Читать книгу The Evolution of Crimson - Jerry Aldridge - Страница 8

May 5, 1921

Benjamin and Versilla Mims were Winifred Dodd’s maternal grandparents. In 1921, Ben and Versie and their children Rupert and Frances moved into a new farmhouse, surrounded by their five acres of land, in Manchester, Alabama. Both Ben and Versie came from traditional southern families. They were both taught to know who they were and how things were. For Ben and Versie had both been told that everything in this world was either black or white. You were either rich or poor, Colored or White, Yankee or Confederate, Republican or Democrat, Baptist or Catholic and you cheered for either Alabama or Auburn but not both. None of the polarities were to be mixed. That would contaminate everything. Any variations or deviations from the laws of “black and white” were inconceivable, incomprehensible, and most of all, unforgivable. Even worse, any transgression of these laws would be an abomination to God.

The northwest Alabama they knew was a far cry from the blackbelt of central and southern Alabama. Though they owned a small farm, they knew it was not a plantation. In the scheme of rich and poor, they knew they were poor. Unlike the south that would one day be depicted in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, Versie and Ben lived an entirely different existence. They saw themselves as totally independent with no need for servants, not to mention they had no money to hire them. There would be no farm hands or Colored people to help tend their five acres. In this part of Alabama, everyone was poor, according to Versie. The Negroes who lived in this part of Alabama were few and far between. In fact, Frances who was already nine-years-old had never seen a Negro. Rupert had seen only one Colored man and that was when he went with Ben into Jasper to buy supplies for their new farm.

Versie and Ben were proud of their values and especially confident because they knew what was right and wrong. Right was right. Wrong was wrong—period! Frances and Rupert were not only expected to inherit their parents’ moral code, they were to absorb their ethical values like human sponges. They would learn the world is black and white. There were no other paradigms or worldviews. That’s the way it had always been and that’s the way it should be in the future.