Napoleon Bonaparte McPhetridge left school at 15 “to espouse the cause of the Confederacy,” according to a local history book, “Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Western Arkansas.” Following the Civil War Pole, as he was nicknamed, would become a respected lawyer and a member of the Arkansas Senate.
Alfred McPhetridge, Pole’s father, fought for the North in the Civil War and died in died in 1865, the last year of the conflict.
In 1863, two years after the war broke out, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November as a day to give thanks and to ask God to “heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.”
I wonder how much hard truth-telling Pole and Alfred would have shared at a Thanksgiving dinner.
As Americans struggle to better understand the past and its lasting impact, they should keep in mind that history is complicated. Family stories are complicated.
For example, Stacie Marshall, who has a master's in education and a small farm in northwest Georgia, grew up hearing that her family once enslaved people. She learned details as an adult, including from her mother's research on Ancestry.com. She discovered an 1860 slave schedule – an official accounting of humans as property -- detailing her ancestors’ human holdings as she sifted through her grandparents' belongings following their deaths.
Marshall, who was given her grandparents’ farm in 2018, has considered creating an internship for young Black farmers, donating money to preserve the local Black cemetery, or simply giving land or money to the descendants of the Black Americans who were enslaved by her family or sharecropped for it.
Her impulse to give shows she has gained a deeper understanding of her family and her nation’s history. Marshall has tried to find the descendants of people her family enslaved, learning along the way how much harder it is for African Americans to document their lineages than it has been for her to research her own family. Black American families also have family lore, but slave schedules, unlike census records, list numbers of human beings, not names.
Future censuses will document what demographers foresee as a historic U.S. population shift. By some time in the 2040s, experts say, Latinos, Blacks and other minorities will together comprise the majority of Americans. A shared understanding of the past and its consequences could help smooth the coming change.
I know how difficult it can be to share how we see the world.
When I was a freshman at Northwestern University, white men in a passing car shouted a racist slur at me as I strolled on the edge of the lakeside campus in the Chicago suburb of Evanston. I was grateful the men did not stop to assault me. Hunching my shoulders, I walked on, thinking I should be careful where I wandered alone. I did not talk about that moment to anyone then, in part because being a victim of racism made me feel shame.
I’ve seen younger generations share stories that, if they don’t redefine race relations in our country, at least give us an opportunity to have a frank discussion about where we are. In coming decades these young people will be continuing the conversation from leadership positions.
In 2019, a generation after I graduated from Northwestern, Evanston’s City Council approved a reparations program to offer money to residents who suffered lasting damage from decades of such practices as anti-Black housing discrimination and barring Blacks from owning or renting storefronts in town. Actions in the past ensured Black Evanstonians are marginalized today, emboldening the kind of white racists who would shout abuse at a Black teen on the street.
Fulfilling America’s promise of equality and democracy won’t happen without considered, informed action. History is the starting point if we are to build a future together.
At a time in which many fear history is imperiled, instead of an annual day of thanksgiving we need a day to contemplate truthgiving.