Thursday, December 22, 2005 at 1:01am
The Mule of Mississippi
[From the gifted accomplished writer, actor and comedian, Aaron Freeman, my friend, who was nominated for an Emmy for his news essay on PBS.]
I owe my life to the mule. I know neither the mule's name nor pedigree nor gender. I would not recognize its picture. But the mule is why I have sipped coffee in Paris, nibbled falafel in Jerusalem and looked out on the misty trees of Machu Pichu.
My ancestors were among the lowest class of enslaved Africans. We were almost wholly unskilled, not carpenters nor smiths nor cowboys. We were not leaders of men or women. Not charming or cooperative enough for domestic work and probably too ornery to preach. We were field hands, inexpensively purchased laborers bought and sold by the dozen. Legend says our first two generations did not even get names. We answered to a demand for 'one o' y'all!".
My mother was born on land her great-grandparents had tilled as slaves. I wish they had liberated the soil themselves and built their homes on the bones of slaughtered overseers. In fact when freedom came, my ancestors, having few skills and less hope, stayed on the land and did what they had been trained to do, grow and pick cotton. They were sharecroppers. They lived without income, easily accessible water or sanitation.
Then one day Ananias Fuller, my grandfather-to-be, was spotted on the road by a skinny 18 year-old girl. According to my grandmother it was not Ananias Fuller's good looks that attracted her, though he had them. He was known as "Uncle Love." She was not wooed by his wide grin either. What attracted my grandmother to Ananias Fuller was the mule.
My grandmother was a bright girl who dreamed beyond the plantation. Cotton was fine, but she wanted to pick her own. on her own land. She recognized the mule's excess value potential. Hitched to a plow a mule was the technological innovation needed to put her onto the agriculture superhighway. A mule provided transport, it was a four-legged Model T.
Its behavior was fascinating and it could be trained. The mule was a classroom and a star pupil, in one. The mule could carry you to a far-off town where you could hear news from even more distant lands. The mule was the internet. And if your neighbor had a mule of a different gender, you could have the Playboy Channel.
My grandmother envisioned it all. My grandmother married Ananias Fuller and his mule. The three of them sharecropped successfully enough that they had money to move north, from Mississippi to Tennessee. They bought land outside of Memphis that produced profit enough to open a store that allowed them to send their children to school, which made the children curious enough about the world that my mother married a man with a car and moved further north to Chicago.
The mule was a genie that granted my grandparents' wishes for themselves and generations to come. It carried my family along a road less traveled by Mississippi Negroes. It removed them from rural poverty, doomed to a life of representation by the Trent Lott's of purposed modern America. It was a dream not deferred. Sadly, I do not know when the mule died nor how old it was, but I stand on its strong back still.
So do we all Aaron Freeman, so do we all.
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Ester Davis is a celebrated host/producer on PAX-TV, Channel 68, every Saturday, 5-6 a.m, a #1 rated show. Visit her website at The Ester Davis Show.
— — —
UPI Religion & Spirituality Forum is a big tent for all expressions
of faith and spirituality, neither excluding nor favoring any.
All opinions expressed belong to the writer alone, and are
not necessarily shared by UPI Religion & Spirituality Forum.
I owe my life to the mule. I know neither the mule's name nor pedigree nor gender. I would not recognize its picture. But the mule is why I have sipped coffee in Paris, nibbled falafel in Jerusalem and looked out on the misty trees of Machu Pichu.
My ancestors were among the lowest class of enslaved Africans. We were almost wholly unskilled, not carpenters nor smiths nor cowboys. We were not leaders of men or women. Not charming or cooperative enough for domestic work and probably too ornery to preach. We were field hands, inexpensively purchased laborers bought and sold by the dozen. Legend says our first two generations did not even get names. We answered to a demand for 'one o' y'all!".
My mother was born on land her great-grandparents had tilled as slaves. I wish they had liberated the soil themselves and built their homes on the bones of slaughtered overseers. In fact when freedom came, my ancestors, having few skills and less hope, stayed on the land and did what they had been trained to do, grow and pick cotton. They were sharecroppers. They lived without income, easily accessible water or sanitation.
Then one day Ananias Fuller, my grandfather-to-be, was spotted on the road by a skinny 18 year-old girl. According to my grandmother it was not Ananias Fuller's good looks that attracted her, though he had them. He was known as "Uncle Love." She was not wooed by his wide grin either. What attracted my grandmother to Ananias Fuller was the mule.
My grandmother was a bright girl who dreamed beyond the plantation. Cotton was fine, but she wanted to pick her own. on her own land. She recognized the mule's excess value potential. Hitched to a plow a mule was the technological innovation needed to put her onto the agriculture superhighway. A mule provided transport, it was a four-legged Model T.
Its behavior was fascinating and it could be trained. The mule was a classroom and a star pupil, in one. The mule could carry you to a far-off town where you could hear news from even more distant lands. The mule was the internet. And if your neighbor had a mule of a different gender, you could have the Playboy Channel.
My grandmother envisioned it all. My grandmother married Ananias Fuller and his mule. The three of them sharecropped successfully enough that they had money to move north, from Mississippi to Tennessee. They bought land outside of Memphis that produced profit enough to open a store that allowed them to send their children to school, which made the children curious enough about the world that my mother married a man with a car and moved further north to Chicago.
The mule was a genie that granted my grandparents' wishes for themselves and generations to come. It carried my family along a road less traveled by Mississippi Negroes. It removed them from rural poverty, doomed to a life of representation by the Trent Lott's of purposed modern America. It was a dream not deferred. Sadly, I do not know when the mule died nor how old it was, but I stand on its strong back still.
So do we all Aaron Freeman, so do we all.
— — —
Ester Davis is a celebrated host/producer on PAX-TV, Channel 68, every Saturday, 5-6 a.m, a #1 rated show. Visit her website at The Ester Davis Show.
UPI Religion & Spirituality Forum is a big tent for all expressions
of faith and spirituality, neither excluding nor favoring any.
All opinions expressed belong to the writer alone, and are
not necessarily shared by UPI Religion & Spirituality Forum.