There is something that keeps drawing me back to Virginia.  Although my father was born in North Carolina, he grew up in Virginia and returned there in 1946 after he was discharged from the segregated U.S. Army.  He was drafted as a teenager to serve in the Army during World War II.  Virginia advertises itself as the state for lovers, but I know that is not what draws me back to her.

Growing up, every year, around the Fourth of July, my father would jump in his Cadillac and make the trek to Virginia to visit his family.  Afterall, he was a Native Southern Son and, despite the South’s history, I think there is something there that draws Native Southern Sons and Daughters back.  I am a Native New Yorker, so I know this is not the case for me.  My father never took me, his first-born son, on his treks to Virginia.  I resented him for this until I learned the history of the South, in which we were still living when I was a child.  For me, the trips would have been during the mid-1960s and early 1970s, when segregation in the South still reigned supreme.  With this knowledge of the history of the South, I came to understand why my father did not take me on his treks down South.  This was a way for my father to protect me from the ways of white folk in the South.  He knew, once he crossed the Mason-Dixon line, that his ability to protect me was greatly diminished.

So what draws me back to Virginia again and again?  I think that part of my father’s soul is here, and that I am searching and seeking to commune with him – he passed away when I was 21.  I have so many questions for him: Did you aspire to be a writer, as I have heard from one of my oldest cousins on my maternal side? Why exactly did you leave the South?  For a better life?  Or did you flee because of white folk?  As a veteran, were you targeted by white folk because you dared to wear your uniform in public?  (Note that during the race riots of 1919, that Red Summer, Black World War I veterans were targeted by white folk, to put them back in their place, in case they got any ideas about fighting for freedom in America, and this targeted violence continued against Black World War II veterans.)

On this Virginia trip, it struck me, that my father not only did not bring me on his treks down South to protect me from white folk, but also to protect himself, his secrets. I think most if not all parents have secrets they do not tell their children, and if your parents die before you can have adult conversations with them, then they take those secrets to the grave.

My oldest sister, Jeanette, thinks that I am obsessed with our ancestry, our family history.  In unearthing some of the family secrets, I am back in 1805, in Bath County, North Carolina.  Looking at a census report, I see that one of my paternal ancestors is listed as a Negro and head of household.  His wife is also listed as a Negro.  One of their daughters is listed as a Mulatta.

This is no secret, the miscegenation, most of it white men raping Black women, in the South.  What is a secret in my family tree is the white father of my 1805 Mulatta ancestor.  Regardless of how hard I shake the family tree, this white father will not fall out.

History, at its best, fills in the blanks of the historical record.  In the final analysis, I am simply filling in the blanks, the gaps in knowledge, of my family history, with Virginia on my mind.