Miss Maggie’s Will at 100
Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2007, is the 100th anniversary of the signing of Miss Maggie and Miss Sallie’s will. I will celebrate with fried chicken, biscuits, gravy and pound cake, my best guess, based on my own experience in Union County, at what a celebratory feast would have been for them. I will replicate what I know they served one guest – a glass of wine and a platter of tea cakes. The celebration will include a toast to what their will accomplished in Marvin, and a prayer for what it could accomplish everywhere. An article by Henry Louis Gates in today’s New York Times confirms yet again what this story could mean in our time.
Gates is writing about the growing gap between poor blacks and middle-class blacks, a gap so wide that many blacks no longer consider themselves a single “race” (in response to a confusing poll question that should have asked about “interest group”), but his diagnosis applies to the race gap in general. Equality must include economic equality. He laments the failure to apply “40 acres and a mule” as the root of both black poverty and oppressive white supremacy, as I have for about a year, and he has the interesting statistic that fewer than 25 percent of blacks owned land in 1920 – the year Miss Maggie’s will was revealed. Because of the will, as Part IV of Inherit the Land describes, black land ownership became normal in Marvin and contributed significantly to the unbroken racial harmony in the community.
Maggie and Sallie signed their will at a time when whites in other parts of the South were lynching blacks to steal their land. I grew up knowing that side of the story, often from people who approved it, and came late to know that the real past was far more complicated. When I say I am proud to be a Southerner, which I am, it is with their courage in mind. These women, and the family that inherited, and the lawyers that defended, and the jury that upheld are the bravest people I have known personally. I will raise a glass to them, and say a prayer for us, on Tuesday. If you’ll join me, it would be nice to know – send an email so we can celebrate together.
Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2007, is the 100th anniversary of the signing of Miss Maggie and Miss Sallie’s will. I will celebrate with fried chicken, biscuits, gravy and pound cake, my best guess, based on my own experience in Union County, at what a celebratory feast would have been for them. I will replicate what I know they served one guest – a glass of wine and a platter of tea cakes. The celebration will include a toast to what their will accomplished in Marvin, and a prayer for what it could accomplish everywhere. An article by Henry Louis Gates in today’s New York Times confirms yet again what this story could mean in our time.
Gates is writing about the growing gap between poor blacks and middle-class blacks, a gap so wide that many blacks no longer consider themselves a single “race” (in response to a confusing poll question that should have asked about “interest group”), but his diagnosis applies to the race gap in general. Equality must include economic equality. He laments the failure to apply “40 acres and a mule” as the root of both black poverty and oppressive white supremacy, as I have for about a year, and he has the interesting statistic that fewer than 25 percent of blacks owned land in 1920 – the year Miss Maggie’s will was revealed. Because of the will, as Part IV of Inherit the Land describes, black land ownership became normal in Marvin and contributed significantly to the unbroken racial harmony in the community.
Maggie and Sallie signed their will at a time when whites in other parts of the South were lynching blacks to steal their land. I grew up knowing that side of the story, often from people who approved it, and came late to know that the real past was far more complicated. When I say I am proud to be a Southerner, which I am, it is with their courage in mind. These women, and the family that inherited, and the lawyers that defended, and the jury that upheld are the bravest people I have known personally. I will raise a glass to them, and say a prayer for us, on Tuesday. If you’ll join me, it would be nice to know – send an email so we can celebrate together.
posted by Gene Stowe at 10:20 PM
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