Total Healing: Truth, Trauma,Triggers
I recently shared my great-great grandfather’s story for Black History Month for Ingomu Learning, an APP based company where I will be going live virtual Diversity Inclusion workshops. I revealed some startling research I discovered about my Great-Great Uncle that I want to go deeper and give the backstory to my research in the spirit of Black History Month.
Researching His-Story and my ancestry has given me a better understanding of who I am and why often find myself vacillating between entrapment and empowerment; better known as flight or fight. I often feel this conflict when my freedom is restricted or my self-worth is disrespected. It also comes about when I see others, I care about, being mistreated too. Sometimes it is real and the feelings are warranted, but other times I am being triggered and blowing things out of proportion.
Deepening my understanding of the depth of my ancestors’ trauma and my DNA is helping come to terms with this dichotomy and have better self-control. I believe during these challenging times and division in our country, we are each being called to do the inner work that will give us total healing. Understanding our truth, trauma and triggers will empower us to stop and think before we speak or take action.
Of the past few years, I have made numerous connections and now historians in Lafayette, Indiana are supporting me in discovering the footprints of my great-great grandfather’s journey from enslavement, to freedom and beyond. Most of my research has been inspiring. However, this particular discovery stopped me in my tracks and silenced me for a while. Like it or not, it is my truth, trauma and trigger related to the political and social tension we are all experiencing in our country today. I must share it so that I can heal, and be of service during these trying times.
You see, I knew from reading the slave narratives that, at the age of six, Grandpa Fields was traumatically moved from one plantation to another and separated from his parents and eleven siblings. What I did not know was there was an unsolved murder mystery as part of his-story. I learned that my great-great grandfather’s brother, my great-great uncle Edward, could have been the impetus to this critical juncture in their lives. Uncle Edward killed their cruel master, Bob McFarland. You can read about it in the excerpt of the article from the Indianapolis Recorder.
The Rev. John Fields, of Lafayette, Ind., it an example of what Negroes of yesterday accomplished by thrift and industry. He was born a slave March 27, 1848, in Davis County, Kentucky. Although he is nearly ninety years of age, his mind is still active, and he can recall incidents of the slave period with great detail and accuracy.
His first owner was a cruel man named Bob McFarland. John’s brother, Edward Fields, killed his master when he latter attempted to whip him. John was then transferred to another master named David Hill. On Mr. Hill’s plantation John saw some of the evils of slavery. He says that once when his mistress was away for several weeks, Mr. Hill forced a little girl thirteen years old to have illicit relations with her master. Her mistress returned to find that the girl was In a delicate state of health. She insisted that the girl tell her everything, but the master had already forbade the girl to tell that he was the guilty party on pain of death. Then, to satisfy his wife, the master would take the girl to the woods, suspend her body to a tree and whip her until she was almost unconscious, trying to make her tell who was the father of her unborn child. When the child was born, as a penalty for her sins, the girl was sold and taken to the far South, where in the words of her master and father of her child she would be doomed to drink the waters of the Mississippi and pick cotton.
In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, but it did not affect the status of the slave in Kentucky, hence, the masters of the Bluegrass State continued to hold their slaves until the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment December 18, 1865. The Union officers, however, began to tell the slaves about the Emancipation Proclamation and to induce the Negroes to believe that the Proclamation was applicable to all slaves everywhere within the limits of the United States. Although he was a mere boy, John Fields decided that he would be a slave no longer. In 1864 he ran away.
I find it interesting that the article in the Indianapolis Recorder was written the same year as my great-great grandfather’s slave narrative by the Federal Writers’ Project 1936-1938 and Assembled by the Library of Congress Project work projects administration. Yet, there was no mention of his brother Edward, Bob McFarland or the plantation owners murder at all. The Narrative author only shared:
“When I was six years old, all of us children were taken from my parents, because my master died and his estate had to be settled. We slaves were divided by this method. Three disinterested persons were chosen to come to the plantation and together they wrote the names of the different heirs on a few slips of paper. These slips were put in a hat and passed among us slaves. Each one took a slip and the name on the slip was the new owner.”
However, I had also found a google book, History of Daviess County, Kentucky published in 1883, that included a mention of the unsolved murder of a Robert McFarland. Even before finding the Indianapolis Recorder article, I began to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The article confirmed my suspicion.
I can only imagine how my ancestors felt and processed the cruelty of entrapment and enslavement, and then the empowerment and guilt of the murder that cost them being together as a family. Yet, in spite of all of that, my great-great grandfather role modeled healing, sharing his truth and moving forward with his head held high. After all he had been through, he was still able to: find love and marry the woman of his dreams; unleash his entrepreneurial spirit and own unmortgaged homes that he rented; launch a Black Baptist church were he was a layman preacher; live healthy and active until he was 104. I wonder if he was able to do all of this because he was only six when he lived with his whole family so he barely remembered, or maybe it was because he had such a forgiving heart and was not bitter, or perhaps his faith allowed him to cry out and be made whole again. I can only imagine, as I may never truly know.