Looking Forward, Thinking Backward

2024-07-10 “Looking Forward, Thinking Backward” by Emma

I decided to come down to the lobby of the condo building where I can see the beach on level, but I got my iPhone and I’m working on my words. I still got lots to learn. An’ when I get worked up, I fall back on my old ways.

Well, Ailana Geven @ailana.geven came by and sat with me. I was telling her about 1880, and she showed me how to make pictures of back then, even though it’s not back then, any more. I made two to go with what I talked to her about, but they are just like I ‘member it.

I explained that after the Civil War, a lot of folk didn’t have much—most all the blacks and some poor whites. My family ended up sharecropping 'cause there weren't much choice for making a living. We'd work a piece of land that weren’t ours, planting cotton or whatever the landowner decided. At the end of the season, we had to give him a big part of the crop. It was supposed to be a fair share, but it never felt that way.

Most sharecroppers were black folk who’d been slaves before. We all were promised a bit of freedom, but it felt like just another kind of being bound. Always owing more for the seed and tools than what we could ever make off the land. So, year after year, stuck in the same old ruts, dreaming of a day we'd have something to call our own.

The land my family cropped shared a barn with a piece of land a n… a black family cropped. They had a girl about my age, and I made a picture o’ her, too. Me and her were about the same but for our skin and hair. We weren’t supposed to mix with each other, but now and then, we’d meet up on accident.

She seemed even more hopeless than me, and I account that to her being black. I know they had it real bad, just ‘cause it was the way. I never even thought to ask her name.

I look around 2024 and it seems some better. I guess down in the poor part of town where I was working on that house, it was obvious that it ain… that it isn’t all even, yet. Seems like 144 years would have made more of a difference.

I guess I can just do my part, and hope to be an example for others.