Remnants by Rosemarie Freeney Harding with Rachel Elizabeth Harding

8/9/2019 Remnants by Rosemarie Freeney Harding with Rachel Elizabeth Harding

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R E M N A N T S

R O S E M A R I E F R E E N E Y H A R D I N G

W I T H R A C H E L E L I Z A B E T H H A R D I N G

A Memoir of Spirit, Activism, and Mothering


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Rosemarie, c. 1952.

.


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R O S E M A R I E F R E E N E Y H A R D I N G

R E M N A N T S A Memoir of Spirit, Activism, and Mothering

W I T H R A C H E L E L I Z A B E T H H A R D I N G

0


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© 215 Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States o America on acid-ree paper∞

ypeset in Arno Pro by Westchester Book Group

Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Freeney Harding, Rosemarie.

Remnants : a memoir o spirit, activism, and mothering / Rosemarie Freeney

Harding,

with Rachel Elizabeth Harding.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical reerences and index.

978--8223-5868-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)

978--8223-5879-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

978--8223-7558-6 (e- book)

1. Freeney Harding, Rosemarie. 2. Arican American scholarsBiography.

3. Arican American civil rights workersBiography. 4. Mennonite

womenBiography. 5. Civil rights movementsUnited StatesHistory

2th century. I. Harding, Rachel E., 1962– II. itle.

185.97.8353 215

323.92dc23[]

21439595

Chapter 4, “Tere Was a ree in Starkville,” is reprinted with permission

rom Sojourners. Chapter 24, originally published as “Atlanta’s Mennonite

House,” is rom Widening the Circle: Experiments in Christian Discipleship.

Copyright © 211 by Herald Press, Harrisonburg , Virginia 2282. Used by

permission. Chapter 29 was originally published as “Bernice Johnson Reagon:

A Song in the ime o Dying” by the Veterans o Hope Project. Used by

permission.

Cover art: Rosemarie Freeney Harding, c. 1986. Photo courtesy estate o

Walter Lee Dozier.


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Sue Bailey Turman

Charles

• • •


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C O N T E N T S

: Daughter’s Pr écis by Rachel E. Harding ix

1. (the light) 1

• Ground 5

2. Rye’s Rites (poem) 73. Grandma Rye 94. Tere Was a ree in Starkville . . . 155. Daddy’s Mark 216. Joe Daniels: Getting Unruly 24

7. Te Side o the Road 298. Papa’s Girl 32

• North 41

9. Snow and Spring in Woodlawn 431. Shirley Darden 5211. Brother Bud’s Death 5412. Death, Dreams, and Secrecy: Tings We Carried 5713. Seasons 63

14. Elegant Cousins and Original Beauty 6615. Warmth 7116. Altgeld Gardens 7517. Hot Rolls (short ction) 8218. Looking or Work 9219. Te Nursing est 962. In Loco Parentis (short ction) 9721. Mama Freeney and the Haints 1722. Height 113


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viii • Contents

• South

. Hospitality, Haints, and Healing: Arican American Indigenous Religionand Activism

. Mennonite House in Atlanta

. Te Next-Door Neighbor . raveling or the Movement . Koinonia Farm: Cultivating Conviction . A Radical Compassion: His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Clarence Jordan,

and Marion King-Jackson . A Song in the ime o Dying: A Memory o Bernice Johnson Reagon . Te Blood House (a story outline) . Spirit and Struggle: Te Mysticism o the Movement

• Te Dharamsala Notebook . Sunrise afer Delhi (poem) . Te Dharamsala Notebook I . Te Dharamsala Notebook II

• Bunting

. Te Bunting . Te Workshops and Retreats: Ritual, Remembering, and Medicine

• Te Pachamama Circle . Pachamama Circle I: Rachel’s Dream . Pachamama Circle II: Sue Bailey Turman and the Harriets . Pachamama Circle III: A Choreography o Mothering . Mama and the Gods

AferWords

. Fugida: Poem or Oyá . Class Visits: Love, White Southerners, and Black Exceptionalism . A Little Wind . (the Call)

: Rosemarie’s Genealogies

A gallery appears afer page


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F O R E W O R D • Daughter’s Précis

Tere is no scarcity. Tere is no shortage. No lack o love,

o compassion, o joy in the world. Tere is enough.

Tere is more than enough.

Only ear and greed make us think otherwise.

No one need starve. Tere is enough land and enough ood.

No one need die o thirst. Tere is enough water. No one

need live without mercy. Tere is no end to grace. And we

are all instruments o grace. Te more we give it, the more

we share it, the more we use it, the more God makes. Tere

is no scarcity o love. Tere is plenty. And always more.

Tis is the universe my mother lived in. Her words. Her ways. Tisis the universe she was raised in, by parents rom rural Georgia whocame up in the generation afer slavery. People who had lived withmany terrors but who knew terror was not God’s nal say. Tis is theuniverse she taught me. Whatever I call religion is this inclusive,Christian, indigenous, Black, southern cosmology o compassion andconnectedness. It is the poetry o my mother’s lie.

Mama died at the end o winter in 24. For almost ten years, we

had been writing. Gathering up her storiesher long, sweet ashes o brilliance, her prayers, what she remembered o her Woodlawn, Chi-cago childhood and the high strong laughter o her mother and aunts;


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x • Daughter’s Précis

her ather’s gentle work- worn hands. She was giving me what she knew I would need to survive this world; and what I would need to love it. Whatshe wanted me to tell about her, what she knew o God, the people we comerom and her many magnicent companions in the movement or justice in

this nation.Lord, I have been writing Mama’s story or too long. Much too long. Pass-

ing through so many sicknesses to get herehers, my ather’s, my brother’s,my own. But she stood there, like the mother in Lucille Clifon’s poem, atthe other side o the river, holding out her heart, set to throw it across whenmy waiting hands could nally catch it.

God sent me beore you to preserve or you a remnant on earth, and to keep

alive or you many survivors.

45:7

Mama trained her mind toward the good. Even beore she knew anythingabout Buddhism, or the Dalai Lama. Beore she ever traveled to India. Idon’t know when it started. Maybe she was born that way. Or perhaps shehad seen her own mother and ather do it so ofen, her aunts, too, that it became an artless response. She would lean naturally into the side o en-couragement and moral strength. And orgiveness, though she was notimprudent.

She could nd a blessedness in anything. She assumed it was there andno matter how deeply hidden, her expert hand would scoop it out and showit to you.

In her counseling, she used a Japanese practice o grateulness, Naikan/Morita Terapy. It emphasizes training our spirits toward gratitude, especially

or our mothers and those others who sacrice so much or our happiness and well- being. Tat appealed to her. “It works quickly,” she told me. I told hershe wouldn’t have many clients i she kept asking people to remember whatthey had done to hurt their mothers and all the things their mothers haddone to take care o them. “Tat’s the opposite o how most psychotherapistsmake their money,” I said. She laughed.

Te Dalai Lama says look upon all beings as i they were our mothertheperson who has loved us best, loved us most in our lie; the person who

has been kindest to us. reat all beings as i they were our mother. Because,in act, they are. Mama says the Dalai Lama said, “We have all been eachother’s mothers.”


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Daughter’s Précis • xi

In my classes, Mama tells the students we have all been the good one. And we have all been the “evil” person. We have all been many things. And we yet carry those lietimes in our cellular memory. Just as we carry all othe universe in our cellular memory. So there is no judgment o others. Just

the will to do good toward them. o show kindness in this lie. We all wanthappiness. We all want someone to be kind to us. We all want and need andhave the right to joy in this lie. o avoid unnecessary suffering. None o us ismore worthy than the next. None o us is less worthy than the next. We areall the same in this. We have all been each other’s mothers.

Listen to me, house o Jacob and all the remnant o the house o Israel, a loadon me rom your birth, carried by me rom the womb: till you grow old I am

SHe, and when white hairs come, I will carry you still; I have made you and I

will bear the burden, I will carry you and bring you to saety.

46:3–4

Tis book is neither autobiography nor biography. But some o both. Andsomething else. It is Mama’s and it is mine. Mostly it’s a representation othe richness o my mother’s creative imagination, the mystic streams o herspiritual lie, and the lyricism and joy o her activism. It is also the way shemodeled or me a emale-centered, indigenous wisdom about the world.

Tere are women in communities all over this country and around theglobe, I’m sure, like my mother. I have met some o them. Women withoriginal and powerul ways o understanding lie, ways that come rom thestruggles and pleasures o their lived experience, but that may not nd muchexpression beyond their kitchen tables, their market stalls, or the crises in which their amilies inevitably turn to them or guidance. (Like Mamie ill-

Mobley said, “Any trouble I’ve ever had in my lie, it took Mama to get meout.”) My mother had a ew outlets or her magnicence. But not nearly, itseems to me now, enough.

Mama had an acute and gentle intelligence about navigating the worldnding the wine, the sweetness in the unexpected places. Te hardplaces. And sharing it. Making it last. Making more. (alk about loaves andshes . . . ) Her understanding o social justice activism situated struggle very comortably alongside hospitality and mothering. Tis is a meaning o

activism I have not seen widely discussed among scholars, but the womeno the Southern Freedom Movement (and their amilies) know about it.More than anything, it is an activism based in “being amily” bringing


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people into the house, literally and guratively. Making room and making welcome. Letting people know there is room or them in the vision, in thestruggle, in the nation, in the amily.

I will gather the remnant o my sheep rom all the lands, and I will bring them

back to their old and they shall be ruitul and increase. I will set shepherds

over them who will care or them, and they shall ear no more, nor be dis-

mayed, neither shall any be missing.

23:3–4

Mama joined the Mennonite Church when she was a young woman, aroundtwenty-one. Her older sister, Alma, joined beore her and Mama ollowed,admiringly, in Alma’s ootsteps. It was the Mennonites, the Movement, andher marriage to my ather that sent my mother south to Atlanta in 1961.

I was born there; my brother Jonathan too. We lived in a household thatstreamed with progressive ideas and peopleBlack nationalists and pan- Aricanists; Arican independence movement intellectuals and artists; labororganizers; Quakers and Mennonites (and a ew Catholics and SouthernBaptists) who were trying to live a witness o peace and racial reconcilia-tion; student activists; our Chicago cousins; blues musicians and olk sing-ers; painters and writers; radical publishers and co-op ounders; and justplain ole good-hearted people. All kinds. O course, the reedom movementpeople were the mainstayour parents’ activist riends and comrades who were like a big extended amily to my brother and me.

In the houses where I was a girl, there were beautiul sepia-toned paint-ings by Ko Bailey and Elizabeth Catlett Mora’s Mexican- workshopped black-and- white prints. A ull set o Blue Note jazz albums and olk stories

and songs rom Atlantic and Folkways records that my mother borrowed weekly rom the library or us. Also lots o books. Black children’s books were an emerging genre and my ather brought home rom his travels thenewest titles or me and Jonathan. Black coloring books, Black comic books, biographies and histories or children with illustrations by om Feelingsand Jacob Lawrence. Most o the books in the house were rom my dad’scollection o American and Arican American history and literature, butthere was, too, a growing set o texts on comparative religion, Eastern phi-

losophy, meditation, and the Christian contemplative tradition. Peoplelike Gerald Heard and Tomas Merton, and, o course, Howard Turman.Later, Paramahansa Yogananda, Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, Hannah Arendt, and


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Daughter’s Précis • xiii

the Dalai Lama. Tese were Mama’s books. Both o my parents were inter-ested in these world teachings about peace, about centering, about the gracein our shared humanity and the transormative power o love, but or mymother, they were a special sustenance and she read them with quiet en-

thusiasm. Te spiritual teachings were places she went and considered andremembered the way she considered and remembered Bible verses or mygrandmother’s counsel.

• • •

My parents met in 1959. Tey were among the ew Arican Americans in theMennonite Church o that era. Both were eloquent and perceptive public

speakers who shared an interest in how the Mennonite witness o recon-ciliation and peacemaking could contribute to Civil Rights struggles, and what insights those struggles could offer back to the Mennonite Church.Shortly afer their marriage in 196, with support rom the Mennonite Cen-tral Committee, my mother and ather moved to Georgia as representa-tives o their denomination to the Movement and established “MennoniteHouse”an interracial voluntary ser vice unit, community gathering place,and retreat space or activists and peace church volunteers. It was the rst oits kind in the region.

Beore and afer Mennonite House, Mama taught school and did social work, inusing her activities with an essential compassion and respect (andsel-respect) that she modeled on her own mother, who learned it rom herparents and grandparentsthose southern generations who repeatedlytransormed collective trauma into empathy and acumen. Mama surely ab-sorbed some o that skill. People would come to her, in private moments orin public tears, and she would put her hands on them and draw out the painso they could drop it. Or she would show them how to make something

useul o ita song, a dance, some poetry or those ollowing behind. Tat’s what she did with her own grie, until it weighed too heavy even or her.Ten it was lifed.

All throughout my lie, although I wasn’t aware until much later, Mamamust have been collecting and laying out teachings and experiences like atrousseau. What she read and studied, judged against what she lived, balanced with what she knew in her heart to be truthul and good. Tese beautiul, use-ul garments; worn close to her skin: the movement work; years o research

on Ida B. Wells-Barnett and the history o Black women’s activism; riendship with Makota Valdina Pinto, a Candomblé priestess rom Bahia (Mama and Valdina each spoke slices o the other’s language enough to recognize their


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kindred lives); visits with my ather to Hopi elder Tomas Banyacya andDhyani Ywahoo, a spiritual leader o the Cherokee nation; study with MichioKushi; the initiations she took with Lama Zopa Rinpoche; and the Vipassanameditation and Feldenkrais training and certication. And so much more . . .

All o this spiritual and intellectual exploration was undergirded by theoundational wisdom my mom received rom her mother, Ella Lee HarrisFreeney, whom everybody called “Mama Freeney.” And, toward the end oher lie, as she reected on it, my mother said, “It’s all the same source. Te way Mama Freeney and Grandma Rye and them taught us, the way theylived, is the same as these beautiul teachings rom around the world, Ra-chel. It’s all the same, baby. Everywhere we go.”

It was a lielong conversation with my mother I had. She knew that she

could be accused o irrationality, but there was nothing more rational, morelogical, more grounded in reality or Mama, than the way the universe lovesand tends to every living being within it. Tat was the lie model or her.

By the time I got to know her as an adult, Mama’s mystic way in the world was “hidden in plain sight” like the reedom quilts and slave songs whosesteal-away meanings were camouaged. She lived, in moments, an exquisite,shamanic love or the world in open concealment. Simultaneously eedingand protecting a philosophical approach to lie that connected her power-ully and intimately to her own source o supply which was both ancestraland cosmic. Either way, it was something that reminded her, in almost every-thing she saw, that the universe is lled with mercy and orgiveness. And thatpeople will always ght or justice, reach or a way to be whole in the world.

Candombléa lyric, poetic, ancestral religion o strength and suppli-cationechoed my mother’s mystic attention to lie, to the universe, tospirit. My rst visit to a temple in Bahia in 1985, was or a festa de Xangô at the terreiro o Olga de Alaketu. My attraction to this Aro-IndigenousBrazilian tradition was immediate, visceral, and sublime. Te orixá rhythms

stammering out the names o God; the smell o holy leaves; the smoke-grease avor o old iron pans and palm oil; the insistent, inherent languageo drums.

Mama taught me to know the presence o God in the kitchen; ances-tors in cookingher hand raised, shaking an affi rmation out o her bones;sharp percussive claps; prayers and gestures o prayers sliding into potso greens and chicken. We ate her tenderness. Candomblé was a religionI knew rom home. Women slicing onions and cutting meat. ending re

and telling stories. And any moment, any moment at all, they entertheancianos coming in through the door, a window, the oorboards: risingup the helixed ladders o our own breath and blood. elling God.


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Tis Arican- based mysticism was a deep strand, a wide band, in mymother’s lie, as it is in my own. It is why I am drawn to study and writeabout Candomblé, Vodou, Santeria, and other ritual traditions o the Aro- Atlantic diaspora. It is also, I am convinced, an underappreciated resource

o Black American lie and culture that has a great deal to teach about who we are and what our history offers to the world. o paraphrase Alice Walker,it is ofen in our mother’s lives and gardens (and kitchens) that the numi-nous, the persevering, and the creative meet.

And I will make her that halted a remnant, and her that was cast ar off a strong

nation. 4:7

My mother lived orty-our years with my ather. Stayed with him “throughmany dangers, toils, and snares.” She taught him and ought him and orgavehim. And loved him and taught him some more. It was a diffi cult union insome respects. Nevertheless, when my parents were able to work togetherthey were an absolutely amazing pair. Both intellectually sharp and ull oimagination, Mama and Daddy were capable o deeply inspired thinkingand, at their best, each generously ed the other’s genius.

What they created togetherin workshops, in classes, in their com-ments and revisions o each other’s writings and speeches, and in theirministry to people around them was an offering o astounding beauty.My mother and ather both loved history and people. And they shared aremarkable devotion to this country, believing prooundly in its democraticand creative potential. In the best times, I loved simply being around them.Teir conversations and company ascinated me ar and above anything my

peers could offer and they nurtured my curiosity about the world.My dad is past eighty now, a senior scholar o Arican American his-

tory whose work resonates in the DuBoisian tradition o scholarship rmly yoked to social justice activism. And his lie has its own poetry, its rhythmsurgent, tangled and soaring. . . . In Mama’s nal year, and since, he is a mag-nied comort, a rock.

Mama and Daddy were both activist-scholars. While she raised my brother and me and a hal dozen o my younger cousins who lived with us

at different points, Mama wrote a master’s thesis on Ida B. Wells-Barnettocused on the antilynching activist’s biography and the progressive leader-ship o Arican American women. When we were older and in college, and


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as she cared or her aging mother-in-law, Mama did another master’s degreein nutrition and social work, documenting the benets o a healthy diet orthe rehabilitation o juvenile offenders. In the year beore she passed, shetalked about doing a PhD in archaeology; she wanted to study the Arican

burial ground in New York City. Always, my parents shared a conversationabout the radical tradition in American lie; and as they began to teach and write jointly about the relationship between spirituality and social activism,my mother’s strengths and sagacity suraced in more obvious ways.

And the remnant that is escaped o the house o Judah shall yet again take root

downward and bear ruit upward. 2 19:3

I you didn’t know better, and you saw them at a public gathering, you mightat rst think she was a gentle helpmeet. (Or, you might not.) I you werelucky, or simply present long enough, you’d see her rise up in the middle oa crisis room and defly turn the tension into a reconciling, embracing wind.She could do it subtly; or she could do it like a tornado.

My mother knew how to talk, how to debate. She was a brilliant debater.She would think o perspectives and justications that occurred to no oneelse in the room until she uttered them. My grandmother, Mama Freeney,loved logic and thinking and trained all o her children to use their mindsinventively and well. Mom won speech and debating contests in high schooland college and she developed into a thoughtul and passionate publicspeaker.

Sometimes though, she sat silent in the public circle and offered hermothering and mentoring to the offended/offending parties only aferward.

She knew so much about healing . . . about recognizing the underlying, un-spoken wounds that catalyzed the outbursts on the surace.

A ew years beore Mama passed, the Veterans o Hope Project con- vened an activists’ retreat at the Fetzer Institute in Michigan. Most o theparticipants were older olks rom the movement dayspeople like omFeelings, Grace Boggs, Zoharah Simmons, and about twenty others. Tere were a ew people present under thirty, but not in equal numbers to the el-ders. wo o the young olks, a man and a woman, were working with a lm

crew to document the retreat and they elt particularly alienated rom theconversation and history shared by the elders. While they gathered oot-age and sound, they were also observing and quietly seething inside. Tey


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Daughter’s Précis • xvii

didn’t see themselves reected in the stories, in the planning, in the com-munity. And on the last day (something explosive almost always happenson the last day with activists, doesn’t it?), the young people rom the lmcrew blew up and told everybody else they were hypocrites. Most o the

older people were stunned. Tey certainly didn’t see themselves that wayand they wondered where the youths’ seemingly sudden rage had comerom.

Te retreat had been coming to a close and people were talking about what it had meant to themhow rejuvenating it was to be in the companyo ones who shared some o their history and some o their earnest, rus-trated love or their country. Te young videographers declined to join thecircle, saying the gathering had no place or thempeople who were not

movement veterans, or proessional community activists, or nonprot ad-ministrators. Tey said they had thought several times to leave, and now,here at the end o the weekend, when everybody seemed to be relishing akind o eel-good moment, they were angry and hurt because it seemed as inone o this had anything to do with them.

By the end o her statement, the young woman was turning to walk out, visibly choked up and emotionally exhausted. Mama went and got her, andstood next to her, bringing her back to the circle. My mother looked aroundat all o us and said the responsibility o the elders is to take care o the youth, to protect them. “No, you can’t leave,” Mama said, holding on to the young woman whose eyes were watering now. “Because you are part o usand none o our work means anything i our children don’t know that welove them.”

Mama stood there talking to the circle, holding the girl tight around theshoulder and turning the energy in the large open room rom deensivenessand rustration to proo that this amily we had made over the three or ourdays o our gathering was strong enough to mend a circle some had not even

seen was ruptured.

Remnant: What is lef o a community afer it undergoes a catastrophe.

In 1997 my mother was awarded a ellowship to the Mary I. Bunting Institute

at Radcliffe College. At the time she was very sick. She had recently beendiagnosed with diabetic neuropathic cachexia (a rare and debilitating neuro-logical complication o diabetes) and was struggling to nd a treatment that


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her sensitive body could tolerate. She wanted very badly to accept the ellow-ship and do a research project on the relationship between spirituality andsocial activism among veterans o the Southern Freedom Movement. Shealso needed some time and space o her own to think and to heal.

Mama originally envisioned Remnants as a book that could serve as amanual or people in the helping proessionssocial workers, communityactivists, teachersgiving them encouragement and creative models orgrounding their work in a broadly inclusive vision o community, justice,and human relationships.

I had just nished graduate school and was taking care o my motheras her condition became more acute, so I accompanied her to Cambridge where we shared a one- bedroom apartment or almost a year. We visited

medical specialists, experimented with various treatments or the wrackingpain and extreme weight loss Mama was experiencing, and in the moments when she was strong enough to sit with a tape recorder, we talkedaboutamily history; about politics; the joys and lessons o her childhood; thestrangeness and meaning o her current illness; her study in India with i- betan lamas; the plays and perormance pieces she envisioned as healingceremonies or our ractured nation; the ancestors, the orixás and God; andthe Black southern mysticism that inormed so much o her mother’s andgrandmothers’ wisdom.

Remnants quickly grew rom a manual into a more personal memoir,inuenced by our conversations and my curiosity about the details o mymother’s lie, and the roots o her spirituality and her politics. We began work on a collection o essays and stories, poems and recipes, play ragmentsand autobiographical remembrances that connected my mother’s history with stories o the many extraordinary women and men she knew rom themovement days. She was trying to get well rom the accumulation o bur-dens she carried, using the writing as a way to explore how she and other

movement people had come through trauma in the past. In a way, it servedthat purpose. elling her story, with support rom staff and colleagues at theBunting Institute, and restorative visits to see her amily in Chicago, Mamasaw her health improve remarkably by the end o the ellowship year.

Once we returned to Denver, I worked only sporadically on the project(to my everlasting chagrin). Mama wanted to nish it quickly, but I was bythen helping to direct the Veterans o Hope Project and ound it hard tomake the time we needed to pull all the pieces together. Afer Mama passed,

I lef the day-to-day operations o the and began working in moreearnest on the book.


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Daughter’s Précis • xix

• • •

Te voice o this text is now our mixed utterance. Our dialogue. WhileMama was living she would tell me stories or write a rst draf o her ideas

and I would stretch and mold and shape the text urther along and then readit back to her to make sure it still said what she wanted it to say. She’d tell mei it was good or i I had lef out something or had missed a detail or toneshe wanted to emphasize. And I’d work some more and come back again.Sometimes, I’d add things that occurred to me as interesting or helpul andusually (but not always) Mama would say “Oh yes, that’s good. Let’s putthat in too.” In shaping the chapters o this book, I have employed stories Iheard rom Mama all my lie; entries rom her journals; interviews with her

amily members and riends; essays she and I wrote together while she wasalive; and transcriptions o more than orty hours o our taped conversa-tions (made mostly between 1997 and 1998).

Like any mother and daughter, we had our discords. We both tendedtoward the dramaticalthough my dramas were passive-aggressive andMama’s moments o re were strikingly lucid. And while she didn’t gener-ally interere in my lie choices as an adult (most o the time I was asking orher advice anyway), i she got a strong eeling about something she’d let meknow. Sometimes to my rustration, and sometimes to my relie, her instinct was usually right.

Our amily moved a dozen times beore I was sixteen. Different neigh- borhoods, different cities. Mostly because o my ather’s academic itiner-ancy and my parents’ political commitments. Mama said, “Some peoplemoved around a lot because they were military; we moved because we weremilitant .” Sometimes the accommodations were only temporary anywayor the rent was too high. Trough it all, Mama worked very hard to give Jonathan and me stability. She and her nephew, our cousin Charles, made

all the packing and unpacking every year or two seem like un. I was a airly well-adjusted child, but I needed a lot o affi rmation in the midst o so muchunpredictability. My mother and my cousin made sure I had it. In the nalseven years o her lie, as I worked to claim and nurture my voice as a writerand scholar, my mother was my mightiest championgiving support with-out stint and in abundance, a broad inusion o condence and love.

But Mama needed her own space and air. All my lie, she was lookingor retreatsmonasteries, meditation centers, places to go breathe some

quiet, restore her strength, and hear hersel think. While my grandparents were still living in the amily home in Chicago, she would go there. Home. A


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respite. Te amily took care o her. Even so, she said later, the problems inthe marriage had a constructive effect. Tey pushed her urther into some-place innite. She had to make an inner sanctuary where she could do thealchemy o healing her own spirit, so she could get up and keep dancing.

• • •

Trough my mother’s story, Remnants seeks to bring the indigenous wisdom o the Arican American community, particularly o women, intoengagement with more academic understandings o intellectual produc-tion. At various points, this book is in dialogue with the work o historiano religions Charles H. Long, dramaturge George H. Bass, womanist writer

and scholar Alice Walker, philosopher and mystic Howard Turman; withthe wisdom and experience o religious activists Clarence Jordan, Martinand Coretta King, Anne Braden, Will Campbell, Marion King, and HisHoliness the Dalai Lama; and with the creative insights o artists Bernice Johnson Reagon and Lucille Clifon, among others. Tese engagementshelp situate Remnants as a resource or critical investigation o indigenous Arican American religious and philosophical thought in relationship to arange o other traditions.

Like Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens , Lucille Clifon’s Genera-tions , and Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera , this book contributesto and draws rom the critical, ethical, philosophical, and creative meth-odologies that are, in current parlance, understood as “womanist.” Teseare approaches that prooundly wed interdisciplinary, intellectual work toreective insights emergent rom the lived experiences o women o color.Te rhythms and tones o Remnants are conversational; its narrative is pop-ulated with stories and poems and dreams, as well as analytical essays andautobiographical meditations. In some ways the quality o the text is like

music, jazz, and old soul you’ll hear it best with your heart, the inner ear.My hope and expectation is that the book will speak to many communi-

ties and disciplines, crossing varied terrains o academia, community, andspirit. Obvious points o scholarly interest will be ound in the subdisciplineso religious studies: especially Arican American and Aro-Atlantic religion;comparative religions; American religious history; womanist theology andethics; public theology; Anabaptist studies; mysticism; and spirituality andsocial justice. In particular, Remnants provides helpul avenues or examin-

ing a meaning o Black southern indigeneity as a cultural-religious scaffoldor the 196s reedom movement struggles and as a grassroots philosophicaltradition with valuable insights about the uses o compassion in healing the


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Daughter’s Précis • xxi

experience o trauma. Scholars and students in other elds, such as history(Arican American social history, the Great Migration); literature (spiritualautobiography and coming-o-age narrative); sociology (amily studies,social movement theory); peace studies; ethnic studies; and women’s and

gender studies, will also nd benet in the text.Te book will be particularly valuable to activists, teachers, students, and

artiststhose members o our larger society who are in especial search or ways to gather and express both inormed critique and ervent hope or thetransormation o our society.

• • •

Remnants proceeds in roughly chronological order. But it is also circularstarting rom the ancestral Georgia ground and ending there as well. Te book is organized in six sections, plus a oreword and aferwords. Te oreword includes this preace and an opening reection “(the light),” which in-troduces the mystic-spiritual element in my mother’s lie running through-out the narrative. Te preace is my attempt to outline major elements omy mother’s worldview and personal experience as well as to offer guidanceabout the nature o the text and help readers appreciate its somewhat un-orthodox timbres. With the exception o the preace, the aferwords, andthe call-and-response o the section called “Te Bunting,” this book is writ-ten in my mother’s voice, sometimes rom verbatim transcriptions o tapesand journals, sometimes rom my reassembled memories o her words andideas, ofen a combination o both.

Te rst and second sections o Remnants , “Ground” and “North,” areanimated by motis o ancestral history and extended kin, beginning withthe stories o an enslaved great-grandmother, Grandma Rye, and coursingthrough the amily’s lie in early twentieth-century southwest Georgia, their

move north to Chicago in the Great Migration, and Rosemarie’s youth and young adulthood in a city that was an incubator o joys and possibilities as well as a place o deep segregation and constraint. Tis portion o the bookillustrates the spiritual values my mother learned rom amily in examples oour death and dying rites; daily associations with extended kin and neigh- bors; the special tolerance or children, people in crisis, and social outcasts;the dreams, visions, and personal, mystic spirituality o her own motherand Mama’s early encounters with the inexplicable, the holy. Among the

chapters here are stories o angels and ghosts in the Georgia backwoods;Daddy Freeney’s memories o the lynchings that sent him north in searcho saety or his sons; Aunt Mary’s stghts with death and the snowstorm


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that paralyzed Chicago when death nally won; the yellow-ower healingteas o my mother’s great-grandmother, Grandma Rye; and meditations onthe battered shields and ironic beauties o blackness.

Te third portion o the book, called “South,” recalls Mama’s years as a

ull-time worker in the reedom movement, her perspective as a racial rec-onciliation activist and the spiritual journeys she began in the afermath othat time. It includes stories o her work as coounder (with my ather) othe rst integrated social ser vice agency in Atlanta, GeorgiaMennoniteHousein 1961; recollections o their travels in the South as an “advanceteam” or organizations preparing to launch desegregation campaigns;and reections on the transormative spirit and power o the movement.Tis section also incorporates stories o Mama’s riendships with men and

women who embodied a convergence o spiritual conviction and dedica-tion to social change, such as Clarence and Florence Jordan, southern whiteounders o Koinonia, an interracial agricultural community in Americus,Georgia; Anne Braden, a white Kentuckian with a lielong commitment toracial and economic justice; Howard and Sue Bailey Turman, deeply ecu-menical spiritual elders to my parents; Martin and Coretta King who livedaround the corner rom us in Atlanta; and Bernice Johnson Reagon, earlymember o the Freedom Singers and ounder o the women’s a cap-pella group, Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Te latter parts o Remnants , “Te Dharamsala Notebook,” “Bunting,”and “Te Pachamama Circle,” trace Mama’s immersion in the mystic tradi-tions o Buddhism and contemplative Christianity. Here again she is drawnto reconciliation, orgiveness, and healingthe grounding values o herearliest lie. In this portion o the book, she connects the practice o InsightMeditation (Vipassana) to the visionary traditions o Arican Americanolk religion; and ties ibetan Buddhist teachings on the purpose o humanlie to the lessons Rosemarie learned at her own mother’s side as they vis-

ited dying relatives and riends. Tis section examines the links among thehealing o personal wounds and societal injustices; and between the searchor meaning and reconciliation in Mama’s lie and the journeys o others who were her companions. In many ways, “Bunting” and “Te PachamamaCircle” coalesce as the mystic heart o the text. In a grammar o medicine, womanist storytelling, and ritual, these sections narrate my mother’s jour-ney through a staggering, uncommon illness and recount how her effort totell the stories o her lie moved her toward renewed strength.

Te AferWords o the book are a poem and two essays I wrote in the years ollowing my mother’s death; the poem is an homage to Oyá, the Yo-ruba energy o storm and transormation, and to our ugitive orebears. One


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essay is about Mama’s extraordinary engagements with my students andthe other describes the experience my ather and I shared o my mother’snal weeks o transition. Te last pronouncement o the text, “(the Call)” isMama’soffering to all in her reach an assurance o ancestral strength and

an urge to reclamation o our national identity as a place o compassion and justice.

But now or a brie moment avor has been shown by the our God, to

leave us a remnant, and to give us a secure hold within his holy place, that our

God may brighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving in our bondage.

9:8

When my mother died we held two memorial ser vices. One in Chicago atmy cousin Phillip’s house, which was mostly amily and a ew old riends. And another one, a larger one, later that spring in Denver, where peoplerom many strands o my mother’s lie came to honor her with stories andsongs and ellowship.

At the rst memorial, the one in Chicago, my ather stood up andtold everyone how Mama had inspired and directed him to be the kind oteacher, writer, and pastoring presence he became. He said, “When Roseand I were rst married, I sometimes spoke in a judgmental way. I had atendency to lecture in hard, harsh tonesespecially about racial justice is-sues; criticizing people or what they were not doing and doing wrong. Mymanner could be rough, even caustic at times. Rose observed me or a while,and then she took me aside and said to me, ‘Vincent, you’re a good speaker.But you can be very critical. People need encouragement. I you can givethem that, it will inspire them to know they can change.’ ”

Standing there, surrounded by my aunts and cousins and amily riendsrom way back, I announced that I had known many intelligent people in myliegrowing up around universities and in the movement. I had studiedat plenty o ancy schools mysel but my mother was the smartest per-son I knew. Categorically. She was brillianton multiple levels simultane-ously. Creatively, emotionally, intellectuallythere wasn’t a problem anyo us ever had that she couldn’t gure out how to help us through. I meanher mind was sharp. Nothing got by her. Sometimes she perceived things so

quickly and so keenly and so differently rom anyone else, that I had to whipmy head around to catch the backdraf o her genius as it sped on its way tothe next sun.


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Remnant: the remaining. the part lefover. the trace still perumed; ephemeral

and persisting. the buried things. coming up out o the ground like ladders.

Her dying was hard or all o us. We were weary and undone. I was not thereat the very end. Te ambulance beat me to the house and her heart hadalready stopped. But Daddy and my Aunt Sue were there and they held Ma-ma’s hands and rocked her sof and sweet rom this world to the next. Teemergency workers revived the heartbeat but nothing else, and then at thehospital, not even the heart would pulse on its own. Mama had gone.

We sang or her in the hospital room. Waiting the day or two until ev-

erybody could come to say good- bye. Hymns and spirituals. Te old-timeychurch songs she loved like the blues. And the prayers rom Ikeda and Bawa,rom Lama Zopa and the orixás. We washed her with mint and marjoramand roses. We placed suras and ibetan prayers on her chest, her orehead, whispered into her ears. And then, afer the wires and tubes had all beenreleased rom her body and the room was quiet, we sat a while longer. Ten we lef.

Mama is gone, but she is not. Her hand still rests on my back when I amtroubled, or sick, or rightened. She comes and she watches us. Her niecesand nephews. Her children. Our ather. Her sisters. Her beloveds. All thecircle o those who remember her. We are her remnants. Te remaininglace, the cloth. Te small rocks. Tis book, not perhaps what she would havemade o the vestiges, is still hers. And mine. And yours . . .

R A C H E L E L I Z A B E T H H A R D I N G

D E N V E R , C O L O R A D O

Notes

1. A public ritual ceremony in honor o the orixá o re, justice, and communal well- being.

2. Te Freedom Singers were a singing group ormed in 1963 by young activists insupport o the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Documents

Remnants by Rosemarie Freeney Harding with Rachel Elizabeth Harding