My dad's side of the family comes from an area just outside Philadelphia. Although relatively conservative at least on social issues, my Uncle Joe was always the black sheep, so to speak, of the family. He is five years older than my dad who was only out of his junior year in high school at the time Freedom Summer rolled around. Uncle Joe, at 22, was a student at Lehigh University where he rowed for crew and with any spare time, stirred up issues on campus. Uncle Joe never liked political talk at dinner when he was in high school, according to my dad. Apparently as soon as my grandpa would start in on how the "coloreds" were raising amuck down at the Village Green again, Uncle JOe would clear his throat, push his plate back, and set in on a monologued rebuttal to grandpa's "ignorant, racist, and misinformed ways."
Of course my dad said this always ended with Uncle Joe getting a lecture about respect and how that "is no way to speak to your father," or him storming away from the dinner table.
After Uncle Joe graduated he told my dad he had to get out and get in on all the history with the civil rights.
"I can't stay here, Danny," he would say.
"You know Dad doesn't mean harm with his comments...just his generation, Joe," my dad would reply.
"It doesn't matter. No one listens here. This is big Dan, bigger than we could ever imagine here. There's more out there and I'm going to take my part to stand up for more. I don't care how cliche or holier-than-now it sounds. I know this is a big time in America, so many people can see that. Dad will never understand."
My dad says it was no more than a month after Uncle Joe got to Lehigh that he was involved with crew and a prominent student group on campus- NAACP. It was with this group, during his senior year, as we well know now, that he caught wind of the goings on in Oxford, OH.
Uncle Joe never really talked about his experience in much detail, but my dad has told me that he was never really the same. Uncle Joe would call my dad during his training, telling him this was so much more than he could imagine. Staged attacks to prepare for the beatings that may happen, stories of the dangers that other volunteers experienced, even a chance of death. My dad would try to talk him out of it, but all Uncle Joe would say was, "This is big Danny. Bigger than we could have ever imagined."
This is a really cool idea. I feel like I don't really know as much as I should about Freedom Summer and it's almost more interesting to read it in fiction. By attaching yourself to a character it's a lot easier to learn about what actually happened there, and I really want to know what's going to happen. I like how you have different viewpoints going on in one family, because i feel a lot of times one family member will influence the other, especially if it's the parent - so it's nice to see some independence. I haven't really read your other parts of the story, are you going to just keep with Uncle Joe and the nephew, or are you going to do all of the family members? It might even be cool if you wrote from the "bad guys" perspective too just as an exercise for yourself.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, good work. Keep going. I want to see your characters get messy and maybe even not like some of them.
Wow, I didn't know anyone in the class was going to work on the issue of Freedom summer, Let me know if you need more information I can defiantly help you out there :).
ReplyDeleteAnyways I like this point of view I find it very believable and was engaged throughout the whole section. However, what I would like to see is why Uncle Joe is saying it is bigger than them, and it would be interesting if the dad never understand that concept until years later when things started to get serious. In addition, I believe the dad will be an important character to show his point of view, although he is the antagonist I believe your readers still should be able to relate to him. We know he's racist because of the generation he came out of but what is keeping him stubborn, what is the true reason why he is biased against "colors".
It's clear the dad represent those who probably thought of going but didn't have the guts or the will to go, I would like to see where he stand and more of how he felt about his brother going to Oxford to help register blacks vote in Mississippi.
I fully agree with Evelyn and Olivia; An attempt at writing through the perspective of 'the other side' is a powerful means of getting across the distance between these two different states of mind and the reasons behind their unwillingness to bend or change their mind.
ReplyDeleteBe careful,though, when writing from such a perspective. You can't think of it as 'the bad guy', you need to pull yourself back and see them as 'the other guy', especially if the narration is set in their point of view. 'Bad guys' never see themselves as bad. And often, that's the most chilling aspect about them; the horrors and atrocities they commit, they do out of the honest belief that it is the right thing to do. There's an extreme 'othering' when it comes to issues of racism and hate crimes, and the group labeled as 'others' are made inhuman in the eyes of the first group, any trace of humanity blinded to them by labels and accusations.
Your stories have been very good so far, and I look forward to seeing how you might take on this side of the story.