Pt 2: When a Simple Weekend is Something Way Bigger
Like maybe atonement, justice, reparations...
Welcome back, friends!
We now return to Reverend Drury Flowers, my third paternal great-grandfather and one of the “winners” of the 1832 Georgia Cherokee Land Lottery.
If you’re just joining us, part one of this dispatch is here.
So. Who was this third great-grandfather Flowers?
He was the born in South Carolina in 1780 to William Lovelace Flowers and Catherine Elizabeth Flood.
In 1801, he married Catherine Sullivan.
They had seventeen children.
He was a farmer.
He was an early Methodist Episcopal minister, ordained in 1816 by Bishop Frances Asbury which I gather was Kind of a Big Deal.
By all written accounts, Reverend Flowers was highly respected.
He was considered a wise and honest man.
His knees were said to be thick with corns from the hours he spent each day kneeling in prayer.
I don’t have a picture of Rev. Drury Flowers, but I found one of his brother, Jesse Messer Flowers.
My third great-grandfather co-founded a Methodist Episcopal meeting house.
In the early days of the church, worshippers were fearful of attack by Indians. They carried their guns to services until the Indian Removal Act of 1830, when Native Americans were forcibly removed from their land.
Geez oh geez do Christianity, guns, and racism have a long and entangled history here in the U.S.
What was running through Rev. Flowers’ mind when he entered Georgia Land Lottery of 1832?
Did he believe taking unceded land was just a natural part of manifest destiny?
Did he think that Indigenous people were heathens, sinners if they weren’t Christian?
Did he think he was doing his part to spread the Gospel?
Did he feel righteous in going forth, settling (stealing) land, proselytizing, and multiplying? Seventeen children.
Did he simply see the Georgia Cherokee Land Lottery as an opportunity to procure land for his family?
Well y’all, I wish I could say.
But he didn’t keep a diary (that I know of).
So I can only guess by his actions.
And I reckon if he thought the Cherokee people should not be forcibly removed from their homelands, he would not have entered his name into the lottery.
Did he see “winning” as a demonstration of God’s blessing?
Dollars to donuts, I bet he did.
Rev. Flowers paid $18 for the deed to 160 acres of unceded Cherokee land on the western bank of the Oostanaula River.
That’s 11 cents per acre.
I poked around and found 99 acres of Oostanaula riverfront land (plus an outbuilding) currently listed for $644,475.
That’s $6,510 per acre.
I’m no economist, but that seems like a pretty big return on investment.
And you know what? That’s how a whole lotta white folks accumulated wealth in the U.S.
We stole land, or got it cheap through government programs like the Land Lotteries, the G.I. Bill, or other subsidies that almost exclusively applied to white people. And then we watched while it increased in value.
White folks like to think we earned our wealth, don’t we?
We don’t like to think, much less admit, that we have tended to benefit the most from O.G. government handouts. When we benefit, it feels inevitable, invisible, earned.
—
“Land Back”? Well, shit. I can’t. I don’t own that land and I don’t know who does. And even if I could give it back, would I?
I support the Land Back Movement in principle, but how much am I willing to personally sacrifice?
Aye, there’s the rub.
Would I go as far as giving up my very modest quarter-acre in Durham?
No. Not if I’m being honest.
And I want to be honest. I want to show up with integrity.
To me integrity means many things.
One is that I need to admit that I am prone to the same greed and grasping, the same compulsion to own and control as my ancestors were.
This greed, insecurity, grasping - and the fears and insecurities they create - are all characteristics of white supremacy culture.
“Oh come on, J. J. ‘White Supremacy culture?’”
Yep. White supremacy culture.
Many of us are so steeped in it that it’s practically invisible.
And you can’t change what you can’t see.
So integrity also means:
acknowledging White Supremacy Culture, how it benefits and hurts me
making the invisible, visible
stepping up and being responsible
taking a full accounting of harm done
atonement and making amends when possible – except where making amends would cause more harm
dismantling white supremacy
transforming this filthy, rotten, system into something truly beautiful and mutually beneficial
I can hear some of you rolling your eyes again.
“J. J., Jen, Jenny Jen Jen. You’re belaboring the point. Isn’t it enough to acknowledge this and move on?”
No. It’s not enough.
Without an honest reckoning and sincere atonement for my ancestral past, how can I even begin to be fully honest about who I am today?
How can any white person fully grok our positionality in the U.S.’s capitalist, patriarchal, racist, ableist, cis-hetereosexist, violent, white-Christian-nationalist, white-supremacist system if we aren’t scrupulously honest?
How can we show up and be mutual and genuine and real?
Especially in multiracial, multicultural, multi-class coalitions working towards transformative justice?
The way we show up for coalition work is literally the way we show up for each other. And for justice.
How we do the work is how we do the work.
If I’m not aware and accountable, I’m terribly likely to repeat my ancestors’ mistakes, however good my intentions.
Am I wracked with guilt over all of this?
Nope. I don’t feel guilty.
I feel accountable and responsible.
That’s a big difference.
Guilt helps exactly no one.
Accountability and responsibility help exactly everyone. Even when done as imperfectly as I do it. (Which is pretty damned imperfectly.)
Y’all. I just wonder what future generations will think of us in 150-200 years.
What will they see that we are completely blind to?
Probably what we did to the earth, our pitiful response to the climate crisis.
It hurts to think of the ways they will need to make amends for what we are doing.
How, in what ways, can we make them proud of us?
—
Atonement. It’s pretty important in any spiritual or ethical journey. In fact, it’s right up there with forgiveness.
And I’m not stupid. I know that nothing could possibly atone for the crimes — over centuries — against Indigenous and BIPOC people that my forebears enacted and perpetrated.
This is both a convenient excuse and a deep, painful fact.
But it’s not a reason to do nothing.
So I decided on this: a donation, in a size big enough to be uncomfortable for me to give, to Liberated Capital, a program of the Decolonizing Wealth Project.
Solidarity, Not Charity
“Rooted in relationships of mutuality and equity, Liberated Capital moves money through a reparations model that trusts and supports the leadership of those most impacted by historical and systemic racism.
“Liberated Capital grantee partners are Indigenous, Black and other people-of-color led initiatives working for transformative social change.”
Will my donation be grossly inadequate? Meager? Pitiful, even?
You bet it will.
But you know what? Something is better than nothing.
Better to act than stay frozen.
I’ll include an apology / atonement letter with my donation. I don’t want to cause more harm with my words, but as my friend in Restorative Justice Durham said, “The Land Lottery’s not a secret. They might be surprised to get your letter, but it’s not like they don’t know about the Trail of Tears.”
I’ll apologize for what my ancestors did. I’ll acknowledge that my donation could not possibly atone for what happened. Nothing could.
But maybe my money can act as medicine, as Liberated Capital says. Even if it is just a tiny dose.
And going forward, my affirmed commitments:
to live in integrity as best I know how
to collaborate and co-conspire to create beloved community
— on this still unceded Eno, Shakori, Occaneechi land.
XOXO
I think a practical solution is subsidized assistance for the disadvantaged, paid by taxes. This would mainly be education assistance for low-income families, regardless of race or ethnicity. This is being done already, but not enough and not everywhere. Assistance based on race or ethnicity is not a good idea. This would not compensate persons who were persecuted 200 years ago, and would compensate some descendants who do not need it.