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Wanting to Be a Forest

Posted in family, Imagery, poetry, tagged Bill Griffin, Civil War, family, Frank X Walker, Load in Nine Times, nature photography, poetry, Southern writing, USCT on November 22, 2024| 6 Comments »

[with 3 poems by Frank X Walker]

Grove

This was the first time

we really look at each other

and not be able to tell

who master the cruelest

who sorrow the deepest

who ground been the hardest to hoe.

We was lined up like oaks in the yard

standing with our chins up,

proud chests out, shoulders back,

and already nervous stomachs in.

We was a grove wanting to be a forest,

ready to see what kind of wood we made from.

The only thing taller or straighter

than us be the boards

holding up the barracks at our backs,

though most our feets feel pigeon-toed

and powerful sore

from marching back and forth, every day,

for what seem like more miles

than we walked to get here.

It take more than pride to stand still

‘neath these lil’ hats not made for shade.

Soldiering ain’t easy, but it sure beats

the bloody leaves off a bondage.

Frank X Walker

[based on a photo taken at Camp Nelson, Kentucky, of troops standing at attention outside the Colored Soldiers Barrack]

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1861 One month after Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, Kentucky’s Governor issues a formal proclamation of neutrality, but he retreats from any denunciation of slavery, which he believes is not a “moral, social, or political evil.” Four months later Kentucky decides to end neutrality and enters the Civil War on the side of the Union; 200 delegates vote to secede from the rest of the state and form a separate Confederate Kentucky with Bowling Green as capital.

1862 Abraham Lincoln’s EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION declares freedom for all enslaved persons in states which are in rebellion against the United States. This leaves slaves in Union-aligned Kentucky still the property of their masters, however.

1864 The U.S. government’s progress towards making universal emancipation a war aim has caused support for the war and the government among White Kentuckians to dwindle. Military recruitment ebbs. On June 13, U.S. SPECIAL ORDER NO. 20 allows enslaved persons to enlist in the U.S. Army without their owner’s consent and be granted their freedom, the first pathway to legal emancipation in Kentucky. That summer and fall, 14,000 Black men enlist.

Only Black men who are fit for military duty are emancipated, however. If they are ineligible, they are returned to enslavement, and there is no offer of freedom for their families. Camp Nelson, Kentucky’s largest recruitment and training base, becomes a haven for refugees from slavery, whether escaping from Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina or arriving with their newly enlisted Kentucky husbands or fathers. Freedom seekers from the South are considered “contraband of war” and granted freedom, but slaves of White Kentuckians remain legal property of their masters with no formal protections.

On November 22, 1864, in the midst of a winter storm, Brigadier General Speed S. Frye orders all refugees surrounding Camp Nelson expelled and their shacks destroyed. Of 400 people immediately displaced without shelter or recourse, at least 102 die of exposure and starvation. Frye’s order is quickly rescinded by his superiors in Kentucky but headlines cause an outcry across the States. On December 15, Adjutant General L. Thomas issues ORDERS NO. 29 to require that “all camps enlisting Negroes provide suitable housing and provisions for their families.”

Within months, the War Department creates the Home for Refugees at Camp Nelson. On March 3, 1865, the US Congress passes laws to emancipate the wives and children of United States Colored Troops soldiers.

Camp Nelson, Kentucky, is now a National Monument, and includes a memorial obelisk to honor the 102 African Americans who perished in The Expulsion.

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We Will Prove Ourselves Men

++ Sewn on the regimental flag

++ of the 127th U.S. Colored Troops

I don’t look the stars and stripes

nor the eagle for mustard

like the white officers

and some of my free brothers do.

I think on the slender fingers

that stitched our proud colors

snapping in the wind,

the same steady hands

that last held me close,

and pray they hold me again.

That’s why I’m willing

to trade bullets in a cloud.

Some confuse our bravery and courage

with our love for our women,

but many of us just eyeing that flag

and trying our best to get back home.

Frank X Walker

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My Grandpop died when he was 67 and I was 5. Our families lived hundreds of miles apart – we in New York, then Tennessee, he and Nana in North Carolina – so we visited only two or three times a year. I can’t recall the sound of his voice, I’m not sure if he ever hugged me, but I know a story about him and me that I have retold myself so many times that it is tangibly real. Totally, unquestioningly, personally real:

We are in the dining room of his house that overlooks Bogue Sound. He, a surgeon, is holding my fingers in his. In the pressure of his fingers I am aware of the bones beneath my skin, and he is teaching me: Carpals, Metacarpals, Phalanges.

I have many photos of Grandpop, his enigmatic smile. I have copies of articles he published, things he crafted with his hands, an oil painting. I have photos he took of me, even an old 35 mm. silent movie. But the most real, the most present, is this story I keep and hold. Perhaps the artifacts helped me create the story. Perhaps hearing the story as it was told to me by Nana and Mom. However the story comes into being, into life, it brings reality with it.

So it is with Frank X Walker and his poems in Load in Nine Times. Frank was already deeply involved in resurrecting and creating the stories of Black Civil War soldiers in Kentucky and their families, using scant artifacts to create short biographies and allow these men and women to live (for a project at Reckoning.com). Then he thought to ask the archivist to research a possible relative of his own. And the sky opened.

Frank’s dedication for the collection of some 100 poems reads thus: For my ancestors, Mary and Randal Edelen, 125th U.S. Colored Infantry and Elvira and Henry Clay Walker, 12th U.S. Colored Troops Heavy Artillery. These folks speak and are joined by dozens of others who lived and suffered and sometimes triumphed. Through poetry they have all come to life, along with the middle decades of 19th century Kentucky. Slave and slave owner, soldier and widow, parent of despair and parent of hope – Frank has honored them and exposed them, judged them and sometimes forgiven them, given them sharp tongues and sharp features and brought their years into sharp, sharp focus.

And our years as well. What did I know about Civil War Kentucky, USA? As soon as I laid down the book I had to know more. More! Frank educates with timelines and resources but his greatest gift is to enlighten me, in the sense of casting light into dark corners where I had never thought to look. When I discover online some of the photographs he must have used for his own inspiration, those slightly blurred faces now suddenly stand out to me – real men, real women. We each owe it to ourselves to continue to tell our stories and to listen to new ones. Somehow, in this harsh and enervating world, perhaps this is the way we will become more real to each other.

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Read the excellent interview with Frank X Walker by Jacqueline Allen Trimble as she explores with him the creation of Load in Nine Times, in the Oct 19, 2024 edition of Salvation South.

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A Black Father Dreams a Son

++ Brig. Gen. Charles Young,

++ 9th U.S. Cavalry Regiment

It was twelve miles to Maysville and the Ohio River and another

ten to Ripley. A runaway could escape from Mays Lick,

at night, head north, follow the smell of the river and make

the entire distance and crossing by sunrise. A determine one,

on horseback, like Gabriel Young, could make it in half the time.

Ignoring racism at West Point was easier knowing

my father survived slavery. He joined the 5th and risked his life

so our people would know freedom. I risk mine to protect it.

If his sacrifice and commitment freed my body, my mother’s books

free my mind. Her skirt was my first classroom.

Every big and small thing I’ve done began at their feet.

Though born into slavery in Kentucky, I learned to play piano

and violin, speak French and german, before becoming a teacher,

before graduating from West Point, before a career in the military,

and public service.

Growing up in Ripley showed me what this country could be.

What my parents instilled in me, and Wilberforce proved it.

I am America’s promise, my mother’s song,

and the reason my father had every right to dream.

Frank X Walker

[Charles young, born in 1864 into slavery to Gabriel Young and Armenta Bruen in Mays Lick, Kentucy, was the first Black man to achieve the rank of colonel in the Unites States Army, and the highest ranking Black officer in the regular army until his death in 1922. In 2022, in recognition of his exemplary service and barriers he faced due to racism, he was posthumously promoted to brigadier general.]

[these addenda are taken from the Author’s notes]

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When the Train Whistle Blows

Posted in Imagery, tagged Bill Griffin, Civil War, family, History, North Carolina, Our State, poetry, Southern Senence Poem, Southern writing on November 25, 2012| 29 Comments »

Southern Sentence Poem Revisited

Last week when I reminisced about my Granddaddy, Pee Wee Griffin, Seaboard Airline Engineer for some fifty years, among the many comments I received was Kathryn Stripling Byer’s: The song of a train passing has haunted many a Southern poet’s work. Haunted, that is indeed what we are.

Yesterday I caught a snippet on public radio by a Civil War historian at Duke. He describes Governor Graham dragging his heels about secession; as much as a third of North Carolinians opposed war. The Duke Prof then tells about pulling into a barbecue restaurant in Kinston recently. During the War, General Pickett encamped at Kinston on his return from a disastrous attempt to recapture New Bern from the Union. In Kinston Pickett hanged twenty-two North Carolinians he considered deserters, though most of them had never sworn the oath to the Confederate Army. Pickett was later accused of war crimes and fled to Canada – the historical point being that allegiances, honor, and motivations are a lot more complicated than South vs. North. When the Professer parks at the restaurant and looks down the row of cars and pickups with Stars and Bars on their bumpers, he just shakes his head and says, “You don’t even know who you are.”

. . . . .

Who are we, anyway? That’s why there’s poetry – that we may discover who we are. I’m pondering again the form an essentially Southern poem might take. Remember in August I suggested such a poem must include Place, Past, and Culture. Our identity is complex, but a poem’s complexity lies in its brevity. What sense most perfectly evokes a memory? The sense of smell – impossible to describe, complex and heavy with nuance, a simple odor may transport you to a time and place you thought you’d departed forever. I want a poem to do the same, to be vastly more than the sum of its words, to cause the reader to gasp and sigh at the same time.

Therefore, the SOUTHERN SENTENCE POEM MUST BE SEVEN LINES.

Why seven? When I as a doddering old man kiss my great-grandchild, I will have held or been held by seven generations of my family. There are seven Southern waters: spring from rock fissure, clear trout stream, green piedmont river, dam & lake, blackwater meandering, sound, shore. Southerners more than many are subject to the seven deadly sins and seven heavenly virtues. Don’t forget the seven bridges road in Montgomery, Alabama. But most of all because I think seven lines is just the right length.

. . . . .

So here’s another attempt:

When the train whistle blows
through the Yadkin Valley
we lay down our plastic toys,
lean across the porch rail
until the last beckoning
has trailed away, and I become
my grandson, wondering.

. . . . .