The Legacy of Marriage
One of the ancestor veneration practices I’ve been doing, is researching my family tree. Say what you wanna say about ancestry.com, but I am grateful for the platform. Yep, me. Queen Conspiracy. Double Scorpio.
But I’m willing to take all the risks because I’ve been able through this platform, to see common threads and synchronicities; things that white supremacy overshadows; my folks were industrious, they were farmers, and they were married.
I can’t tell you why I was so shocked by the marriage thing. I grew up in a home with my mother and father. But even so, I was surrounded by single parent homes. Most of you know about the attempts the gov’t made/makes to dismantle the Black family. Slavery, Jim Crow, the prison pipeline and public assistance et al, were/are some of the more powerful tools used to keep Black men and women apart.
I’m so glad that I don’t have to cite sources. It’s boring and unnecessary.
Sooooo, I probably figured my family fell victim to this as well and in some stories…sure. My grandmother Ellen Smalls-Middleton had several “husbands” and ran her farm with the help of her children and grand children; products of these partnerships. When I sit here in front of my ancestor shrine reflecting on her life, I often feel the word “survivalist” pop up. That’s what she wants me to know.
And speaking of survival, I’ve been anti-marriage for a long time; mainly because I was burned by a domestic partner; father of my two girls, who didn’t offer me the support I sought in marriage so I framed it as a fairy tale and frankly too much work. I decided to survive AND thrive on my own.
Until now…
But I’ve been convinced by spirit and Orisa to give it another chance; ESPECIALLY now. I mean, I did created a farm vision book last year, with quite a few pages dedicated to foine ass black growers (in the gallery above) so maybe they were already working on me anyway.
So if anybody out there reading this entry has some cute single Black men friends…holla at ya gworl! Don’t bother recommending https://www.farmersonly.com/. My godmother beat y’all to it and it’s a solid NO for me. SMH.
Photo Credit Note: I ain’t got time to research all the pics so just google “black farmer and wife painting” to see what comes up.