Why is writing about Debt Peonage important when we want to move forward?
Celebrating Black History Month allows us to learn more about African Americans’ accomplishments, heritage, and societal contributions. Studying the past also illustrates the fear that kept members of humanity in bondage, as illustrated in Song of Jaybird.
Why is writing about Debt Peonage important when we want to move forward? I believe it’s because people forget or pretend prejudice doesn’t exist or don’t know that it happened. Whether it is the Jewish Holocaust, Japanese American internment camps, White supremacy, slavery, or injustice to Indigenous people. There is a premise we don’t want to believe it happened, especially if we didn’t live through it ourselves. As a matter of fact, in the Naval Store Industry (Turpentine), Debt Peonage continued up to the 1950s.
Truthfully, until I began researching Song of Jaybird, I did not know debt peonage existed after slavery. Would you happen to know why? There were some things I was never taught in school. I did not learn about the successes and contributions of post-Civil War African American men and women who were politicians, writers, lawyers, doctors, and heroes. W.E.B. Dubois, in 1935, wrote about debt peonage, “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”
I lived a childhood in a segregated South; white and colored-only signs were commonplace; when I asked why at a young age, The answer was: it's just the way it is. My parents subscribed to TIME and LIFE magazines, and I saw photos of the Civil Rights movement. I saw unkindness, defeat, fear, and courage in those pictures. In seventh grade, our county schools were integrated. I was thirteen when Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. I did not learn about Jim Crow Laws until I was an adult. When I did, I found it extremely difficult to understand why it happened.
Reading newspapers from 1897-1907, I became aware of Black Newspapers and journalists who wrote to protect the unheard voice of debt peonage in turpentine and phosphate camps. My book deals with this type of bondage and focuses on individuals’ ability to cope, survive, and have hope in their situation. As a reader of historical fiction, I learn from the experiences of those in the past. I attained empathy while gaining historical knowledge of Black Laborers in turpentine as I hope this for my readers also. This became a driving force in writing Song of Jaybird, to complete my book, and seek readers to share in Delia’s journey.
What new facts about Black History in Turpentine created the most empathy as you read Song of Jaybird?
I encourage you to read books by Black authors for Black History Month. I have decided to read Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson. There are many excellent writers to read, learn from, and celebrate any time of year. Zora Neale Hurston’s book Their Eyes Are Watching God is still one of my favorites.
Photograph credit: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017768046/ Dorothea Lange’s Photo dated 1936, Children of Turpentine near Cordele, Alabama
http://www.webdubois.org
