For the past twelve days, I have enjoyed my short respite from prompting plays every day with GPT-4. Stepping away from a daily pace of creativity is important at times. Everyone benefits from time for reflection and solitude, well, at least I do. Reflection and solitude are also incubators for new ideas. For example, I attended my wife’s 35th college reunion over the weekend in New Haven, Connecticut. I fell into observation mode by habit and discerned a story waiting to be told — Is there life after Pierson College? There were great threads about secrets, friendships, gender identities, failing bodies, and panel discussions all leading to the existence of life before and after Pierson. But it was life at Pierson that framed disparate lives decades later. It was funny how classmates remembered friends as they were thirty or thirty-five years ago, not how they were today.
Whether there was life after Pierson seemed less important as an essay after my experience yesterday. I was no longer among the movers and shakers in the United States. I found myself witness to the collapse of an American family. This was the real story to share, not the peccadilloes of the propertied and well-connected Ivy League class but something more raw and poignant.
This is the story of another America.
Once upon a time in a southern city, a young black medical student graduated from Howard Medical School and set up a practice in a black neighborhood. The young doctor was the only black doctor around for many years. Over the years, he developed a strong reputation as part of the city’s ambitious black middle-class. One daughter would become the first black female graduate of a leading southern medical college in the 1950s. The other daughter would attend dental school and set up a dental practice in the same black neighborhood where her father practiced medicine.
The doctor father and mother considered marriage and family a grave, serious undertaking. To be wed required all deliberate speed as it was. The older daughter would be engaged for eleven (11) years before she married and had a family. The younger daughter would be engaged for seven (7) years before she married.
The younger daughter chose well. She married a dark-skinned ambitious, intelligent and high aim young lawyer out of Howard Law School. Together, the young couple would have three children in the 1960s and live lives of great professional satisfaction. The Mom’s dental practice flourished. The Dad’s legal practice became recognized throughout the state for stellar work. Their three children were raised in Jack and Jill, an elite association of black mothers dedicated to producing leaders for the future. As the 1960s came to an end, this Black American family reached a zenith in consciousness, enterprise and accomplishment.
The future looked incredibly bright for the grandchildren of the doctor grandfather who set up his practice in the 1920s fresh out of Howard Medical School.
A turning point occurred around 1970 during public school desegregation in the southern city. Before 1970, all members of this Old Black American Family had attended all-black schools. Now, busing was in effect as the oldest granddaughter attended a school across town for the sake of integration. The granddaughter was naturally very intelligent as were her parents and grandparents. She spoke the King’s English as did everyone in her family. And yet on the school bus, other black students bullied the bright youngster for being “white washed.” The black students would torment the granddaughter. They would bully her to say something because she sounded white. These psychological wounds would never be forgotten but the granddaughter persevered, in part, because she knew who she was. And she honored the most important people in her life by being herself — intelligent and well-spoken. Notably, the black classmates who tormented the grand daughter have gone on to live dysfunctional lives.
Success is the best revenge.
The grand daughter became a lawyer and practiced law with a major black law firm in her southern city. She dreamed of having children and continuing on her family legacy of accomplishment into the distant future. When she married an accomplished executive, it became apparent that her husband was infertile. Thus, the grand daughter settled upon Plan B. They would adopt two needy black children, a boy and a girl.
Once the children were adopted, it became clear that these children were different from all that the grand daughter had known in her own family. The daughter had her first period at the age of eight! Apparently, this was true for the birth mother as well. The adopted daughter was diagnosed bi-polar and was placed on medication. She took her medications until the age of eighteen when she stopped. The conflicts between the grand daughter and her adopted daughter were draining and demoralizing. The adopted daughter fell in with the wrong crowd. She was drawn to the street subculture, something as alien to the grand daughter (adoptive mom) as the man on the moon. The adopted daughter cheated and stole which was anathema to everything the lawyer mother and lawyer grandfather (and lawyer great uncle) stood for. The adopted daughter was arrested, the source of the greatest embarrassment to the city’s equivalent of a Black Kennedy family. Think the Harold Ford family in Memphis Tennessee for a comparison. The adopted daughter cursed out her loving adoptive mother. There was no gratitude for opportunities, only resentment and a thirst for street life and chaos.
The adopted daughter fell in with the wrong sort of man, a convicted felon who is no stranger to the illegal possession and use of guns.
A child was born out of wedlock. Rather than see the light of responsibility as a new mother, the adopted daughter continues to revel in street life and essentially passes off her toddler son from stranger to stranger. The grand daughter (adoptive grandmother) fights for custody but the courts are rigged in favor of the mother’s rights. And the father may, or may not, be in jail as I type.
The adopted son has adopted the public persona of archetypical gangsters with his du rag and massive back tattoo.
And as I heard this story yesterday, I thought to myself how tragic — the slow motion death of a Black American Family over the generations.
The Decline of an American Family
Upon hearing this story, a close relative wrote "First, that's so sad. Second,, I think I recall hearing they were adopted. Third, that's kind of sad that she's reflecting that (adopted grandson) doesn't share her gene pool. Also kind of sad and telling. Too bad. Hopefully, she (adoptive grandmother) truly loves him though even though not related by blood. Fourth, so goes many distinguished families. That's history."