The Reverend Al Sharpton’s eulogy for George Floyd asked white America to take their knees off our necks. Our family history provides at least five disturbing examples of a knee being placed on our necks with the purpose of trying to control and destroy us.
My sister, Okella Trice, who is our family genealogist, has documented how white America placed their knees on the necks of our family.
Her research shows how, in each generation, our ancestors embraced the American entrepreneurial spirit and built businesses — even communities.
Each time the knee of vicious white destruction wiped out our families’ ability to amass and transfer generational wealth.
And yet, after each time there was a knee placed on us, we pushed it off and stood up. Today we’re still taking knees off our necks and standing up.
The first knee was enslavement.
We were among the skilled labor stolen to build wealth for white America. My mother’s ancestry is Nigerian (Fulani & Hausa) and Liberian (Kru). My father’s lineage is Nigerian (Yoruba and Hausa).
We know our African Ancestry lineages because of the work of yet another family entrepreneur Gina Paige (www.AfricanAncestry.com.) Gina is a descendent of these Nigerian and Liberian men and women and their progeny.
Second. “Israel on the Appomattox” was a multi-racial community in the heart of the Slave South from 1800-1865.
Richard Randolph (a cousin of Thomas Jefferson) welcomed freemen and ex-slaves to live on his land.
My father’s ancestor, James Dungey, established a 200-acre homestead in Prince Edward County, VA. His family was one of 90. Their community included experienced teachers, preachers, boatwrights, carpenters, blacksmiths, and brick masons who earned equal wages and shared equal access to county services.
The end of the Civil War brought the “knee of destruction,” which denied our families economic justice and undermined the existence of this community.
Third. It happened again in the early part of the 1900s in Bluefield, Virginia.
Our mother’s grandfather, Nicholas Allen Saunders, learned to make bricks through a correspondence course. He built his home, trained his sons, and they built their homes. He and his friends invested in a soda bottling company and spent time in court to learn the legal language and business law. Nicholas was an informal community banker for his neighbors as well.
The community grew to include a school, churches, a convenience store, preachers, teachers, midwives, gardens, a tennis court, and a baseball diamond. My mother who was born in the early 1920s, and she still fondly members those days.
The envious white community used the power — the knee of –eminent domain under the guise of expanding the railroad to destroy our thriving community—no railroad of course.
And today as my mother in her late 90’s looks backs, she asks a question laced with both frustration and anger: Why won’t the white man let you have anything?
Fourth. Around the same time as Black communities were being established in Bluefield, the 1914 destruction of Black Wall Street in Oklahoma occurred.
This time “the knee” added a new twist. Whites bombed the Black community with dynamite dropped from planes. It’s historically inaccurate — and a typical dismissal of the trauma of racism — that the first bombing of Oklahoma City was in 1995.
In Oklahoma City, in 1914, ancestor Roscoe Dungey founded “The Black Dispatch” — the first Black newspaper in his community. Dungey lived 90 miles from the bombing of “The Black Wall Street.” He lived the trauma of covering one the worst of all-too-frequent destruction Black Communities.
Fifth. My parents purchased a home and two businesses.
The knee that limited the expansion of their wealth resulted from redlining in real estate and discrimination in banking.
For Juneteenth 2020, we acknowledge our African ancestors.
We don’t know their names because the white enslavers stripped them of their names, along with separating them from their families, their language, and their belief systems.
We celebrate the names we know — Dungey, Palmer, Saunders, and Paige.
We remain a family of entrepreneurs.
We honor the resistance and resilience embodied in Juneteenth and formally join the resistance sweeping the world today to take the knees off our necks and the necks of everyone.
Join A Digital Justice Gathering on June 20, 2020
https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org
Follow the Movement to Repair Black Economic Injustice
JEROME PAIGE! Thank you for taking us for the journey of all your family’s ancestors and mainly the Paige family! I went to Germantown high school and Don’t remember you. I do remember Jimmy Paige ! My husband Albert Savadove was friends with Jimmy! Hopefully someday soon you can chrinicle your mother and her life and as she is already “A Mighty Girl” it would be great reading for the young and old! Keep up the great work! Best Regards . Madeleine class of June 65’ Germantown!
Madeline,
There were two sets of “Paiges” in the class of 1965. Jimmy was the class president if I remember correctly. One set was Jimmy and Billy on Deval Street. They were Pages without the “i”. We knew them well and I was sad to hear of Jimmy’s passing a couple of years ago. I hear from Billy occasionally on FB. If you remember the neighborhood, my father owned the Barbershop off of Duval and Germantown Avenue. We also had a Take-Out and a Corner Story. My sister Faye is still friends with Jimmy and Billy’s sister, Edie (sp?) My family lived at Bayton & Tulpehocken. Hopefully, our paths will cross.
Thank you Jerome I am an avid amateur Genealogist. I enjoyed reading your family history and I’m sure there’s more to tell. I Also benefitted from your Father’s business savvy he hired me with the help of Cynthia. My first real job at 16. Continue doing what your during It’s all good. 😘
Marilyn
Marilyn,
Thanks. Cynthia is quite the genealogist for her family. You’ll have to engage her in a conversation. On our Paige siblings call last Saturday we were reminiscing about Paige’s Take Out and the Corner Store. I shared that you had mentioned that my father gave you your first job. Take care and stay safe.
Jerome
Hi Before i write again want tomake sure this works!
Madeleine
Great reading for Juneteenth 2020. Thank you, Jerome! This portrait of your family highlights (as an x-ray) the proverbial knee ( as well as the proverbial chokehold) as documented in “Stamped from the Beginning,” read by the North Portal Readers. Your family’s story offers a “front row seat” to the dramatization of Injustice.” May we find a reason to applaud. Thank you for sharing!
Thanks, Evon. As we have shared in our North Portal Reader gatherings, each of our families, unfortunately, share bitter histories. Yet, we still rise.
Jerome,
A powerful piece of writing. It’s always so much more clear, cogent and impactful when history is specific to someone I know and care about. Thank you for sharing this .
My siblings and I are working on other examples of how our family and American history are intertwined. Stay tuned.
“We remain a family of entrepreneurs.” How powerful is that?!!! Today…we still persist! Thank you for sharing your family’s story…very encouraging.