This was an example of him spending more time around us. We were thinking we could do whatever we wanted and he’d understand.
That’s the only time I saw real anger when I was there with him. I’ve seen footage after the fact, and I’ve heard things from
scholars, where something made him upset, or angry. But that’s the only time I actually saw it. I never wanted to see it again,
either. It was some time before Martin and I got back into his good graces, but by bedtime, Yoki was sitting with him, sniffling
apologetically, holding his fingers in her hands.
My maternal grandparents were Obadiah Scott (everyone called him Obie) and Bernice McMurry Scott. My maternal grandfather’s
parents were Jeff and Cora Scott. Jeff Scott ended up owning 450 acres of black dirt, rich, black-belt Alabama farmland outside
Marion, Alabama, seat of Perry County, some eighty miles south by southwest of Birmingham, eighty miles due west of Montgomery,
cheek by jowl with Dallas County, where the county seat was Selma. Jeff Scott was a preacher’s steward in the African Methodist
Episcopal Church. He had thirteen children with great-grandmother Cora, and after she died, at age forty, great-grandfather
Jeff married Fannie Burroughs and had twelve more children before he died at sixty-eight in a car wreck. My maternal great-grandfather,
Martin McMurry, was a mixture of black, white, and Native American. He was two years of age when slavery ended.
My grandfather Obie and my grandmother Bernice awaited us when we made our summer car trips down to the family farm near Marion,
four hours from Atlanta. Going to Marion was like an outing. We’d always drive. It took several hours, so we got a chance
to all be together in the car, a Plymouth station wagon later, but before that, during my father’s lifetime, a Chevy, a blue
Chevy, which we still have. A ’65 Impala. The green Pontiac Bonneville was the car he got before—before Memphis. But we still
have that blue Impala. I remember riding to the farm in it.
My granddaddy Scott was a nice man. He’d let us do anything we wanted, mostly, including driving his old three-gear pickup
truck. We liked him for this. I hate to say it because it sounds so trivial, but he ran a store, like the old combination
gasoline “filling” station–small grocery store. Candy and everything was in the store, and he told us to “help yourself,”
against my grandmother’s wishes. Her thing was, “Child, you need to eat healthy. You’re going to work here.”
Her cooking was great, southern country cooking, the fresh taste. I mean even till this day, once you’ve sampled it, you can
never forget it. Fresh turnips, collards, okra, squash, onions simmering over roasts, and hams stuffed with cloves and a raisin
glaze; cornbread, eggs, bacon, tomatoes, fresh everything, made deliciously. Now you and I know time gilds—often dietary habits
you had as a child are remembered so fondly until other people from other families in other parts of the country find it all
too appalling. You ate grits!? Indeed we did, ate them and loved them as they were prepared in the country, slathered in fresh
butter or in a puddle of brown gravy off the rendering fat of chicken or ham with a touch of celery or bell pepper. Those
grits back then were not just plain grits you get from a box or some Denny’s. In my memory, they were right—creamy, smooth,
delicious, all so good and remembered well.
Granddaddy Scott was a hardworking, frugal man, who learned from watching his father. It must have been hard to maintain a
simple abundance in a system where a black man’s life was virtually worthless and he could be “disappeared” for working hard,
accumulating something, a little more than some few of his white neighbors down the road. An authentic line from
Mississippi Burning
, delivered by Gene Hackman, talking about how his poor white southern character’s father felt about a “Negro”: “If you ain’t
better than a nigger, who are you better than?” We could talk about the psychology behind that line, or dryly recite events
of the day. But no need. Great-granddaddy Scott and Granddaddy Scott lived when it was an unforgivable crime for a “Negro”
to get ahead.
Granddaddy Scott’s home was a wood-frame house on a large tract of land. Animals in the backyard; cow pasture, barn behind
the house, adjacent to the hog shed and chicken shack; vegetable garden and produce trees on the side of the house; then cropland,
several hundred acres elsewhere; the farm itself, and main house, on about fourteen acres. My grandfather was well regarded
in the community—you got that sense. Marty and I would come in the store and work. He’d let us tag along, teach us how to
work a cash register, let us help wait on people who came to get gas.
You could tell that everybody looked up to Mr. Obie. Mr. Obie was for all intents and purposes the local bank and the local
barber. He did some of everything. Cut hair on his porch. When people couldn’t afford to buy groceries, he’d extend them credit.
There were so many people who owed him money that if they paid him off, seemed like he would’ve been a millionaire. He gave
away so much at the end of his life and didn’t have a lot to show for it. Some people see that as mismanagement, other people
see it as I do—he worked at what he loved, he helped people out, wasn’t in it for the money. He saw it as justice. He’d been
fleeced himself. He was always courteous and giving to people. Some people took advantage, cheated him right to his face,
let’s say on his gas pump. “Three dollars on regular,” a bad one might say, when he’d actually put in five. Granddaddy didn’t
spend his life chasing the bad ones, or trying to keep them more honest. He was honest himself, never let other people’s transgressions
affect him or the way he lived. And I saw this, and at the time it confused me, but in later years I began to understand it
better. It took a while, though.
“Granddaddy, did you see what that man did?”… “Yeah, boy, I sure did. Think I’m blind? Make sure you don’t go around doing
things like that.”… “You gonna let him get away with it, Grand-daddy?”… “Ain’t for me to let him get away or not. The Lord
will make an accountin’.”
Now, does that make sense to you? It didn’t to me back then. The Lord was up in the sky, and Granddaddy was cheated on earth.
I didn’t understand. Yet he seemed to want for nothing.
It was busier than you might imagine for the country, or for what I had always thought the country would be like—everybody
lolling about being indolent with a piece of hay stuck in their teeth. Oh no. He worked at a sawmill, bought a truck, hauled
logs and timber, cut hair on the weekends. He later bought a sawmill that was burned down two weeks later by racist whites.
My grandmother had borne her children—my mother, Coretta, her sister, Edythe, and their brother, Obie. They tended crops when
they grew up, hired out to pick cotton at harvest. My grandfather used to say he wouldn’t tolerate laziness in his house.
When we visited, we worked. We didn’t go on vacation. We all had chores. When I say it was mixed work and play, what I really
mean is on one hand, we thought we were going on vacation, because we were going away from home, but the truth is, we were
working harder there than anywhere else. Granddaddy Scott could soften his approach; my grandmother was always strict. But
they were both all about work. My grandfather would come in at 6
A.M.
. “Y’all get up! Work to do!”… “We did it yesterday.”… “Do it every day. You need to be up. Open that shade. Let the Lord’s
light in here!”
Obie Scott was old school, with the ethic of: You work your life through, and if you’re not up doing something, you are wasting
time, your life has no purpose. So we didn’t really mind. We wanted to sleep later, don’t get me wrong. And we kind of knew
if we wanted to go back to bed, we could just turn the light off and he wasn’t coming back to check. That was Martin’s move,
to jump up and say, “Yessir!” and then plop back down after my grandfather left the room.
My grandmother, Nana, as we called her, wanted us to participate in the process: help her prepare the food, help her do chores,
which we didn’t mind, typically. We learned a lot. Like milking cows. Not something on my list to learn how to do, but I did
learn. Granddaddy would take Martin to the slaughterhouse. I don’t remember going; Martin never had much to say about it.
Grand-daddy owned cows and hogs and chickens and everything; they somehow became cut-up slices and slabs of meat; he’d send
us back to Atlanta with what seemed like a whole cow or pig, cut up. We’d have six months’ supply of sirloin, T-bone, ham,
and bacon. We never wanted for meat, not as long as he kept livestock. He also ran a hauling business; Martin and I learned
to drive a standard shift with him. “Drive, boy,” is all he would say, and I ground gears and killed the engine misapplying
the clutch before I got the feel. That was fun. I didn’t have my driver’s license, but on those country dirt roads, I could
play around with his pickup or tractor.
It was a diversion from city life, going to the country to do things not available in the city. Even my mom, even though she
was a parent and concerned, would relax the standards. I don’t remember my dad being in that setting as much. When he did
go, he almost always disappeared.
Sometimes my mother’s sister, Edythe Scott Bagley, her husband, Arthur, and their son, Arturo, would visit the farm with us.
Uncle Obie, Mother’s brother, was always around to help and support us as well. In later years, his wife, Alberta, became
an invaluable member of our family. Arturo is actually probably two years younger than Bernice, and that is the only cousin
we had on that side of the family—the only first cousin. Now, we had all kinds of more distant cousins. That was the other
special thing about “the country.” My great-grandfather had twenty-five children. We were literally related to most of the
county. We would meet new people on a regular basis who would just come up and say, “I’m your third cousin, So and so.” Oh,
is that so? My mother or grandmother would say, “Yes, that’s So-and-so’s child.” A lot of times they would embarrass you,
and take a little pleasure in it too. You might have met them before, just a quick meeting, and they might say, “You ’member
me, don’t you? What’s my name?” How can you remember all these people? So it’s funny on one hand; in the country they all
know each other so it doesn’t matter that they are that many times removed. Inevitably they all know each other. There’s some
comfort in that.
It was always like a homecoming, or a reunion; people would find out we were there and they would drive over from their farms,
just to come and say hello to the Kings, or the “Kangs,” as some of them pronounced it, and ask, “Is the Rev’un here? Can
we shake hands with the Rev’un?” His name preceded him. They appreciated my father. Mother knew them all by name, but I honestly
can’t say I could keep track of them all.
My parents were always very loving. I think the best word for their marriage is partnership. It wasn’t like one parent was
dominant over the other. You felt shared responsibility. When we would sit around the table, they both would have input in
the drift of the conversation. My mom gave my father respect, as man of the house.
I never heard them argue. Maybe they were good at keeping it from us, since the married couple doesn’t exist that hasn’t had
arguments. My mother was always a concerned parent who would say her piece; if he was going somewhere and wanted to take my
brother and me with him and if this was a trip that she thought might be in some way inappropriate, or maybe dangerous, she’d
say, “Well, Martin, I don’t know if you should take the boys on this one.”
And we would say, “But we want to go, we want to go!”
And he’d say, “Well, I think it would be okay.” And she wouldn’t press it, not in front of us. She would just look at him
and lower her head, but not her eyes. Usually, later on, he’d wind up explaining to us why we couldn’t go. We’d gone on just
a few trips, like the James Meredith march in Mississippi, and were surprised when in late March of 1968, she allowed us to
go with him on a tour around Georgia. Just us fellas. She wasn’t the type that challenged him in front of us, but later, when
it was just them, one-on-one, she got her point across. If she had a concern, she would express it, but after being heard
she wouldn’t press it. So she respected him as a man, as the father, as the head of the household.
Christmas and other holidays and birthdays were celebrated in our house regardless of any current situation, campaign, or
cause. Gift giving, gift exchange, and reflection on spirituality were what holidays meant. My mom is a big believer in traditional
celebrations and ceremonies.
The last Christmas we all shared was in 1967. At the time, we didn’t know it was the last Christmas we’d all share. It was
just another great Christmas. Mother bought my father and me identical bicycles. Mine was just a junior version of his. Same
brand, same color, same style. Purple. A new three-speed with the shift knob in the middle on the column. A purple metallic,
sparkly color that trans-fixed me; a new model. The “in” thing. Really the coolest thing going.
Mine had training wheels. His did not. His was also bigger. I remember my father and me riding them together Christmas of
1967, down Sunset; we always felt kindred, there was always a shared sense of closeness between us because we both had January
birthdays and our birthdays were close to Christmas, so when it came down to gifts, we knew we had a double hit coming.
“Dad-day! Wonder what else we’re going to get, Daddy?”
“Isn’t this enough, Dexter?”
“It sure is. Until our birthday.”
He laughed with me. And there we remain forever. It was our last Christmas together.
I don’t remember our birthdays that followed in January of 1968 very well, for some reason; Dad’s birthday was typically celebrated
with staff more than family. The whole Movement family, the Cause—all would do things for him and my mom would kind of incorporate
family into that, but our mother would do celebrations for all of us individually at home on our birthdays.