Fly Your Flag

 

Fly Your Flag

Sometimes my anger is so thick that I must walk away.
I can’t even wash it off in the shower.
It oozes out and fills up again.
Welling up doesn’t mean it’s going, or I’m over it.
I am doing everything I can to control my primal rage.

Fly your damned flag.
Trump. KKK. Confederate Battle. Nazi.
Own who you are.
At least the hoods are off.
At least SOME hoods are off.

I want to see you for who you are.
I want to see you revel in your hate.
"Any bites on the house?"
“Trump’s buying.”
Nah, your house is too good for him.
And kiss my Black ass on the way out.

Besides
You’re probably already
flying your flag
at your new house
in a community of like-minded
evil people.

 

Sonia Lynn Walker
28 May 2025

Start #52Ancestors

So after a hiatus of over almost 2 years, and a handful of posts left in draft form, I've decided to take the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge that is offered by Amy Johnson Crow. The prompt for the first week is "Start." So today I start with remembering my beginning time in genealogy. I was infected by the genealogy bug when we went to our first Foote Family Reunion in 1994. Magically, a few days before we left, my grandmother had placed another picture next to her mother, great-grandma Leah. When I asked about the new picture, Gram said, "That's my Aunt Emmaline. You don't know them. They're the Rollinsons in Cincinnati. It would be another year before my sister and I would hit the road to search for our ancestors.Sandy and I traveled down to Calhoun Falls, Abbeville County, South Carolina. That was our start. We met up with our cousin Billy who joined our journey.

Cousin Essie Guthrie Herring, Sandra, me,
and Sandy's sister by another mother,
Barbara Seals Nevergold - Oct 1966

I guess this is my restart. I haven't really written since Sandy was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on July 16, 2015. She lived with the motto of having faith, family, friends, and fight. Sometimes I didn't understand her fight because it was such a painful illness. There were times I didn't understand her willingness to undergo two treatment trials at Roswell Park Cancer Institute here in Buffalo. I can't say that I understand any better now, but she truly lived NEGU - Never Ever Give Up. She was here from my start - almost 17 years my senior, so she shared in many of my experiences. I was her flower girl. I spent weekends hanging out with her & her hubby. (Though divorced, she and Tom remained friends). She drove carloads of my friends to movies after church on Sundays. She came to Syracuse University during a horrible snowstorm and pinned me when I joined Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority in 1981. We bought our first Radio Shack Tandy computers together in 1987. So much of what we did was the normal day to day interactions. 

Sandy, Tom Sr, Tommy Jr, & Leah - 1973

Sandy loved God and serving her church as a Deacon. She was so amazing when people were close to transitioning into Heaven. So many people also recall the very special moments when she, as a Deacon, would hand a newly baptized person the candle and speak, "Let your light shine before others that they will see your works and glorify your Father in Heaven." (Matthew 5:16) She was my tag team partner when it came to those frustrating times with our Mom. She was my oldest friend.

Sandy became a Golden Soror of
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. - 2013

Before she left here a year ago today, I had her promise to try and send some genealogy information back down after she'd been hanging out with the ancestors. It didn't hit me until this past week that I think she made good on her promise. In fact, she may have been working on it before she left. It was January 1st last year when I received a message that would bring us our bonus family members through a close DNA connection to Tom. I wasn't able to respond right away, but I think this was her way of having us always find a bit of joy in what was a difficult and sad time. A year ago was the start for Sandy's entry into her Heavenly Home, a mansion prepared for her in the midst of God and our ancestors. And though I've continued to research and found lots of support through this time and in my research, especially from my wife Deborah, this will be my start at putting my findings out here again. Thanks to and in memory of my sister, Sandra.

 

Deborah, Sandy, & me -
Bald Solidarity! September 2015

Sandy & Essie
July 2016

Barbara & Sandy
November 2015

Sandy & Mom
December 25, 2016

Sandy's Family History
(not to be confused with our genetics) 

Cousin Shaw said We're Related on Both Sides

29 Nov 2013 - If I had been right-thinking, that would have been enough to send me searching. Mom and Dad had gone down to a reunion in Georgia, and when I got home from Archaeology Field School in Minnesota, Mom told me those words. I was thinking that Mom meant Daddy's Walker and Simpkins lines, but she actually meant a connection to her side of the family as well! It was 1981 and I wasn't asking the questions. I wasn't asking the ancestors to guide me. Thirty-two years have passed and I'm still stumped.

Once I finally restarted my search in earnest, it was 1995. I still hadn't been down home to Calhoun Falls. My cousins and I have joked that if we looked long enough and deep enough this small town in Abbeville Co, South Carolina ultimately would yield one set of grandparents for everyone. Everyone we knew came from Calhoun Falls. We thought it a bit scary that my parents were both born in Calhoun Falls. My Gram, Mom's Mom and my heart, assured me that my parents weren't related because her side of the family was from the Flatwoods and Daddy's family were Millwood People. Mind you that these two neighborhoods are not at all far apart.

Calhoun Falls has never been that big:  1,759 residents in 1930, and only 897 in 1920, It's never gone over 2,500. And you know you've arrived down home when folks ask, "Who are your people?" and they they know who you're talking about even though those you name joined the ancestors more than 50 years ago.

Calhoun Falls is so small that one year I got a phone call from Mrs. Eades who told me that Ron Hunter had told her to call me to help her find out more about her ancestors. As I listened intently and took notes, once we finally arrived at the end of the conversation, I told her that I'd of course look for some information, but I hope she could tell me who Ron was. I sometimes think that was the way our ancestors chose to work, their way of intercession. Ron had met my paternal line Cousin LaRusha and maternal line Cousin Inez at a COG Holiness convention and he'd met Mrs. Eades. When I finally talked with him, it turned out that our common relative was none other that Cousin Shaw. That is how my ancestors send me echoes. They are real. They send us to find information and ask us to find the missing connections.

Cousin Shaw was Floree Simpkins Shaw. Her grandfather was my great-grandfather, Edmond

Simpkins, born 1838 SC. She explained when I was 13 that he had 22 children by 3 different women. I first found him in a slave ledger of James Edward Calhoun listed as part of the "Edgefield Gang." Calhoun had acquired my family, both the Walkers and Simpkins, through his marriage to Mariah Simkins of Edgefield County, SC in 1839. I've heard some other stories about my great grandfather Edmond, but I haven't been able to verify them. I speak them now because I continue to seek evidence to support them. Ms. Mamie Magnolia Isom was born in 1900 and joined the ancestors in 2004. She told my cousin William that she had attended a school for "Colored" children built by Edmond Simpkins. She said the school had been burned down by white folks twice, but after Grandpa Edmond rebuilt it the third time, they let it stand. This makes sense to me because he was a farmer and a blacksmith so he might have invested in education. His daughter, Carrie Simpkins Guinn, was listed as a school teacher on the 1910 census. I've not found any proof of the school except for Ms. Isom's recollection.

Anyway, it's 29 Dec 2016, and I should have published this long ago. I've got to put all of these drafts out into the universe so that perhaps I'll get some hints from the ancestors. Cousin Shaw's mother was Harriet Allen (b. ca 1869 SC) born to Whitfield Allen (b. ca 1844 SC) and Georgianna Williams (b. ca 1854 SC). Somehow either the Allen or Williams line connects to my Foote or Lee lines.

My Grandmother's Hands

When Gram, Lucille Ruth Lee Stokes, went to Heaven on December 6, 2006, I took down the poem I'd written for her and placed it in her coffin. I finally stumbled on an early version of it today as I try to make a dent in the mess I've made of her once impeccably clean house. Of course in typing this in, it means that I'm once again distracted from the job.

I really loved my Gram and was so blessed that she was always right upstairs. Hopefully she'll be with me as I continue this archaeology dig in her home. This was written on December 27, 1983. I was in Bukavu, Zaire (now DRC) in the early days of my in-country Peace Corps training to be a Fish Volunteer. The waves of emotions during my first trip Home to Mama Africa were such blessings.

My Grandmother's Hands

I stare at my hands.
After years of dainty piano,
at last they can more than appreciate
the stories told by the hands:

Of yesterday's slaves
who struggled through a living hell
Building not only the south,
but, in their fight, laid the foundation
for us, their future.

Of today's African women
who from sun up to well past dark-
work fields, cook food, carry water, clean clothes,
march miles with incredible weight balanced so carefully on their heads,
often with infants strapped to their backs.

And of my Grandmother's Hands
Paled and wrinkled, calloused and firm.
The story of personal struggle and a pride,
comparable to no other.

Those hands, which washed windows and scrubbed floors,
show the strength of generations.
And to those hands, the generations to come owe everything.

For in her fight, head always held high,
My Grandmother, bowing to no one but her God,
built and taught our family
to care, to love, and to be proud.

My hands sense the trials of yesterday's slaves and today's African women,
but it is my heart that holds everlasting love and respect for
My Grandmother
whose hands have held me close
and guided my way.

Gram (1/20/1905 SC - 12/6/2006 NY) and me 1988

Look to This Shore

This isn't genealogy - it's greater than genealogy, it's the call of ancestral echoes that rest deep inside. One third of the African DNA coursing through my being is Nigerian. I have very strong emotions, love and disappointment, with my ancestral home. The school girls, kidnapped by Boko Haram over three months ago, have not been freed. Even when I lived there in 1989-90, I could feel the wahala. I also want Nigeria to rise up to its role as an international leader as Chinua Achebe wrote in The Trouble with Nigeria:

I believe that Nigeria is a Nation favored by Providence. I believe there are individuals as well as nations who, on a account of peculiar gifts and circumstances, are commandeered by history to facilitate mankind's advancement. Nigeria is such a nation. The vast human and material wealth with which she is endowed bestows on her a role in Africa and the world which no one else in the world can assume or fulfill. The fear that should nightly haunt our leaders (but does not) is that they may have already betrayed irretrievably Nigeria's high destiny.... We have lost the twentieth century; are we bent on seeing that our children lose the twenty-first? God forbid! (1983)

I wrote Look to this Shore in the Fall of 1989 from the inspiration of J. DeWitt Webster when we were interns for Africare in Nigeria. DeWitt's excitement of returning home for the first time and his love of Nigeria sparkled through his whole person! We had been selected as among the second group of James H. Robinson Fellows through a program sponsored by Operation Crossroads Africa, Inc., the Ford Foundation, and various NGOs that was designed to increase the number of underrepresented minorities working in international development. I'm glad I came across a copy of the poem because it reminds me to hold onto hope - hope for the Chibok school girls, hope for Nigeria, hope for a peaceful settlement for Palestinians among their Jewish cousins, hope for children living in unbelievable situations from Buffalo to all parts of the world.

Look to this Shore

Stepping into the sand of the other side.
Flooded with memories that cannot be mine.
Yet they are of me, through me, all that I am.

How often was someone's last act
to grab a handful of this sand,
a handful of home?

Have you on the other side
ever stared across the sea?
Longing to know the lives of the water-washed bones;
Longing to know our ancestral homes?

Look at the Blackness of the world.
Proudly stand and be counted in the history.
Look inside yourself.
You are the child of a history of pride and perseverance.

Look to this shore my children.
Dive into this knowledge.
Rediscover the pride of self-knowledge
Which flows in other Black faces.

Come to a land of fortitude.
So many of the strongest were taken.
Know that we are because they were.

Are you a living legacy to their standards?
Do you still respect yourself?
Do you have a spirit that cannot be broken?

If not,
go to the shore,
stare across the sea,
seek that unbreakable spirit.

Seek the wisdom of people who created civilization,
perfected medical arts, and lived in harmony with nature.
Let that wisdom be the cornerstone of your knowledge.

The spirit of our ancestors
whose centuries-old fight for survival
will come to you.
Let that spirit be your strength.

As their descendants, we fight today.
Called to resist genocidal apples
tossed on our paths each day.
This war is for survival.

Our ancestors knew themselves.
Putting their lives into the Creator's hands,
they did what had to be done to protect their children.

Stare across that sea.
Think of how Africa was raped.
Stare at yourself.
Know that your ancestors fought to survive.

Stare into yourself.
Be filled with the heritage
that centuries of abuse
have not crushed.

Now vow that in the centuries to come,
your children will have that spirit.
Vow that it will not be crushed.

Hold a handful of sand.
Stare across the sea.
Look to this shore.
Step, assuredly, into reality.

Happy Birthday, Mommy!

On February 20, 2014 Mom turned 90 years old. This was an incredible blessing that could have only been topped by the physical presence of our ancestors who remain so close to us, in our hearts only a thought away. 

Mom loves being with her great grandsons:
David, Gabriel, & Christian

We actually started celebrating at church on the 16th. This was a good place to begin since 42 years ago none of us were sure that she would live another year. She was so sick with bile coursing through her jaundiced body from a bile duct sealed and damaged by adhesions, that the surgeons weren't sure that they could repair it. 

First Cousins: Inez, Dorothy, and Georgie.
1c1r Little Edward in the back.

She was so sick that she had Dad give me the womanhood talk while she sat by to help out if needed. She didn't think she'd be alive when the time came. She was so sick that it wasn't until years later that Gram, Dad, and I would admit that we cried ourselves to sleep in separate bedrooms because we were trying to be strong for each other - even as Mom did the same in her hospital bed. Our own Easter Sunday, 41 years ago Mom was brought out of intensive care following the last attempt they could make. The doctors kept the drainage tube in for over 6 months so the duct wouldn't reseal. So celebrating her 90th Birthday, we can only thank the Great Physician and his human instruments for bringing us to this time.

We don't intend to stop celebrating. We had a great time at the Soweto Gospel Choir concert and this summer she will have her Birthday Backyard Cookout. She has mentioned so often how much she misses those family gettogethers. 

As an only child, Mom's Aunt Sylvia was a second mother
and Aunt Sylvia's descendants are more like siblings and nieces.

We are blessed because Mom continues to be vibrant, on-the-go, and stubborn (Yesterday our first nice day over 50 degrees she put out the garbage and recycling), true to our Lee heritage stubborn! So, since Gram made it to 101, I've told her that I expect her to make it to 102! 

They Were Smiling, too.

Sylvia Lee Easley
15 Feb. 1903 SC - 3 July 2004 NY

For weeks I've been asking my ancestors what they would send to me for the AAGSAR Blogfest. I kept smiling as I thought about Aunt Sylvia and Gram. Those sisters could fuss, but never really stayed mad at each other. They embodied the stubborn nature of the Lees, and that feisty nature isn't such a bad thing. I think if Gram had kept arguing with "Aunt Sivey" a bit more, it might have staved off the Alzheimer's. Throughout this Christmas season, the sisters probably have been going and back and forth over this and that up in Heaven, just to make sure their descendants down here were laughing and smiling together. I think they were smiling, too.

Lucille Lee Stokes
20 Jan. 1905 SC - 6 Dec. 2006 NY

The two sisters were just about inseparable here on earth. They both fibbed about their ages, but I'm reasonably sure of 1903 and 1905. They were the babies, the youngest of 10 known and named. Gram thought her Mom might have had a set of triplets who didn't live, but we don't have any proof. Their mom, Grandma Leah Foote Lee passed in 1908 and their Dad, Grandpa David Lee in 1911. Raised by their older siblings, Uncle General and Aunt Georgie, they were tough, proud women. Aunt Sylvia and Uncle General moved to Buffalo in 1923. Aunt Sylvia married Uncle Ernest Easley in 1924, and Gram moved up to Buffalo with Mom that same year. Of course they lived together, or down the street, or a few blocks away from each other throughout their lives. Many friends and family members have stories of coaxing 90+ year old independently stubborn Gram into the car as they found her walking up the hill on West Ferry, going to see her "little sister" in the nursing home. They spent just about one hundred years together on this earth.

Mom is Gram's only child, but her first cousins Mary, Ernest, Dorothy, Edward, Eleanor, David, and Lucille Easley were her sisters and brothers. She was living with them on the 1925 NYS census and the 1930 Federal census. After church this Christmas Eve, Mom and I ran by Cousin Dorothy's. They're the only two remaining. For three hours we sat laughing as they talked about the old times. I heard some stories for the first time, and still feel a twinge pulling at my heart strings for the stories I've missed because those who knew them best are already in Heaven.

Oh they had me rolling. Christmas 1950 and Aunt Sylvia is cooking dinner. Cousin Mary calls Cousin Dorothy into the bathroom, exclaiming that something is definitely wrong. "See, they didn't tell us anything about babies," Cousin Dorothy tells me. "I look down and tell Mary, That's a head! Close your legs! I run out and tell Momma that she needs to take Mary to the hospital because the babies are coming." Aunt Sylvia told them that Cousin Mary couldn't have the twins because she was cooking dinner. Of course, Gram had to chime in, telling her to shut up and take Cousin Mary on to the hospital. She would finish the dinner. I'll bet that set off a fussing period between the two. Mom and Cousin Dorothy laughed about Gram's biscuits. Imagine, remembering biscuits some 60+ years later! Aunt Sylvia's kids liked flat biscuits, but Gram made big fluffy biscuits. Cousin Dorothy had to "pull out the cotton in Aunt Lucille's biscuits." Yes Mom, I, too, wish Keith and Zion's mom, Cousin Eleanor had written the stories. Gram, Aunt Sylvia, and all the rest of the Easley kids were probably smiling, too.

Lucille Easley
29 Jan. 1934 - 5 Feb. 2002

Megan

New Years Eve afternoon brought Little Edward and his daughter Megan over to sit and chat. Each time Mom sees Megan, she exclaims, "Oh you look just like your grandmother Lucille. You know she was named after my mother." So fun to sit and laugh and create new memories as Mom recalls stories of downed Christmas trees at lively family parties of days gone by - days long before Megan, Edward, or I were born!

Georgie Stokes Walker & Danica

Habari gani? Imani. Mom and I went over to Keith and Antoniette's to celebrate the last day of Kwanzaa. Faith in our God, our family's past, and in its future. There, Mom held Danica. That initial wave of tears welled up and subsided because Lee women don't often let them fall. But in that moment, I could feel her wish that they were with us, celebrating. I'm sure Cousin Eleanor was smiling down at her granddaughter, Jackie, a beautiful new mother, and her precious great granddaughter. 

Jade, Adia, Alicia,
Maya, Asma

Hope and happiness rang strong as I watched the children of our extended family teach us of the Nguzo Saba. I'm sure that Cousin Mary, Mom's closest age-mate sister-cousin, watched and smiled down on her daughter Sylvia, granddaughters Adia and Asma, and great-grands, Maya, Alicia, and Jade. I know Gram and Aunt Sylvia had to smile as Danica, and sister-cousins Jackie and Asma spoke and lit the candle for Imani.

Asma, Jackie, Danica, &
Antoniette

And so we usher in a New Year. Sometimes, our ancestors just may be nudging us to tell a story as it is happening, just as Luckie Daniels has nudged us to take our research to the net through blogging. 

In about a hundred years, may the family historians of our African American Genealogy and Slave Ancestral Research Community savor the juices of the sweet stories we found of the past and shared of our present. Welcome to the "New Kids on the Blog." 

If we leave them this record, I'm sure they will be smiling, too.

One Love,
Nsoni