Welcome to the Roses Supposes blog. I use this space to communicate things that pass across my mind about my cultural explorations, my research, and my continuing struggles with life. I’m a white Arizonan studying African American History in grad school in the midwest. I’m working on my dissertation right now and hope to finish in a year. I still always second guess my perceptions of race and find this a useful place to discuss those first, second, third and forth reactions to historical events and current events. Maybe I will amuse and perhaps enlighten. Please leave comments!
I chose the name for the resonance with my childhood and current interests. The name is evocative of the song in “Singing in the Rain,” where Gene Kelly and his friend tie up the speech therapist with tongue twisters, “Moses supposes his toe-ses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously.” It is also evocative of the famous Gertrude Stein quote, “A rose is a rose is a rose,” which I repeat to myself when feeling frustrated and incapacitated. And Minnesotans often use the phrase “I s’pose.” After I spent a month with distant relatives there as a teenager I came home using “I s’pose” for all of my opinions, only to be mercilessly teased by my brother.
Why did you choose African American studies? Just curious…
I’m fascinated with the twining stories of black families here in rural coastal SC. I’m interested in what you have to say. Thank you for posting!
Welcome! Could you tell me more about the twining stories?
I became interested in black history by studying a black woman pioneer who was big in my small Arizona town. I thought I had blogged about that, but it was on facebook. Here’s what I wrote:
A new statue of the woman who got me into history, standing in front of the brick hotel she built. She was an important founder of Wickenburg. People used to take the train up from Phoenix (about 70 miles) to eat her cooking. She helped found the Presbyterian church, started a theater company, and established many other things throughout town before an avalanche of white Southerners drove her from these organizations. She died still quite wealthy. She had no children, but did have a close relative in Chicago (one of the first black men to graduate from the Northwestern dental schools)–I wish I could find her relatives and see if they still have any of her letters back to Chicago.
I also took several classes in undergrad and was so compelled by the stories I heard. At first I wanted to study the root of injustice, because I couldn’t understand why people could have done such horrible things to each other. The more I’ve aged, I think the surprise is not that people do horrible things, but when they do good things. So I’ve begun to focus more on the latter.
Twining stories:
It’s pretty complicated. I’ll try to explain, but feel free to ask questions along the way.
On and off over the last five years, I’ve been researching a particular name “L*****” with a gentleman friend. It was his mother’s maiden name. That particular branch settled in Savannah, GA, maybe 125+ years ago. They originated upriver about 40 miles in a remote area now known as Garnett, SC (It’s only been known as Garnett for the last 100 years or so when a man named John Garnett helped the railroad come thru). Before that, the census referred to that area as “L***** township”.
So, my friend and I had been traveling thru that tiny little Garnett area, looking at old plantation sites. That started in August 2005. Over the course of time, we met some of the local folks. One little old lady I’ll call Miz Florrie. She’s 96 years old, has always lived in that area, and is “beige”. She has divulged some information about her family and her ancestry, but I know that some information will die with her.
In February 2008, Miz Florrie, myself, and her daughter Rose were having a conversation in her kitchen. I’ve been working on her family tree, and we had a break-thru, of sorts. I asked if they had heard of the “L*****” family. Rose rolled her eyes, and said oh yeah, we know the “L*****s”. Miz Florrie said that her “father was kin to the “L*****s”. Rose prompted her mother and mentioned that she had only seen Miz Florrie’s father once and had thought that a white man was in their house. Miz Florrie won’t say who her father’s father was – she says it’s hard to say – she doesn’t really know his name. My take on that is this: it’s a really tiny area. The large land-holdings are pretty much the same as they were 100 years ago. The little village of Garnett is the central area of the land-holdings. Mostly people have moved away, not moved into Garnett. And if you look at the old maps and the old census records, the names and places haven’t changed much. There weren’t that many families named “L*****”. Only one has an adult male of the appropriate age to be the father of Miz Florrie’s father. I’m not sure who she’s protecting, if anyone. Anyhow, she’s not talking.
I’ve been under the assumption that Miz Florrie was an only child. Last week, Rose told me that her mother has 3 sisters and 1 brother. From the sound of it, Miz Florrie’s mother never married.
Did you ever read the book “Daughter of My People” by James Kilgo? It’s based on a true story that happened about 100 years ago. And it happened in Garnett. It’s a murder/suicide involving two brothers and a mixed-race woman. Her name was Jenny Grant. Miz Florrie’s father was Walter Gant. But Miz Florrie says that she doesn’t know Jenny Grant, which I find odd because in a census record, Miz Florrie was living with her aunt and uncle, and the census taker recorded her name as “Florrie Grant”. (On Ancestry.com it is transcribed as “Harrie Grant”.) And Jenny Grant in one census record was living with a (you guessed it) “L*****” family.
I find all this fascinating and I want to record it, if for no other reason, because it hasn’t been done. And I believe that it should be done, warts and all, because it could be valuable someday to someone. And I believe that Miz Florrie’s life is worth something and should be written down.
Thanks for this explanation. It is a fascinating story! You’ve stumbled onto the joys and frustrations of archival research. I hope that you will continue to uncover interesting and valuable sources, and will write it up!