Looking Behind the Shadows

Celebrating my birthday with gratitude for those who came before me

Photo Credit: Andrew Lancaster/Unsplash

So the story goes that he showed up, torn up, and they laughed.

Sympathy was in short supply. Especially since O’Connor “Connie” Young, Jr. had gone around telling everybody that he would be one of the first people in Demopolis, Alabama—Black or white—to own a horseless carriage. “Carriage” because neither “car” nor “automobile” had yet entered the popular lexicon. He had announced this plan to his parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, and everybody’s spouses. All the kids knew. Churchfolks and the whole neighborhood, too. In fact, all the Black people in Demopolis were talking about, buzzing about, all atwitter about:

“Connie Jr. say he finna get a Model T!”

My ancestor—a man who only did business “on the board” after the bank cheated him and his brothers out of land. My ancestor—who saved his nickels and dimes from his carpentry work until they filled a jar to the top. My ancestor—a man who dared say with his whole chest that he intended to be the first man to own a car in Demopolis, Alabama when being a too-proud Negro was ill-advised.

And wouldn’t you know he actually got that horseless carriage? Drove it more than 100 country miles back from the Ford distributor, and was on his way to the homehouse to pick up his brothers and their daddy for a ride. The men were all waiting in the front room when Connie burst through the door—his clothes in tatters—complaining that the Ford got away from him and the carriage was in a ditch. Seeing that he was excited yet unhurt, they chuckled and belly laughed and bent-over laughed at his claim that he was traveling 45 MPH when everybody knew Tin Lizzies topped out at 20.

The story of O’Connor’s car motors through the generations toward obscurity. At first, the particulars of this family tale were likely clear—down to its shiny black paint, the purr of the engine, and the thick smoke billowing from the tailpipe. I suspect this story is at least partially responsible for my family’s generations-long prejudice against Ford Motorcars (F.O.R.D.=Fixed Or Repaired Daily OR Found On Road Dead). But in the more than 100 years since he bought that car, many specifics of the story have been lost. The tale races down the road of time, losing detail until it ultimately vanishes into the distance of eternity because not a single soul remembers how O’Connor got the car, or how he learned to drive, when virtually no one in Demopolis had a car to teach him—certainly not on his side of town. Nevermind that the closest dealer was likely the Long-Lewis in Bessemer—a hardware store/Ford franchisee that was a couple hours away via segregated train ride. Perhaps he took the train, or perhaps he hitched a ride on a mule cart. Such would have been a long and bumpy ride on winding country roads, for modern highways weren’t built until the 1950s. And finally—after he crashed it, and it sat for years in his brother’s shed—nobody knows where O’Connor’s Model T disappeared to.

These missing details are sobering, for one can infer, even in the absence of certainty about the particulars, that O’Connor was so self-assured in his Blackness that he felt unquestionably worthy to own one of first cars in town. This was the 1920s Jim Crow south—not long after the Red Summer of 1919, when more than 50 racist lynchings and mob attacks were perpetuated against Black people throughout America for the audacity of trying to live the American dream. So despite missing details, this tale is empowering, confounding, worrying, and energizing because even the unanswered questions suggest my ancestor dared a big dream when America told him to stay small. Still, over the generations, his story, like many other Black stories, is turning into that last curl of smoke vanishing when the car meets the horizon. For us, memory is disappearing due to time and not malice.

Conversely, malice does occur when people spread intentional falsehoods about American history to erase the truth of Black stories and whitewash this country’s myriad national travesties. But knowing history means we know the truth. History reveals how disgraceful and nonsensical it is to assert that Black people “benefitted from slavery.” History demonstrates that federal, state, and local governments have aimed to exclude Black people from the electoral process since before Reconstruction. History shows us that modern policing often fails to protect and serve Black people because the departments were originally founded to capture and re-enslave Black people. And history pulls the hood off these sinister n’er-do-wells creeping around the government destroying archives, erasing everything having to do with DEIA (since it apparently only applies to the Hard Rs of us), and defunding museums that stand as witness to Black trauma and triumphs on this soil.

They say that time heals all wounds. Maybe that’s why O’Connor’s Ford survives in family lore as a humorous tale. But when I peek behind the veil of laughter he shared with his brothers and their daddy, the keloid from his heart reopens inside my own. For the time the bank cheated him and his brothers. For the years spent saving his nickels and dimes so he could have the dignity of buying that Tin Lizzie “on the board.” For the misery of his journey from home to that Ford dealer. For the sneer, snide remark, and maybe even accusations I envision he endured when he paid for that car in cash. For the heart scare he must have experienced trying to figure out how to drive it. For the exhileration of learning and then taking to the open road. For the physical pain of a car wreck. For the demoralizing walk to the family homehouse. For a car, for a dream, that would never drive again except over the roads of faltering memories.

Alabama abounds with stories of Black excellence, achievement, hubris, love, ingenuity, trauma, struggle, resistance, resilience, and some absolutely trifling behavior. Sometimes, all within the same tale. The efforts right now to erase us are nothing new. But whenever I look for inspiration from my folks, I always look into the shadows of our southern stories. I look for what hid behind the laughter and the smiles because I want to know how we got from there to here. How my ancestors lived then so I could live to see another rotation around the sun.

Today, I choose to share this anecdote about O’Connor because the texture of his desire, his dignity, his defeat, matters. I carry O’Connor’s wound in that keloid on my heart that reopens every time I think behind the shadows of that laughter. But I tell the story, and look into the hurt, because he is part of me. Preserving his story tells me my own, so on my birthday, I motor with O’Connor and all who came before me into the future.