Why I'm Going to the Lynching Museum and Memorial Alone or An Ironic Confluence

My wife and I want to go to the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. The Museum and Memorial are an acknowledgment of the history of racial terror, that is littered throughout the American story. We want to go together. And one day, we may.

But not right now.

My wife is a US History and Government teacher and would love to go to the Museum and Memorial to help tell the story of lynching and racial terror to students in a California classroom that could read about it but not have the passion of the account transferred to her students.

I'd like to go for different reasons- it's a significant chunk of my experience- every male in my mom and dad's family left the deep south as soon as they were able- whether they left for college or the military (and sometimes both), they all left. I never gave it much thought until it occurred to me **how many** men left.  My dad was one of 10 kids, eight were boys. My mom was one of nine kids, six were boys. 14 boys **all** left the south to go north. I asked my uncle why one day, and he was pretty blunt. "They were stringin' boys up in trees here **well** after Brown v. Board passed here- wasn't safe to be a black boy in the Klan south." And there you have it- an entire generation of my family's men left the south because they were **literally** in fear for their lives.

Which is what makes today so depressing. As much as I'd like to share this experience with my wife, I'm **afraid** to do so. I'm scared to do so for *many* of the same reasons my kinfolk left the deep south in the first place.

I do not believe that my wife and I could travel safely in the deep south. I'm obviously Black. My wife is white.

And this is only depressing because it's not the first time that we've had to consider trips, and then think about where we're going, who we'd be around and whether or not that would be a safe experience. The example that jumps out at me most has to do with Bourbon. My wife **loves** her some Bourbon. Loves it so much, she went on the Bourbon tour in Kentucky, traveling along the Kentucky grasslands from distillery to distillery, tasting the finest Bourbons in the world and hearing the stories behind them (which as a history teacher I'm sure is as much of it as the Bourbon itself). She came back and talked about how awesome an experience she had and that we should do it, too. And honestly, I'd **love** to do it. But knowing immediately that the experience of a black man and a white woman driving through the grasslands (read: rural) is **distinctly not the same experience** and one that entails the possibility of danger (pulled over on a country road by a Good Ol' Boy cop, run off the road by rednecks yelling nigger- note **both** of these things have happened to me, and the first was scarier than the second). The kind of danger that puts **both** of us in danger.

Danger's not exactly my middle name, but I am willing to accept risk **for myself**. I can defend myself well enough and am, even at my age, faster than most people if we have to make a run for it. But in general, I try to keep Carol out of extra unnecessary risk- she does not do well when I'm being fucked with, and her speaking up might put her in physical harm, which is the most likely way I'd be killed by a cop, who would get away with it because apparently, you have to shoot someone **in their home** to be convicted.

So, in 2019, despite having the legal right to be married for (only) 50 years, we still don't have the ability to travel freely and safely. Not even to see a Museum and Memorial noting the nation's history of racial terror.

I'll take "Situational Irony" for 800, Alex...

The Life and Times of the Nonprofit Negro

Despite loving my job, loving what I do, and working with staff/management I genuinely like, I dread coming in to work.

The place I work started 55 years ago as a grassroots movement to address hunger and homelessness and has 10,000 volunteers deliver 12 programs to approximately 60,000 people each year to address the short and long term needs in our community.  Our 13 member, all-volunteer Board of Directors (BOD) members represent government, private industry, and low-income residents, working together to provide guidance and leadership for the organization. More women than men and almost 70% POC.

It's not that I don't love my job: I get to write, for a living, for fuck's sake. I'm not writing The Great American Novel, but when I write effectively, a lot of good people can do great work. And I get to write, which I fucking love to do.  I work for a nonprofit, and almost all the things I thought I would hate about Dat Nonprofit Lyfe were things that just flat out weren't true here. I even like the actual people I work with- the people who are above me on the food chain seem to have my back as much as you could ask people you work with to have your back. 

The place I work is generally Brown and Down.

With all of this, why would I dread going to work? Shitty, racist people I can't tell what I feel about them. I should probably provide some background…

As I said above, I work for a nonprofit that offers a variety of services for people who need things- we have a food pantry and clothes closet available twice a month for people who need it, a produce sack available for anyone who needs it once a week, daily sack lunches for anyone who might need it, a low-income home energy assistance program, and emergency housing assistance to help with move-in costs and to help stave off evictions. We also have employment services, an age 0-17 Education program, an urban gardening program, as well as a policy and organizing wing. With such a broad array of ser, you can imagine there are always people in and out receiving services as well as volunteers on-site, constantly. And our members are reflective of poverty not just in the area, but nationally- which means it's more black and brown than society is, generally.

Our volunteers, however, are reflective of what I determine to be three, particular groups, reflecting different times in the history of the organization. The organization has changed from a charity to an organization focused on social justice and poverty alleviation.  Some have been there since the beginning- volunteering and donating from a time when the driving force behind any involvement was just straight unadulterated Catholic guilt. Some of our volunteers are new to the organization and have been around under only the metamorphosis. The final set of volunteers, which would consist of most of our volunteers fall in someplace that could only be classified as "the middle"- some of them lean toward, for lack of a better description, Old and Shitty and Young and Woke Willing.

Wow, I've been writing for a while, and I haven't even described what happened this time to make me wish I could work from a home office and come in for the occasional meeting. So what had happened was…

I was sitting in the Admin office at my cubicle. I'd just finished up a grant proposal that was due later that day, and was in the process of "closing out the file"- making hard copies of the application to put in the file folder, making soft copies of the file to there is a paper as well as a digital copy of every application and was in the process of updating the calendars when a woman walks in the Admin office, which is, in and of itself, a bit strange: it's an office set back from the rest of the building and is frequently locked. There are two doors in the office, and the back door is the one closest to my cubicle. When you walk in the door, to find my cubicle, you have to turn around, as my desk is behind the door. Also to get to my desk, you have to pass another employee, as her cubicle is the first, one you'd see if you turned around, but there's an entire office in front of you. When the woman walks in, she looks like she is looking for someone, but I'm doing work and figure the woman could ask my cubicle mate or the HR manager, whose desk is a cubicle directly in front of where she was standing. I look up, and she's looking DIRECTLY at me, which is odd, and she looks bitter and angry, which is a look I have been known to draw out of people, but not usually until I speak to them. When we make eye contact, she barks at me "There are no paper towels in the women's room." This took me aback for a few reasons: a) why are you angry at *me* about that- I can't even go in the women's room, b) who are you and why do you think it's OK to treat anyone that way, c) hey wait a second, there's a room FULL of people here you could have asked, including my cubicle mate, who is actually much closer to you than I am. But before I could make any comment, she had stormed out of the office, and by this time, all the information had been processed and it occurred to me that she barked orders at me about paper towels because she assumed it was my job to stock the bathrooms, despite sitting at a desk and working on grants when she summoned me.

It is infuriating: but mostly because this is consistent with a theme since I have been working here.  There are a lot of people who volunteer here who have a hard time seeing past their implicit biases and don't believe they even have them, which makes a discussion about their behavior even more complicated. I have had three separate volunteers in six months treat me as less than an equal. It's infuriating for a couple of reasons, but the most important one is this one: if this is how they treat black and brown people they are supposed to be equals to, how do you think they treat our members? Having spoken to a fair amount of our black members and just asking them how they are, I have heard more complaints about the way our volunteers treat our black and brown members than I am comfortable with. They speak about the way they're spoken to by some volunteers. One of the members used the term "disgust" to describe how she felt she was treated- but "if you need services, you need services. You get what you need and keep it moving." The volunteer who came in Admin had a look of absolute disdain, like that she couldn't believe she had to find me to come and do my damn job and if that's what I felt like from my small exchange, I can't imagine what kind of stuff she could project on our members.

It's also infuriating because I know that when it happens, that I have two courses of action, both  equally unfulfilling: I can just keep quiet, pretend it didn't happen, and go walk out the anger and frustration (which is my ordinary course of action) or I can file an Incident Report, where I tell people who work here what happened, they track down the person (if they can) to find out what happened (and I always wonder what would happen if they straight denied it and it became a "my word vs. their word" issue- I do not have confidence it would work out in my favor). Once the report is filed, and the person is notified, then the org speaks with the person involved in the incident and tells them "we've spoken to the person/will speak to the person," there's usually a part of the conversation about training they have done (which didn't work, clearly) or will be putting them through. And I know the person will if they choose to return, will be allowed to return and volunteer. Inevitably it means there's no real closure for me: I know that they said some messed up shit, and then I get to see them a week or two later, and the only thing that happens is that person is unwilling to look me in the eyes. No apology. No recognition of wrongdoing. No acknowledgment of anything. I get the privilege to see them walk around here like nothing happened. Maybe a better phrasing would be "like nothing that matters happened."

And that's why, despite something happening to me here about twice a month, I rarely say anything. I have no problem speaking truth to power IF there is some level of recourse for doing so. It's hard. It's painful because it requires to drudge up shitty, painful memories. It's harder when you know doing so leads to no real change.

And that's why it's now hard to get out of bed and go to work: because some racist shit is probably going to happen to me, and I'm probably going to have to bite the bullet or be told the result of an inquiry was **literally** the same as if I'd just bitten the bullet.

And that sucks.