For the Mods: Permission was given to post this in its entirety.
Today, while many of us in the blogosphere continue to preoccupy ourselves discussing the disturbing tone of racism that seems to have crept into the Clinton campaign's narrative lately, an African-American lady from South Dallas will be gathering together with family and well-wishers and doing something that few other people have lived long enough to do: celebrating her 114th birthday.
By any measure, Arbella "Bell" Ewing is a remarkable woman: she is currently the second-oldest person in America and the third-oldest in the world, not to mention the 67th oldest verified person in the history of the human race. She is a member of an elite group of people known as supercentenarians, or those who have lived for longer than 110 years - only 81 people currently living, and somewhere over a thousand out of the billions who have ever lived, have been verified as supercentenarians. She is also the oldest living African-American, having lived long enough to witness with her own eyes many of the great milestones that have been achieved by African-Americans since the end of the Civil War.
Bell was born in Freestone County, Texas on March 13, 1894 not far from Coutchman, the birthplace of "Blind" Lemon Jefferson, who was born later that year. She and her younger sister, who will be turning 104 later this year, were born into a family of 12 children, descendants of great-grandparents who had been slaves in pre-Civil War Mississippi. They grew up in East Texas, in the westernmost reaches of the Deep South, under the oppressive Jim Crow culture that took root after Reconstruction. Bell still carries memories of life in those days before Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, before the Freedom Rides and the sit-ins:
Although farm work was hard, she told relatives that she enjoyed it. Other memories were less pleasant.
"She always said there were racial problems," Ms. Williams said. "She had a cousin who was lynched, and she told us that was a reason she moved to Dallas."
She settled down in South Dallas with her husband in 1936, in a little house on Bradshaw Street. There she lived for the next 64 years, and as she outlived many of her family, friends and acquaintances, she also outlived old Jim Crow.
As a white man and a product of a far different time, it challenges my imagination to think in terms that I can relate to about many of the things that Bell has born witness to, and the experiences that she has had, during the long arc of her life. She no doubt heard about the race riots that erupted throughout the country during the Red Summer of 1919; one of the nastiest of them took place in Longview, not far from her home in Freestone County. The thought of what it must have been like to be black in East Texas during those tense days gives me chills. She might have heard a year later about women getting the right to vote, though it would have little immediate impact in her own life; as a women of color living in the South, it would be decades longer before she would be able to exercise that right in practice.
In my mind, I can see her gathered around a radio with family and friends during the 1930's, listening in as Joe Louis made history. Like most African-Americans of the time, Louis walked a tight wire of racial expectations, but because of his talent as a boxer he did so on a global stage. He defeated James J. Braddock to become heavyweight champion of the world in 1935, and dealt a body blow to the Nazi idea of Aryan superiority in 1938 when he beat Max Schmeling in a fight that lasted two minutes and four seconds. Millions of white Americans listened to his fights on the radio; how many of them began to question their cherished assumptions about race because of Joe Louis, we'll probably never know. Millions of black Americans listened to his fights too, and celebrated in the streets after his victories. In my mind, I'd like to think that Bell was out there with them, her heart filled with pride.
In those days, celebrations like the ones after Joe Louis's victories were few and far between, partly because black people had so little to celebrate in a time when they were kept at the absolute margins of American culture, but mostly because they knew what happened in those days to black people who drew too much attention to themselves. And yet, despite the injustice that they dealt with as second-class citizens in a segregated America, thousands of African-Americans still volunteered to serve their country in World War II. Joe Louis interrupted his lucrative career as a boxer to become one of those men; he never saw combat, but instead traveled around Europe visiting with battle-weary troops and fighting in exhibitions for their entertainment. He received only $100,000 for these fights, far less than he would have back in America, and what money he did receive was donated to the Army and Navy Relief Funds. Many of us, looking back on the injustice that black Americans had to endure in those days, might find ourselves asking why so many of them would volunteer to fight for a country that had treated them so badly. When asked just that, Joe Louis gave a simple reply: "Lots of things wrong with America, but Hitler ain't going to fix them."
In return for the sacrifices that he made for his country during World War II, Joe Louis's reward was to be harassed by his government for most of the rest of his life for back taxes on the money that he earned during the war, none of which he kept for himself. Likewise, multitudes of African-American men who returned from the war expecting (or at least hoping for) better treatment from the country that they put themselves in harm's way for, found instead only disappointment and frustration: they would still not be allowed to vote; still be expected to ride in the back of the bus; still be called "boy," even if they were grey-headed old men; still be called "nigger" if they held their heads too high; still be beaten and hung from trees if they forgot their place in society.
One of those black men who returned from the war, Jackie Robinson, would go on to become the first African-American to play in the major leagues. Many people consider his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 to be the launching point of the modern civil rights movement. But in reality, it was born from the frustration of thousands of returning soldiers just like Robinson, who wanted nothing more than the same rights that white Americans took for granted. More directly, it was born from the groundswell of anger that arose after a 14-year-old boy named Emmitt Till was beaten, tortured and murdered for whistling at a white woman. I don't know if Bell Ewing ever saw the picture of young Emmitt's mutilated corpse as it lay in the casket in which he would later be buried. In my mind, I can see her holding a copy of Jet magazine, tears running down her cheeks. But in my heart, I'd like to think that she never saw that picture. By that time, at the age of 61, I imagine she had already seen more injustice than any person should ever have to.
Over the next few decades, Bell lived to see and hear about all the great events of the civil rights era: Brown v. Board of Education, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott; Little Rock and Greensboro; the Freedom Rides, and the integration of Ole Miss; Albany, and Birmingham, and Selma, and Montgomery, and the Freedom Summer. And, of course, the one event that always comes to mind when we youngsters think about the civil rights movement, the March on Washington, and Martin Luther King's moving and eloquent speech that day. I don't know if Bell saw the speech on the television that day, but in my mind, I'd like to think she did, and I'd like to think that she felt her heart fill with pride again that day.
Bell lived long enough to see and hear all these things, and to witness the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But she also lived long enough to witness Medgar Evers and Dr. King gunned down in the prime of their lives; long enough to witness the emergence of the Black Power movement, and the riots of the late 1960's. In the aftermath of those turbulent years, though there is still much that hasn't been achieved, African-Americans can now at least exercise their right to vote, although they are still at times subjected to attempts at voter suppression and exploited as scapegoats by white politicians using fear to motivate white voters to support them. African-Americans have even been elected to serve in the House and Senate, as governors and as state representatives.
And now, for the first time in our nation's history, we Democrats stand poised to select an African-American to serve as our party's nominee in the upcoming presidential election. We've had to overcome a lot as a nation to get ourselves to the point where an African-American can have a realistic shot at winning a presidential election, and there are still hurdles that make it more difficult for black candidates to succeed. To suggest, as Geraldine Ferraro has, that Barack Obama's success as a presidential candidate is due to his race, or that he's "lucky" to be the black candidate, is to willfully ignore what African-Americans have had to endure in this country throughout its history, and to ignore what, in some cases, they still have to endure.
According to her family, Bell Ewing is pretty humble about her longevity:
A niece, Ozelner Martin, 87, said that when Mrs. Ewing was told she was among the oldest people in the world, she reacted with surprise.
"She said, 'I don't know why God left me here so long.' "
I think I might have an idea. Bell says that she has followed the presidential election this year, but she hasn't decided yet who to support. In my mind, I'd like to think that she'll end up picking Obama, but even if she doesn't, I believe that Bell is here to bear witness for a while longer before she leaves us. And I hope that Bell at least lives long enough to have her heart fill with pride one more time.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/13/12035/1331/630/473294
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