On my commute to work through rural Virginia, I drive between verdant valley on a two-lane road. I cross an intersection where the railroad tracks, a winery, and a babbling brook meet.
Growing up in the populated Northeast, I envisioned settling in New York or Philadelphia to ride the relentless slipstream of city life. L.A. even made my shortlist of potential homesteads, before life routed me to a small Virginia city that beckoned me to stay.
They are mounting an old train and waving goodbye to loved ones. Their destination is another babbling brook called Bull Run. The very first battle of The War Between The States is about to begin.
Don’t worry. I am not going to take you there.
If you would turn away from the old station, I will direct your attention to a curving side road, and off this street, a regal house atop a hill.
A slave owner owned this estate. My family lived on this property. I confirmed this yesterday through historical court papers. My fourth-great grandfather was a man named James E. Lee. He was a very rare free black man. (For brevity’s sake, I will refer to him as my grandfather throughout this essay.)
Oh, but his story is complex. I am far from understanding many details. I know what I know through an almost miracle combination of fate and detective-like tenacity. Which is to say, I did not know until yesterday that I was going to share any of this.
I read an eloquent NY Times opinion piece, “My Body Is A Confederate Monument” by poet Caroline Randall Williams. Our narrative arches parallel. Prior to the recent crest of Black Lives Matter movement, I never believed there would be an appetite for this story.
My grandfather’s is Entry #329 in a little know book of court records called the Fauquier County, Virginia Register of Free Negroes 1817-1865. The records were abstracted and indexed by a small team of researchers who poured over records at Library of Virginia. Their names are Karen Ibrahim, Karen White, and Courtney Gaskins.
I just saw Ms. White yesterday at the historical archives she helps to maintain. I have only known her for two years. She has helped me learn everything I am about to share.
“Year: 1840 – 22 years before the Emancipation Proclamation. Name: James Edward Lee. Age: 5 months. Color: Bright Mulattoe Boy: Description: With no visible scars. How Freed: Born Free.”
Through oral family history coupled with this “bright mulattoe” description (that I only found 3 years ago), it is believed his father was white. I know nothing yet about the nature of any possible relationship. But James Lee’s mother was also born a free woman (Entry #324), and so was his grandmother (Entry #322), who was born about 1800.
So in 1861, my grandfather is in his early 20s. Confederate troops are flocking to this tiny train station to head east for battle. Concurrently, grandfather is attempting to buy a property lot from the slave owner who lives near this same railroad crossing. He is trying to purchase his home.
My grandfather was unsuccessful. Yet, he does a very remarkable thing. He sues the slave owner. How did gain enough education to pull this off? Where did he get the audacity? I wish I knew. I only know this narrative through a small blip of a paragraph from a Freedman Bureau court document. This led me to the railroad crossing. Which led me to the slave owner. Which led me to the knowledge that this is where he once lived.
There isn’t enough space here to detail the sheer peril of what my grandfather must have endured before, during, and after the Civil War. I know little about his role during the war. I have his name in a Confederate military order being pressed into manual labor to dig entrenchments in North Virginia. Like the Confederate soldiers, I imagine he was swept east along on old train into America’s darkest chapter.
I can only deduce what was important to my grandfather through what I know of his life after the war. In the 1870s, he succeeded in purchasing land in another small city just outside of Washington D.C. He helps to establish a church in his community, which plays a prominent role in teaching the formerly enslaved to write and read.
On his land, my grandfather builds a small school for black children. This tiny school would evolve, yet remain segregated, surviving more peril for another hundred years. In 2020, this former school is a thriving community center in Falls Church. In 2012, President Barack Obama gave a speech in this community center that bears James Lee’s name.
This short accounting of facts barely scratches the surface of a history that is deep, complex, exhaustive.
I have on my desk as I write this, another book which I wanted to reference, but for brevity’s sake, I must yield. This book is called the Black Laws of Virginia by June Purcell Guild. It is a compilation of every Virginian “statute, constitution, resolution, and ordinance” signed into law pertaining to African-American people from 1607 to 1936. To describe this research is to run out of adjectives. Shattering, devastating, illuminating, inspirational, hopeful are among the few I have uttered while reading.
People say that things will never change. They say this simply because it feels this way. But things do change.
Once upon a time, conclusions were reached and laws were made that met certain needs and influenced behaviors. Behaviors supported institutions. Institutions became the way that things always were. The people under their sway struggled to imagine anything different.
Until one day, people changed. They learned better ways. Old beliefs, patterns, and laws no longer made sense. Institutions that could not change died. Institutions worth saving reformed. This phenomenon is not unique to subjects of race.
When I think of human progress – as hard as it can be – I try to take the long view. Discovering stories that help me admire the human spirit is important to me. I did not know I would find one in my own family. I passed these railroad tracks hundreds of times before I “swerved”, so to speak, into this research of the past.
Where do people find the audacity to celebrate in the face of violence? To build noble lives against the odds? What about life is worth celebrating several hundred of years from now?
Let’s start there.
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Talk to you soon.
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Photo credit: Flickr
