Young Harold Ford (known as "The
Prince"), who ascended to his
father's congressional seat at the
age of 26 in 1996, would have us believe that,
during this period of murderous white mob
violence, a white couple from Memphis would
both decide to become Black, and to subject
their children to Jim Crow schools and lynch law
justice. It defies all reason - an amazing fiction
concocted in Harold Jr.'s head for purposes
unknown.
Grandmother Vera attended all-Black
Booker T. Washington High School. In 1934, at age
19, she married Harold's grandfather, N.J. Ford, a
somewhat darker Black man. Together, they launched
the family funeral home and political dynasty.
Nobody questioned Vera's Blackness. As Wendi
Thomas reports, "Vera was named the Tennessee
Mother of the Year, ‘the first
black woman ever so honored in Tennessee,' the
Nashville Banner wrote in 1976."
Vera's death certificate, like those
of her parents, John and Lottie, identifies her as
Black.
There is a level of corruption that
even the Ford family of Memphis have never stooped
to - until now. Harold "The Prince" Jr. has
submerged himself in the muck, and all but one
close family member has dived in with him in order
to save his senatorial campaign. None say that
Vera ever fessed up to being white. Retroactively,
they now say it was assumed. "She looked white,"
(indicted) son state
senator John Ford told reporter Wendi Thomas.
Actually, we don't think she looks
white - however, we have eyes trained for this
sort of thing. But that's not the point. The
Ford's collective violation against Black people's
history in this country is far more disturbing
than the pretensions and self-debasement of one
Black family. They make a fiction of their own
family history, and thus allow others to
extrapolate larger fictions, to further confuse
the Black and white public about the real nature
of African American's past and present.
There is really only one definition
for the people who became African Americans: those
who were eligible to be legally sold as chattel,
and whose children were condemned to also be
chattel for slavemaster scum. The "one drop" and
"one-sixteenth" Black blood rule was simply a
commercial arrangement, that allowed white men to
exercise their sexual privileges among the slaves
while carrying no parental obligations. As
a result, the United States became the only
country in the world in which rich and respected
men routinely sold their own children - an
abomination almost beyond comprehension, one that
challenges normal notions of human behavior.
Because of the high cost of slaves
in the U.S. - the driving force in this grotesque
social arrangement that led to child-selling - and
because the United States had a large and heavily
armed white population, there was no need to
create a mulatto class with privileges recognized
by the white rulers. Unlike elsewhere in the
African Diaspora, the "one drop" rule reigned. All
of the "one drop" or more people were herded
together, to be sold during slavery, and Jim
Crowed in its aftermath.
However, in this centuries-long
process, a people came into being: African
Americans of many hues but sharing the same
references and history. During slavery, all could
be sold. Afterwards, all could be lynched, and all
were segregated - unless they "passed," which
usually required leaving the region where
everybody knew who was who and where they came
from. But most did not, because of their ties to
their land, family, community and collective
aspirations.
A distinct people emerged from
the cauldron, a people who developed their own
institutions in opposition to white
institutions, and their own view of the world.
A people with a sense of community that had been
forged in - among the many oppressions of slavery
and Jim Crow - the sexual oppression of Black
women that created the multi-hued African American
group.
Vera Ford belonged to that group, as
did her parents, John and Lottie. They did not
"pass" but stayed within the community. Now, her
grandson, the despicable and
underbrained brat who wants to be a senator, is
casting her out, claiming she was white.
Of the Ford family, only aunt
Barbara Ford Branch, a retired lawyer who lives in
New York City, seems to have an ounce of pride in
her family or her people. "I will not let them try
to make my mother something she wasn't," Ms.
Branch told the Memphis Commercial Appeal's Wendi
Thomas.
However, Ms. Thomas, who is Black,
strays into nasty territory when she introduces
the now-familiar white line that race is a "social
construct." Of course it is. But this "construct"
has vast social consequences, that led to
annihilation of peoples (most Native Americans,
all Tasmanians) and to the creation of new nations
of people. The "social construct" term has been
interpreted by white popular media as meaning
"socially irrelevant" - which is a convenient way
for them to say race doesn't matter, so get over
it. But the centuries of slavery and racial
oppression that have been justified by the
"construct" are not irrelevant. They are facts.
These cumulative events - the lives,
struggles and accomplishment of millions of people
who came to call themselves Black Americans - have
created a unique people in the world. Vera Ford
was one of them, as were her parents.
Harold Ford Jr. desecrates their
graves, and should hang his head in shame. But he
won't, because he is shameless. And
amoral.
