I posted months ago about my 1961 journey to Mississippi. There were many profound memories which were awakened in me by taking that trip into my past.
Chopping cotton in the humid summer heat of the Mississippi Delta taught me things about my capacity to endure hardship and the unfairness of racism.
I remember the roar of that old mufflerless Ford flatbed kicking up dust on that gravel road every morning at 5.30. Black families and poor white relatives hanging on with their feet dangling over the edge as my cousin picked us all up to “slave" for another day in the cotton fields.
Up one row and down another for 12 hours for $2 a day.
But I also remember the water cooler on that flatbed where we could get a dipper full of cool water to survive another row.
I learned where that old saying:
"A tough row to hoe” came from the hard way.
Those black kids, their parents and I shared that much needed dipper of thirst quenching water.
There wasn't a "whites ONLY" dipper! We ALL got thirsty. We shared the dipper.
In Vietnam that feeling was confirmed by the wounded Marines whose wounds confirmed what I had learned in that Mississippi cotton field years earlier:
“We ALL get thirsty. We ALL have red blood. We ALL react the same when shot or blown up. We're ALL HUMAN beings!
Maybe that's the simple TRUTH that MAGAts NEVER learned. Black, brown, yellow or white. Skin color doesn't make ANY human being more or less than another.
Maybe WE ALL need to learn that drinking from the same “dipper" won't hurt you. WE ALL get thirsty!
But some of us learn that empathy is NOT a bad thing.
Offering someone different the same dipper won't make the water less effective. As a matter of fact, it might make it more delicious and thirst quenching!
We're ALL in this together. Sharing the same dipper is a good lesson to learn. I'm glad I learned it early in my life.
Together we can defeat this horror of racism and hate. Share a dipper MAGAts! It might open your minds and hearts to a better world.
You’re most welcome. Two descendants are buried at Andersonville. Perhaps there stones are marked unknown Soldiers. I do Ancestry. Bye for now.
Chuck, that is a very thought provoking statement you are making and one that is so true. I honestly remember the first time I saw, really saw, a racist act. I was a young teenager when i first saw black people face to face. I was living on a US Airforce base in Labrador. It was a training base and a lot of the GI’s were very young and there were white, black, Asian men there and they all interacted well. There did not seem to be any racism whatsoever. All of us young girls interacted with them in movie theatres, swimming pool, ice rinks etc
I have, of course, over the years been aware of the racism that has raised its ugly head. But I think I first saw it in action in 2018 on a visit to New York when a disabled black veteran was being disrespected and demeaned by a couple of entitled young white jerks. It was heartbreaking to see. I was able to offer some comfort but I am sure that it was very little compared with what he must have endured daily. Someway, somehow, there must be a way to rid this world of the sin of racism, sexism. May not be in my lifetime or in yours but I have hope