I began writing this several days ago and it seemed appropriate to post it on Juneteenth.
Over the past few months, the world has seemed out of control — the pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of people all over the world and in the midst of that, the country and the world seeming to wake up to the killing of black and brown people every day at the hands of those in power.
At the same time, my book group decided to read “The Plague” by Camus. As I read it, I felt like I was reading my grandmother’s letters while she was trapped in Vienna and separated from her children who had been sent to relatives in the U.S. There was the same sense of helplessness, loss, and isolation — very similar to how so many of us are feeling these days.
Delving into my grandmother’s papers has been an education both about my family and about the world. It’s heartbreaking to think that the promise of America is a nightmare for so many. And that it hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. My grandmother’s correspondence reflects her disillusionment. In 1939, she sent her children away for a better life (and the opportunity to actually have a life). For the next 6 years, she heard little from them. She was reunited with her children in 1946 after being unable to leave Vienna for over 3 years, being imprisoned in Ravensbrück and then essentially being imprisoned again in Istanbul while trying to get papers and money to make the voyage to San Francisco.
In the late 1940’s, my grandmother sent to friends and relatives living around the world books, articles, and letters about the disconnect and hypocrisy she saw between the message of the Statue of Liberty and the reality of living in the U.S. — although I don’t have any of the letters she wrote, I surmise this from the replies she received from her correspondents.
One book she read and then sent to others was “Knock on Any Door” by Willard Motley. The book is about the effect of poverty on families and individuals and how people may be driven to crime and end up in prison due to their impoverished circumstances. From Goodreads: “Motley researched his novel on the streets of his native Chicago, talking to immigrants about their experiences and visiting juveniles in Illinois's youth detention centers. In Knock on Any Door, Motley creates a painfully vivid picture of poverty, the struggle for ethnic identity, and the flaws of the penal system in urban America.” (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/257127.Knock_on_Any_Door). On its own, the book is incredibly depressing, but made even more so by the lack of progress that has been made since it was published in 1947.
I imagine my grandmother saw the treatment of African Americans in the U.S. as similar to how she was treated by the Germans. She kept a binder of articles and papers that meant something to her. In it, was an article and editorial from 1952 about a case in North Carolina:
For more on the case, go to https://www.aaihs.org/mack-ingram-and-the-policing-of-black-sexuality/
I don’t know what my grandmother would have made of the world we live in today. She always called herself a “fatalist”, but Fate hasn’t been very kind this year. I hope that will change soon.