Death in the Delta by Molly Walling

Author:Molly Walling
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9781617036095
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2012-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

ChApTer eleven

i

Silencing of a Community

PP

July 2006

Both black people and white people in the Deep South were so

fearful of each other, so intimidated by the potential for power

struggles to erupt into violence, that the safety they found in their own numbers contributed to a hardened code of silence. My family began to suppress the truth the moment it became known.

Mr. Evans told me that the black community shut down for days,

fearful to mention the shootings to one another. Even on the plantations, the races may have worked side by side and interacted

freely in the course of a day’s work, but they kept their business to themselves. Gathering together took place on Sundays at church

where, after the service, black families shared a meal, talked shop, gossiped while the children played games in the churchyard. Then

and even now, churches were the social hubs of rural black life.

When I returned to Asheville, I was plagued by a sense of

loss—that had Simon survived, I might have had a chance to meet

and know a third uncle. He was a good man, according to his fam-

ily, affable and, I gather, somewhat charismatic. We might have

shared common interests and the tender connection of blood

relatives. Trying to imagine what his funeral was like, I read the book Passed On: African American Mourning Stories by Karla Holloway.

University Press of Mississi

From her research I put together a picture of what might have

happened after Simon and David were shot. First, their bodies

would have been taken to the homes of their mothers for a wake

or “settin’ up” because it was important for families and friends to 113

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silenCing of A CommuniTy

see the dead men for the last time. Churchwomen would bring in

food—fried chicken, turnip greens, sweet potato pie, cake. Later, i

because there was seldom a way to embalm the body, black mor-

ticians would take it “out to the garage, place him on a couple of PP

straight boards and wrap him in muslin. Then, we packed news-

papers into the pine coffins that we put together and buried him

without further ado—it only cost us about fifty dollars.” Some-

times the bottoms of the coffins were hinged so that the body

could be dropped into the grave and the casket reused. The buri-

als would have occurred before the funerals took place, Simon’s at Southdale Missionary Baptist Church.

On Sunday, when workers were free to go to church, they would

have gathered together. Inez and Rose and their father and mother, along with Simon’s mother, would hear a cathartic sermon rousing

the congregation to lament the loss of two young men to white

aggression. There would have been movement, dramatic gestur-

ing, speeches, and songs. And the minister might have taken the

opportunity to incite the congregation to have hope, not to give up because the world in which they lived was full of evil. He promised them they would see a better place in heaven.

In a letter from King Evans dated May 31, 2006, he wrote,

“Negroes survived in this country because of a deep and abid-

ing faith in God. We

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