Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. Insults His Grandmother and Our People
by BC Publishers Glen Ford and Peter Gamble
Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., who wants to become a U.S. Senator from
Tennessee, has sunk lower than a snake. He has defamed his
grandmother, and his great-grandparents, by claiming that their lives
were frauds and lies - that they were whites passing for Black.
There seem to be no limits to the young congressman's perfidy and
stupidity. In the process of depicting his own ancestors as people
living a lie, Ford has also insulted the Black public and Black
history - not to mention common sense, a quality of which Harold Jr.
seems to be totally lacking.
Ford's allegation, now mimicked by much of his highly political
family, but never mentioned by any family member before the
35-year-old senatorial candidate casually smeared his grandmother in
USA Today, in December, defies all reason. Grandmother Vera Ford, who
died in 1994 at the age of 78, was the daughter of John Davis and
Lottie McGinnis, both of whose death certificates list them as "Negro"
- as skillfully reported by the Memphis Commercial Appeal's Wendi C.
Thomas on March 19.
Vera Ford's parents were married at a time of great racial violence in
Tennessee and the nation. Shelby County - Memphis - recorded the
highest number of lynchings of Blacks in the state. In 1917, a year
after Vera's birth, according to the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History
and Culture, white mobs vented their racist anger en mass:
Tennessee's "greatest lynching carnival" was held in Memphis in
May 1917 when Ell Person, the allegedly confessed ax-murderer of a
sixteen-year-old white girl, was burned to death in the presence of
fifteen thousand men, women, and little children. The mother of the
murdered child cheered the mob as they poured oil on the man and set
him afire. The Memphis Press said that "the mob fought and screamed
and crowded to get a glimpse of him and the mob closed in and
struggled about the fire."
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.
Glen Ford and Peter Gamble are writing a book titled, "Barack Obama
and the Crisis in Black Leadership."
picture of his G-mom:
http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/...553713,00.html
She reminds me of my Great Aunt, who is biracial.
Smear campaign
Re: Re: Smear campaign
Hybrid Mode
