Tangled Branches

William Bailey

Description

Southern Race relations are a disordered and mismanaged mess snared in prejudices, suppression, and failures in communication. Tangled Branches does not fit into the popular context of the causes or effects. While slavery existed within the author's family for thirty-four years, the black and white families remained together for 150 years. Tangled Branches is a week-long discussion between the author and the African-American grandson of his mother's maid. It is the story of a middle age white man facing his own fears of allegations of racial prejudice and finding the responsibility to tell the African-American family's history. It is the true story of the black family history through the white family. Both families are traced five generations through the evolution of both technology and society, from pioneers to the 1970s. It recounts the crimes committed by both upon each other and on those around them. It reveals a generational dependence each family had upon the other. While popular dialogue claims black and white races separated at the conclusion of the American Civil War, Tangled Branches tells how one family remained together; from Tilly a freed slave using the white family's farm as an underground railroad station, through both black and white working together to supply Al Capone with whiskey, to Ina walking out after decades of abuse. It tells of the final separation of the two families when the Author's mother's maid is fired, and of their reconciliation.

Sujets

• Historical
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 12 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798823000697
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Tangled BRANCHES
 
 
 
 
 
 
William Bailey
 
 
 
 

 
AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: [phone]
 
 
 
 
 
 
© 2023 William Bailey. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse  02/10/2023
 
ISBN: 979-8-8230-0068-0 (sc)
ISBN: 979-8-8230-0067-3 (hc)
ISBN: 979-8-8230-0069-7 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023902193
 
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
CONTENTS
Preface
 
Chapter 1       The Bible
Chapter 2       Keeper of Stories
Chapter 3       Slavery
Chapter 4       Andrew Jackson
Chapter 5       Nancy Fleming
Chapter 6       The Frying Pan
Chapter 7       1815
Chapter 8       1807
Chapter 9       1830
Chapter 10     1832
Chapter 11     The 1830s
Chapter 12     The Bounty Hunter
Chapter 13     Matilda Burton: The Stationmaster
Chapter 14     Pre–Civil War
Chapter 15     1861
Chapter 16     War
Chapter 17     The Cave
Chapter 18     Upgrades
Chapter 19     Nannie’s Obsession
Chapter 20     1865
Chapter 21     Revenge
Chapter 22     1869
Chapter 23     1870
Chapter 24     1871
Chapter 25     1875
Chapter 26     1877
Chapter 27     1880s
Chapter 28     1886
Chapter 29     The Still
Chapter 30     1891
Chapter 31     Photos
Chapter 32     1893
Chapter 33     1896
Chapter 34     1897
Chapter 35     1900
Chapter 36     1901
Chapter 37     New Century, New Generation
Chapter 38     1911
Chapter 39     1917
Chapter 40     The 1920s
Chapter 41     Eastman and Carter
Chapter 42     March 1934
Chapter 43     Mrs. Elizabeth
Chapter 44     The Great Depression
Chapter 45     July 15, 1939
Chapter 46     Leah
Chapter 47     1940–1951
Chapter 48     1951
Chapter 49     Intolerance
Chapter 50     1953
Chapter 51     1964
Chapter 52     1969
Chapter 53     1970
Chapter 54     1977
Chapter 55     The Graveyard
Chapter 56     Family Photos
PREFACE
I t has been several years since that first day Kaylan walked up the two steps to ring the doorbell. It took him a few days to work up his courage. Finally, the day came, and he stood in jeans, a T-shirt, and a Hard Rock hoodie, with his backpack slung over his shoulder. He took a deep breath and pressed the doorbell. He waited for the door to open, certain it would end up being slammed in his face.
A middle-aged man with gray hair and a reddish complexion opened the door and looked at the young African American over his glasses.
The college student forgot his rehearsed opening. He blurted out in nervousness, “I think yours owned my great-great-grandparents.”
What a horrible opening line. Where could the conversation possibly go from there? No movie director would dare to begin with something so absurd. No discussion to follow could be believable. Audiences would stand up and walk out at the absurdity. But that was what happened. For Kaylan, it felt as if time froze. Drivers stopped their cars in the street to see how this man staring at Kaylan with his mouth slightly fallen open would reply.
The moment froze the writer as well. In a spinning mind, he flipped through alternative questions that were certain to follow. Did he want to answer these or not? Should he slam the door or grab the rifle hidden behind it? Should he attempt to reply? All were terrible choices. If he slammed the door, he would instantly be labeled a racist for refusing to speak with the boy. If he wanted to tell the boy what had happened, there was nothing he could say. At the university, they taught that slave owners had instructed their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren through the generations to be racist. It did not matter that the stereotype was not factual. It did not matter that five generations had passed. African Americans were taught that all white southerners were to be painted with that broad brush.
Conversely, the white man wanted to know what this boy wanted. Was this the start of a money grab? Was a lawsuit lurking in his future for a possible claim to reparations? His every question landed on suspicion. He greeted the young man’s presence with hostility. This conversation was not one the writer of this book wanted to have.
Nicole, the writer’s best friend, was an African American. She was sitting in the living room, silencing the television to eavesdrop on the conversation. The boy was fortunate that Nicole was there that day. She intervened in an unpleasant conversation on the boy’s behalf. She had the skills of a human resources manager, with an ability to listen to both and understand what each was saying; she negotiated, navigated, and facilitated a conversation that lasted a week.
The writer’s mother had recently died. She had been born during the Great Depression, and the family threw nothing away. Boxes filled the attic with diaries, journals, and ledgers. Boxes held boxes of boxes filled with folded, used wrapping paper. Attics were time capsules of all the generations of families past. During her life, his mother had stuffed cabinets with letters and photographs. She had shoved deeds and plats into desk drawers. This mess was the house Kaylan had approached.
Kaylan had approached a house in a small city in the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee. The area often had struggled to find its identity. Before the American Revolution, it was part of North Carolina. That sense of not belonging led to small local battles and minirevolts moving toward statehood. After the area became part of Tennessee, the allegiances and party affiliations of the mountain people did not always match those of the rest of the state. Just as the locals were frustrated, so were the state’s political leaders. Landon Carter Haynes lived from 1816 to 1875. His financial and economic investments paralleled and intertwined with the family Kaylan now approached. Landon became one of Tennessee’s two senators in the Confederate States of America. Following the war, he was sent into political exile to Memphis, away from the democratic base of East Tennessee, as part of the pardon received from President Andrew Johnson.
In 1872, he attended a banquet in Jackson, Tennessee. Former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest participated in the event. He knew Landon had been born in East Tennessee, for which Forrest harbored no affection. Forrest delivered a toast to the former Confederate senator to poke fun at him and lighten the moment: “Mr. Chairman, I propose the health of the eloquent gentleman from East Tennessee, sometimes called the God-forsaken country.”
In response to the toast from General Forrest, Haynes delivered a short speech now known as the “Ode to Tennessee.”
“Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: I plead guilty to the soft impeachment. I am from East Tennessee. Evidently, the distinguished soldier proposing that toast was not himself born breathing the pure air of the mountains. At least I understand he was reared in the sluggish atmosphere of a lagoon far back in the swamps of Mississippi.
“Yes, I was born in East Tennessee—on the banks of the Watauga, which in the Indian vernacular means beautiful river. And a beautiful river it is! Standing upon its banks in my childhood, I have looked down through its glassy waters and beheld a heaven below and then up beheld a heaven above. Reflecting like two great mirrors, each into the other—its moon and planets and trembling stars! Away from its banks of rock and cliff, cedar, hemlock, and laurel stretches a vale back to the distant mountains, more beautiful than any in Italy or Switzerland. There stands the great Unaka, the great Roan, the great Black, and the Great Smoky Mountains among the loftiest in America on whose summits the clouds gather of their own accord, even on the brightest day. There I have seen the great spirit of the Storm after noontide go take his evening nap in his pavilion of darkness and of clouds. Then I have seen him aroused at midnight like a giant refreshed by slumber, covering the heavens with gloom and greater darkness as he awoke the tempest and let loose the red lightings that ran along the mountaintops for a thousand miles, swifter than an eagle’s flight in heaven! And now the lightning would stand up and dance like angels of light in the clouds to the music of that grand organ of nature whose keys seemed touched by the fingers of Jehovah in the hall of eternity, sounding and resounding in notes of thunder through the universe!
“Then I have seen the darkness drift away and the morn get up from her saffron bed, like a queen putting on her robes of light, and come forth from her palace in the sun and tiptoe on the misty mountaintop, whilst night fled before her glorious face to his bed chamber at the pole, as she lighted the beautiful river and the green vale where I was born and played in childhood with a smile of sunshine.”
The author had grown up in these mountains, in a town that, durin