DNA

"You're going to be someone's ancestor--act accordingly." 

A big African-American man--I didn't catch his name, but I'm sure he's someone with standing--was holding forth at what I thought to be the Hollywood Bowl or someplace similar, participating in a big Juneteenth celebration yesterday.

"Juneteeth" honors the day the Galveston (TX) slaves were freed, a day two months after Appomattox and two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863, the day Lincoln freed the country's four million slaves. The very last American slaves walked away from bondage on June 19, 1865. Thus, Juneteenth--some places more than others--is a national holiday.

What the man said with that one line reminded me of someone else's discussion, something I read somewhere to the effect that we would, as a nation and culture, be more responsible if we thought more about our grandchildren. In other words, if people didn't live "for the day" as much as "for the future," America would be, in every way, a better place to live. I can't help thinking that's right.

I'm sure some conservatives--and white nationalists, for that matter--would have approved of what that speaker told the crowd: "You're going to be someone's ancestor--act accordingly." But the line has resonance in any community, mine too.  If I thought more about my grandchildren's world than I did about my own, we all would prosper.  I didn't. That's for sure. 

And it reminded me of a story I once did on an African-American couple from Albuquerque, a couple who had chanced upon a Christian radio program called the Back to God Hour (BtGH), and became, thereafter, devoted followers. I was doing a series of stories for the BtGH, stories that invited readers into the lives of people who were enriched and encouraged by the Word the BtGH was offering.

Because I've always believed that we are, in many ways, created by identities given to us by those who've come before us, I liked to begin an interview with a simple request: "Reach back and tell me about grandparents and great-grandparents. . ." I always found that information useful. Still do.

The Robinsons of Albuquerque were native-born Southerners whose parents had come north in the Great Migration to escape Jim Crow and find jobs, mid-Depression. 

"I can't go back very farther than that," Mr. Robinson told me. "You know--slavery."

He knew nothing about his great-grandparents and little more about his grandparents. Neither did his wife know much about hers. "You know, slavery."

The truth is, I didn't know. I hadn't thought of the reality of it. I mean, I knew about the horrors of slavery, but I'd never sat in the living room of a married couple who claimed to know very little about their kinship because well, "You know, slavery."

I thought of the Robinsons when that Black man was speaking. I thought of the discussion of how we all should think more about our own legacies than we do about ourselves. I thought of my own grandfather, who used to tell my father that he would be able to determine what kind of father he had been when he observed his grandkids, me included, a line that stays with me as if it were actually in my DNA.

Other than five minutes of a Juneteenth celebration on TV, I didn't spend much time thinking about the Emancipation Proclamation, Jim Crow, the Great Migration--none of that. 

We've got an anniversary coming up--a big one, the 50th, so my wife and I are putting together what seems a half-million photographs of our kids and grandkids, a job that's taken us most of last week. It'll be fun, I'm sure, and we'll have all of them around when we gather less than a week from now in Arizona, where Barbara and I started our married life. 

Maybe I should have been thinking about Juneteenth more than I did. Maybe. But somehow I felt forgiven because I was thinking a ton about my grandkids, riffling through sweet pictures from what was but doesn't seem all that long ago. 

"You're going to be someone's ancestors," that man said, over and over. "Act accordingly."

That line just stuck with me, I guess.