I Sing a Song of the South—But I Ain’t Whistlin’ Dixie

[cross-posted from Connect Savannah]

scarlett+green+velvetWHEN I was 10 or 11, summer in Arizona was horrendously boring and hot as hell.

To keep me from burning holes in the pool furniture with a magnifying glass and O.D.ing on Days of Our Lives, my mother handed me the biggest book she could find: The paperback edition of Gone with the Wind looked like a brick and weighed about as much, and I dubiously hefted it onto my lap.

It took me all of a week to devour all 1,087 pages, love-hating spoiled Scarlett as I pined for Rhett and sobbed for Melanie. The burning of Atlanta seared my heart, and for years I fantasized about making a dress out of the Venetian blinds.

Between GWTW and repeated viewings of the adorable Myrtle Beach chick flick Shag at the local dollar theater, I formed some rath-uh romantic notions about the South in my youth.

By the time I met the surfer from Savannah who would become my husband, however, I had also acquired also a comprehensive liberal arts education that put me eye-to-eye with the true bloody history of the Civil War and the hard-earned legacy of the Civil Rights Movement, fermenting a passion for social equality and filling in the gaps of my imaginary petticoats. I married into the South with my eyes wide open, ready to embrace its complicated charms and difficult paradoxes.

As any wise person will tell you, marriage ain’t all about the romance, dahlin’.

As an outsider, I knew I’d never be considered a real Southerner no matter how deliciously I fry my okra (it’s all about the coconut oil, y’all). Such tacit acceptance has always been fine by me: As a Jewish hippie chick, I figured I was absolved from the past’s persistent evils, as though I could line dance and swill bourbon with the South’s fun-loving side and tiptoe away when it gets all blackout drunk and waves its guns around. I could be up to my earlobes in it, but not of it, so to speak.

I think that changed forever last week. We were at a wedding in upstate New York when the horrific shooting at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church hit the news, ripping off the gauze on a wound that still seems to fester as deeply as it did 150 years ago. It can be argued that the South’s racial issues aren’t any more or less intense than the rest of the country’s—the most violent cases of racial unrest in modern history have taken place in the Midwest and Southern California—but slavery’s painful legacy remains embedded in its soil, in its history, in the heritage some of its citizens champion so fiercely.

I felt the backlash as we introduced ourselves to the other wedding guests and told them where we were from. There was an exception when one person asked excitedly, “Georgia? Did you see the zebras running through the streets?” I had to explain gently that last month’s flooding incident involving the escaped zoo animals actually took place in the country of Georgia, “like, near Russia.” She seemed very disappointed.

Mostly though, I watched eyes frost over warily, as if I was going to break out a Confederate flag bikini and an AK-47 and start spitting tobacco juice all over the furniture.

It was real strange to be judged as Southern. I mean, I did not put a boiled peanut in my mouth until I was well into my 30s. I birthed my babies in California with a doula and a bottle of Rescue Remedy. I was born in freaking New Jersey, for criminy’s sake.

Wait, y’all have got me all wrong! I wanted to shout. I am not responsible for this hot mess!

Instead, a surprise entered my heart: I found myself defending the South. Maybe I was just rebelling against the Yankee snarkiness that assumes everyone below the Mason-Dixon line has a double-digit IQ and a fried Twinkie in the glovebox. But I could not let my chosen home be reduced to the actions and attitudes of a few violent, inbred cockroaches.

Hackles raised, I spoke passionately about the joyful diversity of my kids’ public schools. I described the miles of forest and marsh, the kindness of strangers, the humble goodness of a paper plate of boiled shrimp caught in one’s own castnet.

Granted, I live in a lovely city with a racially-balanced city government, an organic farmers market and a thriving arts scene, a little bastion of progressive thinkers and educated transplants. It also helps that we’ve got The New York Times fawning all over Savannah like we’re the most covetable girl at the cotillion. (Three articles in two weeks? Any more of this courtin’, honey, and you’re gonna have to put a ring on it.)

Absolutely, Savannah is a precocious exception to the South that regularly sells out its natural resources to the highest bidder and still refuses to expand Medicaid benefits to millions under the Affordable Care Act no matter what SCOTUS says about subsidies.

This is the only South I know: One where for every Confederate flag on an F-350, there’s an Obama sticker on a Prius. Where there are more people authentically concerned and engaged with economic equality and social justice than any place I’ve ever lived.

The South I laud is the birthplace of Martin Luther King, Jr. and a seat of the national food justice movement. It is where, in the wake of horror and death, we stand up, link arms and march together, black, white, brown, young, old, straight, gay, trans, and everyone in between.

To this adopted daughter, being Southern is to own the good, the bad and the ugly and work for better. It’s a bittersweet row to hoe, which is probably why we put so much goddamn sugar in the tea.

The Confederacy’s been dead and gone a long time, and even the most delusional debutante must know deep in her bones that South ain’t rising again, no matter how much starch it put in its white hoodie.

But as God as my witness, how I do believe that this South, our South, can and will rise above the ignorance and the corruption, heal the wounds and show the rest of America what forgiveness, perserverance and gentility really mean.

And what will we do with all those retired flags?

Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

Welcome to 2015: Southern Living names Michael Twitty a Changemaker

Listen, when I moved to the deep South from the hippie nether regions of Northern California, I had some serious slaps upside the head.

First, boiled peanuts. Also, the weird thing the South does with marginalizing and often outright ignoring its history of slavery.

And then there’s the secret social code.Other than reading Gone with the Wind when I was 10, I really had no blueprint on how to fit in, and I sure as shit wasn’t gonna make anything pretty to wear out of the curtains.

These days, I feel pretty good about being a Southerner these days. I write a lot about pervasive and persisting socioeconomic and environmental issues in the Civil Society Column for Connect Savannah. I’ve documented some of my misadventures in Confessions of a Hapless–But Not Hopeless–Southern Belle.

And I have to say for the most part, my experience of the last few years is that the South has as vibrant a progressive and hip momentum as anywhere, only with better side dishes.

michael-twitty-lI mean, when Southern Living — the favorite magazine of steel magnolias for over a century — names a black, Jewish renegade slave historian as one of 50 People Who Are Changing the South in 2015, you know change has already come, nu?

Check it out:

This year you might see food historian Michael Twitty of Afroculinaria camped out at landmarks across the South re-creating historical meals with local chefs—one of the many ways Michael is preserving African-American foodways in the region. Be on the lookout for his forthcoming book, The Cooking Gene, which documents his personal journey exploring the connection between food and history from Africa to America.

I had the honor and joy of hanging around the fire with this visionary a few months ago, and I’m so pleased to see him included on a Super List with The Bitter Southerner, feminist beermakers and an Avett Brother.

Mazel tov, Michael!

 

Modern Tribe Store Open in ATL!

Well, this is exciting!

Screen_Shot_2014-06-26_at_11.19.55_AM_grandeModern Tribe, the super hip online Judaica shop has a swanky new storefront in downtown Atlanta!

Those of you who live in areas of the country where you just pick up a new menorah or a kabbalah bracelet in between Pilates class and your morning latte, are like, yeah, *yawn*, whatevs.

But we who live in places where our sweet and well-meaning synagogue gift shops are the size of a bathroom stall, the idea of a WHOLE STORE OF JEWISH TSOTCHKES elicits a joyful dance that’s somewhere between twerking and the hora.

Shopping online is fine; it gets the job done. But I would have loved to see these gorgeous Jonathan Adler birds bowls that I bought for my Bro the Doc and his bride as a wedding gift before purchase–when I finally got to touch them in person, I was a little disappointed they didn’t hold more charoseth.

And I’d actually like to try on this adorable Candleschtick sweater to find out if it itches.

But this is the SOUTH, y’all, and Southern Jews accept that our storied history comes with certain limitations. We are so used to paying stupid money for the last box of Chanukah candles that we finding ourselves thanking the manager of Michael’s for designating an entire endcap to paper plates with dreidels on them. (I don’t know what Hobby Lobby’s got going on this year, and I don’t effin’ care.)

Sure, the Modern Tribe store is a four and half hour drive from me, but STILL, same state. Anyone up for a field trip? I’d drive, but the Absurdivan isn’t allowed to leave the city limits.

 

When Jews Owned Slaves

leadLiving in Savannah, GA, one can not really escape the horrid specter of slavery: I mean, if you are any kind of awake, you understand that this pretty little city, the South, this whole dang country wouldn’t be here if weren’t for the labor and skills of enslaved Africans.

While there may be reminders in Maya Angelou’s powerful words at the feet of nicey-nice memorials and clues in the thumbprints of brick buildings, the stories of these tortured men, women and children–let alone their actual names–rarely made it to the metanarrative of local history. But that is finally changing:

I wrote a cover story for Connect Savannah a few months back about how city archivists are using old records to document the local government’s participation in the slave trade. The results of the project are now available, providing primary sources for academics and anyone else interested in real history.

A recent article in The Atlantic by my friend Kris Monroe details the largest slave auction in American history that took place in Savannah in March 1859. Only marginally discussed on the trolley tours if at all, this terrible event known as “The Weeping Time” sold off 436 human beings and split apart hundreds of families. There’s a little plaque west of the tourist corridor that commemorates the Weeping Time, but few people outside of Savannah knew about it until Kris brought it to a national readership.

There’s also this piece by Susanna Ashton in today’s Forward that focuses on Charleston and explains why Savannah’s Jewish community–the third oldest in the U.S.–took a nose dive just eight years after it was established:

One important population influx took place in 1741, when a large contingent of Jewish families left their homes in Savannah, Georgia, to resettle in Charleston because trustees of the Georgia colony would not let them (or anyone else) hold slaves. The state of South Carolina, which had long embraced slaveholding, was thus a welcoming place for these families. By 1749, when Georgia rethought the ban and decided to allow slaveholding, it was too late.

Ashton’s article reminds that with the South’s historic Jewish communities comes a certain responsibility to the truth of that history: Much of the success and prosperity of those early families was built on the scarred backs of others. As a Southern Jew of more modest origins, I think it’s high time that Jewish communities researched the enslaved people who helped build the synagogues and businesses. Who were they? How can we remember and include them into our bigger story?
This weekend, Savannah is hosting The Slave Dwelling Project Conference, a gathering of academics and artists from all over the South who will discuss the preservation of slave history. Rumor has it that Kosher Soul chef and Afroculinaria blogger Michael Twitty may make an appearance, which would be a tremendous opportunity. (I’ve been trying to get him to my Shabbos table ever since his “Open Letter to Paula Deen” went viral!)
It’s an odd notion to consider for most of us, this Jews-owning-slaves business, considering our own past as slaves. Though it should come as no surprise for those with relatives who have been in America since the 18th and 19th centuries.
Even though I’ve scoured the family tree for any slaveholding branches and it’s come up empty, it’s times like this that I like to remind people: Hey, I married in.