I’m grateful to my friend Nicolas for our talk about the introduction to THE INVENTION OF GREEK MYTHOLOGY, which opens with my experience with the Greek tales as a schoolboy.
I grew up in Berkeley, California, about the same time as Kamala Harris, when the shocks of the civil rights movement of the sixties were reverberating through schools nationwide and especially in liberal Berkeley.
Like Vice President Harris, I was bussed and went to integrated schools. But I think the most formative part of my experience as someone who can write appreciatively about the multiculturalism of the Greeks came from the thoroughgoing training I got in Black History.
It was so thoroughgoing that I never knew till much later that Black History was only supposed to last a month—and February didn’t register to me as the special time for that. Back then, we got both Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthday off in February, on consecutive Mondays.
That would have shortchanged Black History even more than the meager 28 days of February already does.
Anyway, the reason for this particular newsletter is to ask a question about those bygone days and to let loose the sleuths among my subscribers.
Because I am stumped.
Somewhere in the 5th or 6th grade, in the early seventies, we were assigned to read a novel that took place in Reconstruction-era South Carolina. It was about a group of white and Black farmers who took over a plantation. I don’t remember how they took it over, but the plot revolved around the work that the farmers did to create a thriving business that was democratic in nature and truly integrated.
I rooted for those farmers so hard, because I knew from my studies how difficult it had been in the US for European-Americans to recognize their shared humanity with African-Americans. This was a success story; this was going to have a happy ending, or so I hoped.
But there was no happy ending.
As an American child I had been trained to expect happy endings, but I was shocked and disappointed when the white power brokers in the area, alarmed at what they saw as a threat to the status quo, decided to break up the plantation by force.
I read, incredulously, as the farmers took up arms to save their livelihood but were hopelessly outgunned.
There were cannons involved on the racists’ side, and they used them.
It was a little bit like rooting for Troy in the Trojan War. It seemed like Fate and the divinities were against this little oasis of multiculturalism. I can’t say that I shed a literal tear, but I was heartbroken by the end.
That pointed me, however obliquely, toward the reality of sadness in ancient Greek life that is reflected in their tales. And it made me more inclined to look for the association and collaboration of differing peoples instead of their separation and the subjugation of whoever was deemed inferior.
So here’s my question: even though I can remember actual moments in the book, I have no idea who the author or the title of the book is. I have searched the internet with all the queries I can muster, with no luck.
It’s like that wonderful (and sadly accurate) poem by Billy Collins.
So if you’ve read this far and have any inkling of what book I might be referring to, I’d love to hear from you. You can leave a comment, or DM me on Twitter @DWFrauenfelder.
You see, Black History Month is not a month. If done right, it should last a lifetime, even if you don’t remember it.