This story is part of a series about intergenerational conversations about race. We encourage you to listen to the short audio pieces, each roughly 3-4 minutes long.
Listen to Tom DeWolf's story:
On this past July Fifth, my
ten-year-old granddaughter and I were walking down the street from our home
toward the park by the river; a place we’ve played often over the years. Swinging,
sliding, climbing, and running around; just a half-mile from our home. We live
in a three-generation household. She, her sister, their mom, and my wife and I,
all moved in together when she was four years old and her sister was six.
“Did
you have fun last night?” I asked. The three of them had gone to a 4th
of July party at the home of some friends of theirs from school. They live up
the hill, a few miles away from us, with a perfect view of the holiday
pyrotechnics.
“Yeah,
the fireworks were really cool!” she said. “What did you and Meemo think?”
“We
didn’t watch them. We were watching a movie.”
“What?!?”
Her face scrunched up in disbelief. “Why didn’t you watch? They were so cool!”
I
turned my head to look at her as I spoke. “There are some holidays I don’t really
like to celebrate anymore. The Fourth of July is one of them.”
“Why
not?” she asked.
She
knows that I work for Coming to the Table, which focuses on acknowledging and
healing wounds from the legacy of slavery. She knows that I travel quite a bit
talking at colleges and conferences about racism. She’s seen the documentary
film, Traces of the Trade, about my ancestors’ key role in the slave
trade; the film I’m in along with several distant cousins. She knows I’ve
written books about racism and racial healing.
And she’s young,
so I talk to her in ways I believe she can understand.
“The
Fourth of July is called Independence Day, right?”
“Right,”
she said.
“And
independence means freedom and liberty, right?”
“Right.”
“But
the only people who got freedom and liberty on the first Independence Day were
white people. African people were enslaved. Native American people didn’t get
independence. So, Thanksgiving is another holiday I don’t celebrate anymore. Thanksgiving
started as a holiday to celebrate the Pilgrims learning to survive because of
the help of Native people… people who were later either killed or run off the
land they’d lived on for thousands of years. The more I’ve learned the truth
about our nation’s history, the harder it is to celebrate some parts of it.
Does that make sense?”
“Yeah,”
she said. Then with a smile and a sideways glance at me, she added, “Fireworks
are still pretty cool.”
“Yes,
they are,” I agreed, and smiled right back.
She
nodded. And though she said no more about it, I could feel the wheels turning
inside her brain as she pondered.
We walked on toward
the park in silence
