betty one day in the West End of Coatesville better known as Honkey Hill. My grandfather owned a garage behind Sears before Sears closed their downtown store, abandoned Coatesville, and moved to the Exton Mall. My grandfather had a kinship with black folks in Coatesville that has perplexed me over the years. When I was young, I thought that it was because of my grandfather’s legendary strength and athleticism. He is supposedly the only person ever to hit a baseball completely over the Plate-Planers Building at Lukens and could actually lift a car up from the back and set it on blocks. This I witnessed myself. However, as I got older, I began to think or hope that somehow the kinship was inextricably linked to Zachariah Walker. It is as if the community of Coatesville, both Black and White, shared some kind of collective shame, a shame that transcended race about the incident. The old black men that I spoke with growing up in Coatesville always spoke fondly of my grandfather.
As the story of the traveling salesman goes, Poppop had two very close black friends who upon hearing that Poppop was going to kill the salesman, ran as fast as they could to Poppop’s garage. Poppop somehow had lured the salesman to the garage and was about to throw the man into the furnace where he burned old tires when his two black friends arrived and stopped him, saving the salesman’s life and probably, my grandfather’s life as well. Somebody in my family would always preface the story with this comment that still rings true in my ears today, “If you have a black friend, you have a friend for life.” And yet, I recall, one day going to my friend’s house, Greg Jamison, in South Coatesville and asking his mother, Henny Jamison, if Greg could come to my house. Mrs. Jamison said, “Honey, respectable black people don’t socialize with white people. Here. Take this sweet potato pie home to your Mom. Tell her, I'll see her at the game. Tell her to save me a seat.” Such is the utter irony and confusion of the racial portrait of America.
My wife Maria is from Puerto Rico and my Mom never misses an opportunity to remind her to speak English. My wife speaks English very well but still has her accent and still sometimes doesn’t pick up on all the cultural nuances and imbedded meanings of the language. Mom gets very upset when we speak Spanish in front of her and I remind my mother that I never heard her criticize the DioBilda’s when they spoke Italian or the Braverman’s when they spoke Yiddish or the Kornet’s when they spoke Polish at summer neighborhood picnics. Her response is, “That was different.” Yet, I have heard stories over the last 20 years of times of when Maria has misunderstood somebody’s English and the unfortunate person has said something supposedly derogatory to Maria in front of my Mother. My Mother's reaction to offending person has been to give them a good-cussin’-out. It is an irony of family and race.
My mother insists on going with Maria anytime she has to encounter somebody from officialdom perhaps to help her, maybe to defend her, or to protect her. My wife doesn’t mind. In Maria’s culture, this is not enabling or domination but rather a deeper sense of commitment to family and shared responsibility that is present in the Latino Community. My parents are in their 80’s and my wife Maria recoils at the thought of putting them in an old folk’s home. I know where Mom and Dad will be when it’s time. In our house. Maria wouldn’t have it any other way. Yet, some of the things Mom says about Puerto Ricans makes me, as Barack said about his grandmother, cringe. That doesn’t matter to Maria. They are her husband’s parents and because of that, regardless of what they say, they deserve her respect.
My Uncle Larnie, nicknamed the plowboy was raised on a farm, one of eight children. He is a local baseball legend. In 11th grade, he quit high school and signed with the St. Louis Browns for $700 in 1949, quite a sum back then. He was hitting over .400 in the minors when he became homesick for the farm or maybe for my aunt and walked and hitchhiked all the way from Louisiana to Coatesville. Twice the Browns tried to get him to return. Even after he was drafted into the Army, the scout who signed him came to him and told him that he could get posted stateside at the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Grounds and play baseball for the Brown’s minor league affiliate there. My uncle refused saying that he was no different from anyone else. For him serving his country was a sign of status and being excused from service just to play a game, even if that service put him in harm’s way, reminded him of the same kind of social ostracism that had earned him the name plowboy.
My uncle taught me how to play baseball. How to keep my head up if I struck out or made an error. How to sacrifice bunt to move a teammate into scoring position. How to love a game that is a metaphor for America itself. But, he also taught me when it was time to hang up my spikes and focus on my education. He taught me how to make a new dream. At one Thanksgiving dinner, with all the family present, my uncle began to rant about how anybody who didn’t speak English, shouldn’t be in America. It was so absurd to be farcical. I said to him, “What about my wife, Uncle Larnie. Do you want to send Maria back to Puerto Rico?” His response, “No, Maria’s different.” Do I love him less for being so ridiculous? No. And then, to my amazement, my dear wife says to me, “He’s right Richard, people should learn English.” Do I love my wife less for not standing up for her people? No.
I just shook my head, looked down the table, and tried to decide whether I wanted the creamy white mashed potatoes or the orange brown-skinned cinnamon coated sweet potatoes. And I thought to myself, “There are some battles you can win and some you can’t but what a full rich table we have.” That’s family.
Richard Beck
Coatesville
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